Ladies and gentleman, I'm not too proud to say I believe I was the mood slime that bubbled the bad vibes that made CMGB close there doors. Or may close there doors.
I talked to Patrick I believe from their franchise the other night on-line. Read on as I speak to them. Guys, guys you asked me to give you my feedback or whatever on your new site design and I'm not going to get into it again here because you two know how I feel and I don't remember word to word what I said.
Why close your doors? You blatantly ripped off a whole layout from another franchise. Yes you said Cleavand hasn't updated in a few years, guys even if it isn't stealing because its not copyrighted (which I'm not 100% sure about) you could have come up with some different ideas. It looked like your last design, while under construction was going to accomplish this.
I am by no means an html expert and who said you had to be. Geocities, the site the JZGBs is on has templates a person could use. Which you could modify to a degree. I don't know about other free sites, they may have templates too. Shoot even AOL has that easy design creator thing. It doesn't take money to get a site up. Do you see anywhere in the franchise rules where you need to create an expensive site? And certainly your site doesn't have to be on this server.
I'm not sure who you were referring too, I for one was not cracking on your site. Yes I told you all GBI franchise sites are going to have similar content, you called this fantasy…well if you guys like other “real” franchises are creative and have imaginations somewhat like the films itself, then why can't your site be original? No it doesn't say (I don't think) that your site can't look like anothers, hey man its just like the web “golden rule.” Like when you shouldn't take a graphic from a web page and use it on your own site w/o permission.
You thanked me for my support and I do want to be supportive, how can I be when most people, especially other franchises are gonna see your site and immediately recognize its a ‘copy’ of another franchise!? It makes me look bad, it makes you look bad, and it ‘weakens’ G.B.I as a whole. In this “world” how would it look if they (GBI) let franchises do whatever the heck they wanted. No, image isn't everything, part of being in this franchise thing is to have a business site. And the fun with an original looking site is to have people you may meet and let know about the site think is this real or isn't it. Or something like that.
I may be blowing this all out of proportion, creating a site doesn't have to be this big of a deal. I'm gonna say one more thing now that I think some people on this board are afraid to say to you and your franchise. I say this because of the tone of your post. If you can't “handle” what the franchises are about, then maybe you should go. Grow up and come back when you're adults. The ghostbusters in the movie weren't kids nor should be the franchises pretending to ‘really’ use proton packs, etc.