A Forums-Focused Digital Agency

Audentio, the parent of ThemeHouse, is a forums-focused digital agency, with high profile clients like AVForums, Mac Rumors and Android Forums. There aren’t too many (any?) agencies focused this seriously on forums, working at such a high level.

Founder and owner Mike Creuzer has been working in forums since he was 11, starting on an MSN TV, and they’ve had a massive impact on his life. Though currently focused on XenForo, Mike and Audentio have worked with many forum platforms over the years, giving him an interesting perspective on the space, and where it’s headed. Plus:

How a Harry Potter forum taught him more about being a person, than about Harry Potter Why being a developer-friendly forum platform is important The forum platform Audentio is migrating people from the most Our Podcast is Made Possible By…

If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Open Social.

Big Quotes

“Being [in forums when I was] 11 or 12, I learned how to formulate an argument and present it. The good thing about forums is you actually get to take your time researching, or putting together some type of thought. … Not only did I learn about managing forums, but interpersonal skills.” -@mikecreuzer

“I don’t know where I would be without forums. I don’t know. It’s my career. It’s what I do. I wanted to play baseball, but instead I got forums. That’s just the way life works." -@patrickokeefe

“[At some point, vBulletin wasn’t giving developers] the tools that they need. That’s the thing a lot of software companies forget. Who do you have to make happy first? The developers and the designers. They are the ones who are actually going to build out the third party resources. Every forum that I know of has at least a couple of add-ons that are third party. The developers are the ones who actually go out there and build those tools. And the developers are what make your community sustainable and powerful and a place where people will sometimes come to your platform just because of these certain features and tools. And I feel like [vBulletin] didn’t listen to what the developers were needing but other platforms were, and it wasn’t even a hard decision for a lot of people [to leave them].” -@mikecreuzer

About Mike Creuzer

Mike Creuzer is a UI/UX and digital strategist from northern Illinois in the United States, and has worked in communities and forums since he was around 11. It started as a hobby, and after wanting to grow his forum and getting quotes for astronomical sums of money (that he’d later grow up to learn were quite reasonable), and being a kid unable to afford these quotes, Mike set out to learn the skills himself. Some 15 years later, he now runs Audentio, a small agency that solves problems all over the world, most known for their forum-focused services offered under the ThemeHouse name.

Related Links Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits Mike on LinkedIn Audentio, the digital agency that Mike founded and owns ThemeHouse, owned by Audentio Community Signal episode with Serena Snoad of Alzheimer’s Society, whose Talking Point community was recently developed by Audentio XenForo, a forum platform that Audentio currently does a lot of work with vBulletin, a forum platform that Mike worked more with in the past, and now sees a lot of migrations away from Android Forums, AVForums and Mac Rumors, other clients of Audentio phpBB, a forum platform that Patrick currently uses and has used more in the past CoSForums, or Chamber of Secrets, the official forums of MuggleNet.com, the first online community that Mike was heavily involved in Wikipedia page for MSN TV, a set top box that provided web browsing capabilities to your TV “DWx Has Been a Moderator for 10 Years,” a thread at KarateForums.com about a moderator that has been on Patrick’s team for more than 10 years “UCL Reconstruction,” a thread about that moderator’s recent UCL reconstruction surgery Digital Point, an online community that some people use to make money, as Mike did in the past Simple Machines, MyBB, ProBoards, Invision Community (referred to as IPB or IPS), NodeBB, Discourse and Flarum, other forum platforms mentioned during this episode Community Signal episode with Emily Temple-Wood, former Wikipedian of the Year, where we also discussed being a kid online WikiProject Women Scientists, led by Emily Temple-Wood Chuck Wadlow of cPanel, another Audentio client SitePoint, and SitePoint Forums, an online community that has been impactful in Patrick’s life Matt Mecham of Invision Community, formerly of Ikonboard ZetaBoards, which acquired InvisionFree Skin Zone Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan, XenForo developers Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts

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