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Scott Halliday hatched the same grand plan as hundreds before him: to build the ultimate Mustang community web site. But unlike most everyone else, he started working on his vision years before he typed a single line of code, and in quite an unorthodox fashion. In April 1999, Halliday relocated from Newfoundland, Canada, to southern California, which is home to considerably more Mustangs, Mustang enthusiasts, and aftermarket suppliers than Newfoundland. To free up the time it would take to chase his dream, he also changed career paths. Soon after, he launched V8Mustangs.com as a prototype for his ideas, and continued to research what it would take to build the ultimate enthusiast site. Part of the answer would be to join forces with a like-minded individual. Meanwhile, Dale Brown was having a blast with his own late-model site, SN95.com (www.sn95.com), which was featured in Cyber Stallions, Feb 2000. During 2001, Brown decided to expand the scope of his popular site to include earlier Mustangs, so November 2001, he re-launched it as AmericanMustang.com In January 2002, Halliday contacted Brown and suggested they join forces. "The merger made perfect sense from both of our perspectives for many reasons," Halliday said. "American Mustang was based on the east coast, and geared more toward tech, particularly SN95's. V8Mustangs was based on the west coast and focused more on classic and Fox bodies. It was like a marriage made in heaven." The two enlisted the help of a team of graphic artists, programmers, and web developers, including Robert Hernandez, who was responsible for a lot of the programming of SN95.com. After a few months of planning and hard work, AllFordMustangs.com went live in March 2002. From day one, Halliday was determined to make AllFordMustangs.com more than "just another community site with tech articles, a forums section, and reader's rides." Yet, take a quick glance at AllFordMustangs navigation bar, and that's a lot of what you'll find: links to Forums, Classifieds, Feature Cars, Event Calendars, Galleries, Links, and Tech, just as you'd find at most other major Mustang sites. But take a closer look, and you'll see that it's the attention to details under the hood that sets this site apart. Take a feature called the Dashboard, for example. It's like a command center that ties together all of the tools registered members can use to personalize the site. Here you have quick access to your own private messages, subscribed forums, subscribed threads, and buddy list. There's a neat option called My vBpad, which serves as an electronic post-it note, where you can keep stock replies for email, the forums, or anything else you'd like access to quickly without having to type more than once. The Dashboard is also where you can set your preferences for the forums, edit your profile, and more. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it lets you know someone is putting a lot of thought into how visitors experience the site. Like many other message boards, AllFordMustangs forums are nicely designed, easy to navigate, and full of options and features. But Halliday recognized that it's the moderators that make or break a forum, so instead of just enlisting whoever volunteered for the job, he carefully screened each one and handpicked the appropriate moderator for each forum. "Our moderators are the best because we only [select] the ones who truly have a passion for helping others and treating their readers with respect," Halliday said. In just over three months, the AllFordMustangs message board had gathered close to 800 registered members and more than 10,000 posts spread across more than three dozen categories for discussion. AFM's Webmail is similar to other sites' free web-based email, only with more features and a nicer interface. Aside from getting a "yourname@afmmail.com" address, you can also create folders, an address book, spam filters, signatures, and more. You can also check POP3 email, store 10mb worth of mail, set up forwarding and auto replies, and search your mail. "About 30 percent of our subscribers take advantage of our Webmail," Halliday said. "We expect this to be one of our most used services." Most sites have events calendars, but few have gone as far with the concept as AllFordMustangs. You can view all events of the day, week, month, or year, by region of the U.S. or Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Europe. You can customize how you view event listings, and a simple form allows you to submit your own club's events. The entire calendar is searchable, and clubs will soon be able to customize it for use on their own sites. There's a lot more to AllFordMustangs: a sizable Tech section; Galleries, which contains photos of member's cars, events, and historical Mustangs; Classifieds; Links; and more. And apparently, this is but a small slice of what Halliday and company have planned. "Not even a quarter of our offerings are available as of yet," Halliday said in mid June, adding that the next redesign would implement e-commerce enabled classifieds, chat, project cars, club listings, and more. Of course, big plans are common among site owners, while adept execution isn't. But if what AllFordMustangs has shown us so far is any indication, this site has a very good shot at becoming the next Mustang megasite. To read more or comment on this article, click here Top of Article
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