Website Hype

Quite often it is the non-commercial enterprises that become the really innovative and exciting websites, and the urban75 e-zine has become one of the most popular e-zines on the web, with games, photos, an events diary, information, articles, reports, but most of all, its piece de resistance – its bulletin boards, where its aficionados simply refer to it as “urban”.

Founded in 1995 in Brixton, England, (for those of you that don’t know, Brixton is part of London, south of the River Thames), the site remains resolutely unmonetised, being strictly non-profit, with no banners, no tie-ins, and no ads. The photos are a real treat – there are galleries depicting Brixton, London, New York, Chicago, Brighton, and Wales, as well as various 360º panoramas and even photography tutorials!

The site features loads of just-for-fun games, made by various web designers, and it is made abundantly clear that many of the games are pointless and have no meaning, such as “The Dot Clicking Game” and “The Curious Thingy” – a bit like “Mornington Crescent”.

Football regularly features on the site, but you certainly don’t need to be a footie fan to enjoy it. (For those of you across the Pond, I’m talking about soccer).

The bulletin boards have grown into a highly popular community, with around 33,000 registered members, although only a fraction of these are active posters. At present, there are an impressive quarter of a million page impressions each day, and about 5,000 new posts daily.

Yours truly has been contributing much of late, due to a bit of software development work. The advice you get there is great – as well as sorting out my programming problem, I have received advice about gardening, seen photos of people’s pets, discussed food, pubs, music, had a laugh and a joke. The boards are managed by a team of sensible moderators, so things don’t get out of hand, and despite being London based, the forum has a very international dimension. Urban definitely has its own inimitable sense of humour and its own culture, and if that’s not enough, there are offline nights in London where you can meet other urbanites.

The Student Room is the indispensable forum for UK students, particularly for those doing A levels, and considering university. Here you can get frank advice about what the different university courses are like, which subjects are interesting to study, which A levels you need to study a particular subject, and so on. You can compare notes with others about how open days and interviews went, what offers have been made by the departments, ask questions about student finance, and generally find out just about everything you need to know. Present students can tell would-be students the inside information about the different halls of residence at a university, the quality of the nightlife in a particular city, and a thousand and one other cool bits of information. You can also discuss student related issues such as gap years, your love life, politics, and, well, just about any subject. The Student Room is especially useful round about exam time, as people can rant about the difficulty of the questions, and compare how they did.

Originally created in 2001 as a portal site, with a vBulletin based discussion forum running alongside, by 2002 the portal idea was dropped and the focus of the site became the forum itself. The site offers more than just the forum however, one section of the site offers members free advice about their personal statement, which forms an essential part of the UK university application.

For paying members, there is yet more – they have access to around two hundred arcade games and competition league tables, as well as a secret sub-forum.

The site also offers TSR Wiki, which includes revision notes covering many subjects from GCSE level right up to University level.

The site is owned by Acumen Professional Intelligence Ltd, and on 19 September 2007 the new look website was launched – it was out with the standard vBulletin layout, and in with a custom-made skin. The new look site is sleek and professional, and with over a 140,000 members to click those ads for universities, mobile phone companies, and all things of interest to discerning young people, The Student Room looks well set for success.