I added the “Extra Chill Articles” forum which will automatically post articles from Extra Chill as they are published.

It creates an exact replica of the article (minus the ads). This part works great and the articles are being correctly synced.

The next step is combining the upvote counts, which has proven to be a bit trickier. The idea is that the user should be able to upvote an EC article, and its corresponding topic on the forum, one time each, with the total upvotes count reflecting the combined number of upvotes.

I’m close to figuring it out but it has really been giving me a run for my money.

Then, after achieving that, the next step will be to allow community members to interact in the topics created, so anybody can essentially contribute to a given piece of content.

Of course, the ultimate idea is to lock the Extra Chill Articles forum so that you must be logged in to view it. Then, it will allow community members to read the articles without ads, and give us a further incentive to drive signups to the community.

The overall goal is to continue building a digital ecosystem that is completely seamless between the two websites, and turns Extra Chill into an entire world. Each step gets us closer and closer, and I have been working on this every day.