I was gonna post this in the staff forum, and then I wondered why it had to be there, so I posted it here instead.

I've been thinking a lot about how to get more members and stuff, and this is what I've come up with.

It seems to me like our current method of advertising and 'selling' this site to other people is to emphasize the community aspect of it. It's understandable; it's because of this community that we have here that you guys like this site so much. But in all practicality, that's not going to help us get more members. We could talk all we want about how you should join the interguild because it's [hypothetical dialogue:] "a really cool group of people who love games that let you make your own levels in them", but no one's gonna really be interested in that.

People don't go to sites looking to join some cool community that they heard about, they go for the services that it offers. So I think that we'd be more successful if we started pushing the concrete features and services of this site. We have to focus more on advertising our cool stuff like a level database that lets you share levels for any game you want. Not only that but we have to start making things not to please the members that are already here, but to attract new members that aren't here yet.

For instance, the reason I like the level directory idea so much is because it's something that we could really promote to newcomers why they should come to this site. And it could also give us a competitive edge with those other super-large game-specific databases because we'd be offering a directory-type overview of levels spanning across several different level-sharing websites and forums. And yet you guys don't like this idea because suddenly it's not about our little community anymore, and you'd much rather just have a collection of levels made by the people on this site. But this is the kind of thinking that's holding us back.

And there's probably a concern that if we start thinking about stuff like this (with the sole purpose of impressing new members as opposed to just the old ones), then the community won't be as important anymore and that it'll either deteriorate or feel artificial somehow. But I think such a fate is impossible. The cool thing about my vision for the future of the Interguild is that it would have a ton of cool, inventive features that will lure visitors in, but it'll also have all of the community stuff everywhere that we have now (and more) to help accumulate an actual member base and a real community, as opposed to the little HATPC fan club that we have right now.


This is my perspective. And hopefully, you can better understand the logic behind some of my ideas. I want to change a lot of stuff around here that will hopefully make this a more popular website, and these ideas I'll explain later. And I don't want to be accused of being crazy or abandoning the wants of the community or anything, but just know that these ideas are intended to help the site itself.

so now that i've posted the previous post to defend my credibility, I'm gonna post some of the big changes that I've had in mind:

Website Reorganization
I've started working on a new layout (which I got the idea for on Sunday, and I mentioned once in the chatbox). In this new layout, the level database will literally be the center of the site. I'm not sure how it'll work out yet, but there will be more level-related stuff, such as a Featured Levels section on the sidebar, maybe (and I mean a real featured levels list, not just a random level list). Also, the big links to games around the site, it should lead to their page in the level database, which will have a big banner presenting the game, which will also be a link to the game's real page on the site, in case you want more info about it. The game's level database page may also link to any of the features that we've made for the game, such as the CaveList and Glitch Scanner for HATPC.

Also with the new layout, the member stuff will have to be pushed out of the way. Right now the chat box and recent posts box are a huge hassle when designing the layout, so I'm going to make them much smaller, where you can only see the first few lines of them or something, and if you want to see more, I'll put a javascript "Expand" button, so you can make it bigger on the fly, without having to completely remove those. I haven't experimented with how it looked yet, but hopefully it'll look good..

Actually, I'm thinking of experimenting of a way to sort of carve the site out of the level database. As if the entire site was originally intended to be only the database, and a site was built around it. I dunno, it's hard to explain, and it's a really abstract idea right now, but it could be really interesting if I make it work out...

New Cool Features For Levels and we can forget about everything else
I'm planning on sort of combining the cavelist with the level database in a way that'll let you search through both of them simultaneously and essentially it would be a microcosm of the directory idea. Speaking of the directory idea, I'm actually thinking of adding it despite the fact that you guys might oppose it. but all for the good of the Interguild...

But this will basically prioritize the level database above everything else. What? You say the video archive is hideous? Well, suddenly, that's not that big of a deal.... I will be basing my priorities based on their importance to the level database. For example, there is incentive to fix the game page b/c the game pages is where people go to initially find out more about a game they never heard of, and this could affect whether or not they will become interested in the game and look for its levels in our database.

Also the guides system is important b/c they help new members learn to make cool stuff, thus improving the overall quality of levels by new members, and their own enjoyment as well.

Better Design
I'm gonna really try to really make everything as easy-to-use as possible, which involves all this fine-tune stuff. For example, the Next and Previous Level buttons are not all that necessary, but they make things better to use. The same goes for the javascript map generator and its renaming to "Preview". There's not much to say about this, except that it's difficult.


so yeah, that's all I can think of right now. Please comment on these plans

I wouldn't mind more members, but I don't care if there are more members, or not.

I don't see anything that I oppose in your posts, except one thing: I really think that you should do at least a little work on the video archive.

lol. well, the video archive will probably get worked on eventually, but it's not like anyone uses it much. The opportunity costs of fixing it (the time that it would take) would just not be worth the value that we'd get from a better video archive. At least not right now.

Later on though, it would be helpful b/c people sometimes like to browse through all the videos we've made, but the problem also becomes that they don't have to be at the Interguild to do that. No matter what we do, they can get better results on Youtube. so yeah, the video archive has no hope. BUT, it's still very useful when linking videos to levels, and submitting vids to comps.

But I still think that the archive is a nice part of the Interguild.

Who would want to browse YouTube, looking for game WTs, when they can find them right here.  I think that it's nice, and I agree that it may not be worth all the time put into it, I still say you should put some sort of work into it.

I think it should be worked on while your planning the new layout, or something.  Or just do it when you don't feel like working on the other areas of the site.

well don't think that I'm gonna totally give up on it, b/c a successful site can't have something that hideous on it forever....

btw, in terms of the new layout, i've gone back to the blue color scheme, with a white page background. Except now it has better shades of blue, and it's not real white (it's gray) so it's more tolerable. If you notice, popular sites like Yahoo and CNN don't use real white either. The only exception is google, but they need the white. But this new color scheme looks much better than the rushed, no-effort thing in the original layout of this site.

However, I'm actually planning on making two color schemes. One will be the new and improved light layout, and the other will be an improvement of the dark color scheme. It'll be more similar to the original HATPC forums color scheme, because blue on gray doesn't look too good...

Will the different color schemes have different layouts?

Will there ever be different layouts available at the same time?

the entire layout content will be changed, so basically the different layout options would simply be to change colors...

There was a time when I thought we might, but whenever there's an organizational overhaul like this, it's usually because the old way was inefficient and I wanted to throw it out. So it doesn't look like there will be any major changes in layout. Unless it's something like switching the sidebar to be on the right, as opposed to the left....

A lot of people find our site through youtube videos. Having a better video archive means people will be more likely to make videos, which'll then be uploaded to youtube, which'll then help draw ever more new members.

I don't necessarily believe that, but I was just seeing what it felt like to make a poorly-constructed argument.

I'm very tired of this discussion. However, don't you DARE remove the importance of the chatbox, because whether you like it or not it's the current center of our community, and there's a reason for that.

lol and this is Isa's first post in this discussion too....

yeah, removing the chatbox would be a terrible idea. Right now I'm experimenting with an expandable "community bar". By default, all the online members, chatbox, and maybe recent posts thing will be part of a small section of the sidebar leaving no clutter, but then there will also be an "Expand" button that'll take all of that stuff out of the sidebar and make it appear on the top of the page like it currently does.

btw, I changed the topic of this title to something that made more sense, whereas before I mainly summed up the first post in order to finally click submit.

You mean like if people watch more of our videos, they will get inspired and make more videos, which will bring in more people? I don't know why I didn't think of that.....

Actually, we were probably the only people making HATPC vids on youtube anyway, and people who found us were mainly interested in the fact that there was an actual HATPC community out there. However, videos are still a pretty good way to advertise, and it would become very effective if we could accumulate a large amount of videos, all with "interguild.org" pasted on there somewhere. Then people will be like "what's with all these videos linking to interguild.org? I'm gonna go see what this site is...." But to reach that point, we'll need a decently sized community first, and right now we're focusing on becoming a community of such a size. So that means the best time to upgrade the archive is when we have decently sized community.

I'm probably overlooking some stuff in my argument, but I think it's fairly obvious that the video archive is not of immediate concern

One thing is certain: Absolutely no changing post's background to fuchsia. My god, that was an eyesore...

so if anyone actually read some of my wall of texts, I mentioned an idea where we could make the site look like it was originally a Level Database with the site built around it. If I could explain it better, look at this site: http://fr2db.fr | The entire website is clearly a level database (even though it has questionable navigation), and I was exploring the idea of making the Interguild in a similar manner. Think of it as if the Level Database suddenly got its own site, and then all of a sudden, all of the forums and guides, videos, comps, etc, were suddenly dumped onto that site.

Well actually, that sounds like a mess, but hopefully I could find a cool way to organize it. So the whole idea with the sidebar is to split it up into two sections. The first section will be labeled "Community" and I've already designed it and am amazed by how compact and neat it looks. It contains the login stuff (without your avatar), online stats, and a tiny chatbox. There's also a link to "Expand Community Bar" which will do what I mentioned before.

But the rest of the sidebar, what if it had all of the Level Database options and links? it'll probably have to be divided between links and all of the search options, but it could be really cool. But I guess it all depends on how it all looks after I design it whether or not it works. And you'll get to the other sections of the site the same way you do now, with the top bar links.

and if the site is redesigned to actually BE a level database with a bunch of cool stuff added around it, it would be a pretty cool way to think of the site.

I don't think that you should move the chatbox. It's very convinient at it's current position, being at the center of the page.

then you didn't read my previous posts very well. The "Expand Community Bar" will take all of that stuff off of the sidebar, and put it in back to where it is now.

and it'll let you look at the recent posts and comments. That just can never look good on the sidebar....

You gave me the impression that the chatbox was going to be part of the sidebar, as opposed to the top bar. As long as it remains in place, I will be happy with it.

technically, when it's on the sidebar, that's what the new default will be. And yet, it was placed there with the intention that you click the "Expand" button. Not sure if it's good web design, but oh well....

actually, now that I've seen how it looks, I think I'll make the "Community Tab" (which is all the stuff like the chatbox, the recent posts, and online members) the default set of things. I'm not sure if I'll still add an option to move it to the sidebar, but I might still add the option to completely close the Community Tab if it's too much clutter them. And the cool thing about this design as that this "tab" is deliberately separated from the infrastructure of the layout. Instead it seems like a floating tab at the top of every page (by page, I mean everything under the topbar)

ok, so now I need a new phrase to put under the big "Interguild" text on the top left. As I implied in my first post, "A Community about Games with User-Created Content" isn't gonna work, and if the site is basically gonna be about the level database, then we'll need to emphasize that. But it's still pretty hard to come up with a good one. So far I have:

A Level Database for Any Game
A Multi-Game Level Database
Find and Upload User-Made Levels for Any Game

after approximately 3 days of designing this layout in Photoshop, I think I'm ready to start converting this to code. but it's late, so I'll leave that for tomorrow.

One of the most popular line rider sites: http://www.elitelinerider.com/

Clearly its main thing is the forums.

Although line rider doesn't really have much of a copiable code.

that link won't load...

I'm thinking of making a controversial change to the home page. But I think I mentioned it before in the chatbox, and no one seemed to respond to it...

So with this whole idea of making the Level Database the site itself, what if the news wasn't the centerpiece of the home page? Instead, I'm thinking of taking the news and tucking it into the right side of the homepage, and it'll be presented in the form of a list of the latest news posts where you'll only see the title and the date posted, and you'll have to click on them in order to read the post itself. Think of it like the column of stats that we have on the homepage right now, except that it'll be a little over twice as wider and with better typography.

The main part of the homepage can then be something else that is more related to the database itself. I'm thinking of making a section called "This Week's Featured Levels", where we can create some sort of spotlight with maybe around 4 or 5 levels of various games, but with enough quality. I'm thinking of making it show screenshots of the level, and a description written by the staff on why that level is worth playing.

I like this idea because it puts on the site more images of the games themselves, and that's something that we really need. People are more likely to notice a screenshot of their favorite game than anything else, and screenshots add a better overall more "fun" tone to the site. Also, through this method, we could gradually add more images to levels, since it would be pretty impractical if we made images for every single level on the site.

You realize this requires something the staff lacks right now, namely the will to actually do anything?