Hi there. i have just opened up my website/forum at www.gamecrate.co.uk abd i need some tips to kick it of. i mean TBH i can understand why know ones joined or posted because its empty. i wouldnt join an empty forum for sure. please help Thanks, Kishan (Gamecrate Admin)
In order to attract people, you have to offer something. There are probably thousands of forums on the net that provide pretty much the same what you do (solely a platform to discuss), that's the problem. If you specialize on something (like AG is specialized on the dev scene), you will attract people that count themselves to this sub-scene and they will contribute to your site. This way people will also stumble over your page when they google for a certain term, such as someone who googles "development kit" is likely to get here. Your brand-new forum has no chance to compete with things like IGN, Gamespot or ntsc-uk when people google for what it represents right now, a "gaming community". If you leave it like that, there's not really a chance for a rapid growth. The initiatial kick it off is alwaysup to the admin. And even then it's hard to draw attention in this jungle and overcrowded area of gaming communities. For instance, a friend of mine has a webpage that offers hundreds (900+ atm) of high-quality game magazine scans from the late 80's to early 2000's covering all the popular and nostalgic mags that were released in Germany of that time. The forum, however, has ever been rather deserted with about 3-5 steadily active members. Years ago I contributed commented video-reviews of games (about 5 or 6) that triggered very positive reactions on youtube. Yet, no big run on the forums and we don't really know why as we offer a lot of interesting material.
so its kinda a trial and error kinda thing. it would help if you guys got it started out. i think were kinda specialized in classic gaming and maybe classic development. i dont see alot of them around. oh and yeah. it would be great if you gave me your friends forum Thanks for the quick reply
My friends page is www.NinRetro.de. It's all in German though, but we are eager to establish a detailed database of as many games as possible in all regions (yet incomplete, of course). You can click though that and German magazines of the mid-90's are also lovely to look at as they featured a lot of import games back then. Something I heavily miss nowadays.
Creating a gaming forum is easy but there are many out there and you won't get users joining unless you can prove to them that there is a good reason for joining i.e. you do many reviews/video reviews for your site and get a lot of people watching/reading them. Take my site for example, I just created the site in my sig the other day with it going to be a personal gaming site with me posting my own personal thoughts and views...etc on gaming. Now i've also added a forum to my site but i've decided to not add any sections bar the welcome section untill i have a steady input of articles and content on my main website, That way people can come and read what i post and if they like it they'll come back a lot to read anything new on the site. In turn that will possibly give me a reason to get a simple forum up and running with the people who may visit my site regualrly and i can then take things from there.
Ive already deleted this topic once and asked you to post it in the correct place. However if you insist in knowing why no one will join your forum. Its got this really annoying flash entrance every time you click on your signature link it takes like 10 seconds to get to the actual forum. You almost totally copied this forum from the start. It not only looks like your trying to compete with us but it offers nothing we don't. Why would members join your forum when it offers nothing new & its filled with flash. You were giving away founder membership for the first 200 users and then last time i checked you were selling VIP memberships for £2. Who would buy a £2 membership for a year for an empty forum. For £5 more you can buy a domain name and some webspace for a year and make your own forum. The VIP privileges include annoying things such as removing and deleting your own post and being able to sticky anything. All its going to happen is a bunch of fan boys are going to join make topics and then remove them when someone says something sensible that they don't agree with. Its also beyond me why anyone would let members sticky anything. It just sounds like it would be the most annoying thing ever. Having every sales posts or every topic someone thinks is smart sticked. You would have this huge list of stickies everywhere. Also i think the most annoying one of them all is "Exclusive VIP Logo so the members can treat you like a VIP" So not only do we have to help you out by joining in there but we have to be nice to idiots. Then you also give VIP members an exclusive forum (mind you some might count keeping the idiots in their own special place actually a good idea.). Your forum currently offers nothing special, you don't specialize in anything because you have no members, and you need to stop trying to adverstise and start to think of what you can offer to people instead. Im sorry if it sounds harsh but until you actually have something members want to talk about its not going to go very far. This forum only has so many valuable members because of the years ASSEMbler has spent making it something special and the knowledge he provides.
That VIP Membership thing was meant to come in effect after i had people join. oh and compete???.... i dont think so. i love this place thats why i used for inspiration and never in a million years is gamecrate going to be as big as AG . im currently looking into making it specialised in classic gaming. but its up to users if they are interested in that. you did offer some good construcive critism though. and i respect you for being honest
If you want to specialise in classic gaming then why are your classic gaming forums almost at the bottom after all the current gen discussions. If you want people to talk about classic gaming then remove or move the other forums and make them the focus. Nothing on your forum makes it look thats what you want it to be about.
Your forum is quite big, you could eaily make one even 2 general sub section for various peices of your site like talking about current gen, next-gen, development...etc that way when you get more users the amount posts in those sections will look better because its one or two places to talk about several different things and then if you ever need to in the future you can always expand these sections. if you want your forum to be about classic gaming then thats the part you've go to make stand out as the main attraction becuase right now if i stumbled upon your site then i'd think your forum is just another general gaming forum.
