New Year and a new SMV!!! Please share your wishes!

I have decided to do a major overhaul at SMV.
I think that we need some new concept for the site to make it work better and more globally.

Here is what I would like to do:
0. The mission of SMV would be to provide users with self-improvement information (forum + blogs) + give them real tools to plan their way towards success (custom profile fields: goal setting, vision board) + give them a chance to earn money (mentors can post their own products at smv - if they have their products) + to express themselves (mentorship + blogs + products)

1. The site will include these blocks:
a) forum (current, with simplified posting form and rules, more democracy, but still with smv club area and group)
b) advanced personal blogs for each member (perhaps wordpress with custom themes and custom user page)
c) area on moving towards success (goal setting, vision area with pics and videos, progress monitor etc)
d) mentoring area (???)
e) add copywriting on main page (text selling our features and a free book on success from SMV)
f) add area where our mentors could create their OWN pages with own articles, blogs, and OWN products (incl paid ones), with links to their own websites
g) ...

2. Better SEO: keywords to target "self-improvement forum", "self-improvement", ...
(if we have some good SEO experts here - please help)
+ link exchange engine

3. New platform: Drupal will replace phpFox; + PhpBB (for forum) + Wordpress (for blogs)
single user registration

The idea is to make a place where a person could come and from "0" move on towards success,
where we could have both: "audio+text+video success materials" (tools) AND "planning and actions area" (to keep track of success progress) AND "mentoring and getting coach help" area.

PLEASE ADD ANY WISHES + SUGGESTIONS HERE

The major drawbacks which I see in old SMV versions are: too big focus on info sharing and thus little communication, and no SEO

You are right here my friend, unfortunately we became more of a file sharing community, people post less and less, a good friend of mine told me that it's because of all the confusing sections
I have to admit, i'm partially responsible since if i remember i suggested to split the general chat in 4 different topics

My Ideas are:
a) Make less Topic categories as you said, instead implement a general tag system with check boxes, if somebody wants to read all about Antony Robbins he could simply click on the Anthony Robbins tag. I could describe it more, but not sure if you like it

b) This is a nice Idea, i personally own 5 wordpress blogs , we could do like blogger does perhaps for the less advanced users, as for the ones that are advanced, maybe just link to their blog or using iframes

c) All in One Success tools sounds great

d) you refer to coaching right? yeah we need a more visible area and more easy to schedule perhaps, maybe even instal team speak 3 or so to easily record coaching sessions

e) you want to make a sales letter?

f) This reminds me of the wall feature of facebook, we could use something easy like tinymce and html, we must be careful thou

g) ...

2. no experience here

I will think an easy structure as well

PS: Thank you for all!
PPS: I used too many smileys

I think it should be VERY simple and EASY to use.
VEEERRRRRYYYYY SIMPLE!!!

The forum will have perhaps 3-5 categories with no subforums: discussions, sharing (audio, text, video) and few others. The "organisation" of forum material will be done via tags and search.

Yes, sales letter will be written for first page with easy explanation of what can we do to improve the life of others.

Currently still thinking on how to make this very simple and communication friendly....

I am thinking about separating forum from social network & success tools...
Like:
forum => selfmadevip.com
tools + social network => smvdream.com
with 1 login and top and bottom menu integration for both sites.

This would allow us to position selfmadevip.com as self-improvement forum.

What do you think?

I'm not able to reply to that thread so I'll post here. I would like to see an option for being able to subscribe to threads. Right now, I have to bookmark each thread I'm interested in so that I can return to it at a later date. I would like to be able to save important threads under my user name so that I have access to my important content anywhere I go. Whereas right now, I can only find those threads on my personal computer.

I would also like to see a section where the more motivated users can discuss tactics they're implementing in their lives and where we can discuss ways to improve our lives. I've made quite a few threads in the general sections but they haven't gotten much response. I'd like to see the more action oriented members get to together to co-create inspiring lives.

I know that I've dealt with a lot of obstacles in my life to this point regardless of my age and I'd like to offer my advice where I can. A section of the forum dedicated to continual conversation on important topics to personaal development would be very rewarding for me personally and for those who have access to the information. Of course, maybe the site hasn't generated as much interest from people like me and maybe that's why my threads have gone unanswered?

Basically, I would like to see some sort of increase in conversation. We have talked about this before. The content provided on a site like this is invaluable but there is a missing link: input from the members who use this stuff. I'd like to see people post reviews in threads and the useless posts be cleaned up like "thanks" and "this product looks amazing". I'm guilty of making those posts but if we implemented some sort of system where the user was thanked for their posts to reveal content, maybe more people would be apt to post products and re-up old products. It would give them some sort of value for the work that goes into to uploading and posting links.

I'm a member of feed the brain and my biggest complaint is the snobbyness of it's users. Few people go out of their way to re-up products on good servers (like rapid or mega). They would rather post links on crappy servers that pay them more. I can't stand that. Here we have the opposite. We have a great community of people who re-up products but they don't get much for it. Thanks buttons are just a small way I see to give back. And requiring a thanks button to be used might be a powerful way to do this.