this forum is dead any ideas?

[king_leo]

this forum is dead any ideas?

well Im back and i come to a dead forum, why? anyone have ideas?

[Boxeh]

Try advertising at other websites.

EDIT: Welcome back

[NYman]

Welcome Back.
And i'm sorry, i'm busy with school and soccer/football and all that stuff.

[devon]

Not that I like going around to tiny little forums and telling them they suck, this is just a post detailing why this forum has no activity. Take it from someone who has been in the forum game for 8 years and has seen every little "gaming" forum try and struggle but will eventually get nowhere.

1. Forums without content "aka sites/downloads/videos" just don't work - This forum has no hook to it, it's a gaming forum that offers nothing. Why would anyone want to join? Pity? Well pity might get people on the wagon but will they stick for the ride? Members who join out of pity will generally disappear after 2-3 days, they might stay around a little longer if you mod them. You could try pulling the "join a great community for the community" angle that might take off, but this advertising, even in a massive forum, will only really work on the new people; the veteran posters will see no need to join as in their eyes they ARE in a great community, having great conversations with great people and all that other great nonsense. To get people to stick around you NEED to have something to hook them, something to make them hit "BOOKMARK THIS URL". Even if they're just coming back once a week as long as they're coming back.

2. If you want to succeed, spend money - This is one I learned the hard way. I had a little forum with a friend of mine, G2Fusion. Despite our best spamming and advertising efforts we could only get 200 members onto our forum and the living dead were having a party compared to us, we worked hard for every member but nobody returned the favor. A string of "Oh hai, I came here from _____" intro posts and nothing else. It wasn't until we merged with another site and that admin started spending money, a host, a premium forum, proper advertising, affiliations, and an actual site in the works and suddenly we had 2000 members. People started posting regularly and business really started picking up.

[b]3. Make friends with other site admins[b] - Get to know the admins of similar sites/forums. Converse with them, go on IRC, add them to MSN. Get on friendly speaking terms, then turn around and ask for affiliation, ask if they can advertise you on IRC, show them your forum and ask them for advice. Try and learn how they got big and copy them. If they have a technical wizard right hand man, get a technical wizard right hand man of your own, if they're getting hits from posting nude pictures on their front page, try it yourself.

I could go on, I really could, but I can't help but get this feeling I'm wasting my time. I'll summarize a few things that need improvement in your forum:

1. It's called Acewing Gaming but you only really have like 2 or 3 gaming areas. This forum is more of a generic forum rather than a gaming one. Make more gaming areas.

2. Goals? Do you have any goals? One of the first things I do when I'm designing a website is asking the client what goals he/she wishes to accomplish with the website. What goals do you have?
I feel this is a pretty big topic, it should really be in the main list but I'll summarize it with a listing of the goals I have for a big project I'm working on:
- Become the first place people go to when they want to download anime/manga
- Start a fansub group and a scanlation team
- Get Shinpantsu-tan famous (fanart in deviantart or some shit)
- Get IRL interviews from people inside the anime/manga business
Lofty heights, really, and more of a pipe-dream than realistic goals, but hey.


One thing I will commend you on is holding back on staff, I've seen forums with 20 members with 8 staff (seriously), 3 from 15/16 isn't too bad. If you want some advice on hiring, look at timezones and get every hour on the clock occupied by a staff member. Also, never pick using polls. It only ends in tragedy.

Anyway, that's all I got at the moment. If you want to ask about anything, do it in RomU.

Ciao!

EDIT: You do realize you have a half meg picture loading under the forum, don't you?

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