The Forums Are All But Dead...

[kenny0011]

Ok... Im going to point out the elephant in the room... The forums are dead, and frankly, pointless at the moment...

From a perspective of a new player, it looks inactive, it looks unprofessional, and it looks dated...

This is what a new person without logging in sees first on the forums/website:

http://i.imgur.com/LWxiOCd.png

They are met with spam from the chat box, and dated forum threads (Most recent on that picture is March 13th.. News and Announcements should be active... Its at the top of the page, and should be one of the first people visit)

I, in at least my opinion, believe we have two possible choices:

1) We scrap the forums all together, make a new small website that just has webtrade, stats, donations etc... This would be a small, yet fancy website with just information. We move "talk" to the server.

2) We keep the forums, redesigning them and bringing people back.

Option 1: By removing forums we can focus on making a better website. We could have more "news post" announcements and replys, but remove the rest of the forums. Now... I don't make myself a professional website designer, but we have a large community, I am sure someone is able to make a website, but heres a quick idea I came up with (Using paint... I know... Its amazing)

http://i.imgur.com/IInBHWc.png

Option 2: We completely redesign the forums, bringing them forward. We redesign, we re-entice, and we maintain.

Redesign: We look at whats wrong with the forums, we remove potentially unneeded forums, we introduce new ones. We also look at how moderating is done on the forums, weather the mods moderate the forums, or we set up a select few who are not moderators on the server to maintain the forums i.e. veterans.

Re-entice: We bring people back to the forums. This part is the hardest, but still possible. We set up weekly "forums events" such as a lottery. Post on the thread, you get a chance at winning some stuff... Hopefully at least that will bring people to the forums once a week... Voter commands also make people vote. Think of a way to give people some voter commands by using the forums... Just a suggestion. We spam defaults who have not made an account to make one... Hell... Give em a week of a voter command for registering... Vetrans/donors, make macros to advertise the website!

Maintain: We keep the forums alive. One major way we can do this is maintain the rank structure. At the moment it is very dated, and no one keeps this up. This needs to be maintained. We continue enticing people to the forums, and we actively make new topics of interest. We moderate the forums so that spam threads are removed, and above all, we remain talking on it....


Bit long winded there... But I had to get it out my system. I feel the forums are an integral part of the server. Some of you older people will remember the good old chat box, and the... Wonderful... conversations that occurred there... The forums can become active again, but, as a community, we must make them active.. And no.. there is no getting around this one... something must be done...

Discuss.

[_DeathKiller_]

I will make a new website and allow Zerg to use all the permissions

Edit 1:the website is kreatious.iclanswebsites.com I'm making the website better right now

Edit 2:It's all set up for Zerg to come on I just need him to sign onto the website then I can past ownership for the website to him!!

Edit 3: http://kreatious.iclanwebsites.com/

Edit 4: new website is http://kreatious.ihostinghq.com

[masy1]

I like the forums, and it makes me sad that they're so dead ...
I'm partly to contribute for the spam on console, but I was expecting zerg to clear the /mail every once in awhile :3
Many of the new players don't really know about the website, and go to the .com kreatious on accident. (Don't do it)
I think that the welcome messages that people play should include the website, so they know where to check things out, Wall-E should link people to the website, when they trigger him in the chat by asking for the website, when it says "Welcome to Kreatious" when you first login, there should be a second message after that in chat, or when you reach the end of the /rules there's a sign telling you about the website. It would inform a lot more people about it.

Personally, I like the layout of the forums, but I can see where it would be confusing, and a bit sad to a new player. Seeing the changelog etc, with only old posts can be a little discouraging, and people don't really know about the web trade shops, donating tab, store, and voting button. It can be a little confusing for them, if they are new. In my opinion the voting button should me moved out of the banner, because for awhile I thought it was just an icon, not a link.

There should be a subforum that players go to when they first check out the website, where older/current players can contribute, and share helpful things such as how to use the website and other things. I know there's a help forum, but it's a little different from a forum that new players go to for checking things. Think of it as a "Welcome" forum.

Also, many people just sign up on the forums for the resident rank, and never really participate in forums, such as the introduction forum. Just saying, but the website might need to have the things explained on the pages so that new players understand.

Take the donating page for example. People aren't sure what the minimum for donating is. It's default set at 10 dollars, but the minimum really is only 5 dollars.

I like how zerg really explains the voting commands though, because after you vote, it shows a message saying you can do /help to see what command you can do, twice. That's really helpful, and I would like to see the same newbie-friendliness for other things.

That's me going on and on. kthxbai

Edit: and players shouldn't be triple posting, Deathkiller.

[kenny0011]

@_deathkiller_

As masy said above, please avoid triple posting... In some weird way, you show what _is_ wrong with the forums, and how it has become somewhat of a spam bin...

However, while I do not necessarily like the iClan website, it somewhat illustrates my point that we need somewhat of a redesign, with at least a "front page". While we may not use that website as the man one, I can definitely see it as being used to try and work out where we want to take the main website. As stated before, we have a fairly large community, and I hope there is at least a group of people who are willing to make a website with some... Motivation...

@masy1

The situation with .com is one we will simply have to live with... While I am somewhat OK with that material.. I can see it as being a obvious turn away for others

As you stated, yes there is spam on the console... But only zerg can do that... The ball is in his court to rectify the situation... But this could be rectified with a possible solution below...

I personally have very little website coding knowledge, so have no idea how hard it is to implement, but we have a "default splash screen" which shows just certain stuff i.e. Help, News, Announcements etc. and does not show the chatbox, or any other forum. This "Help" would be simply be basic, such as IP of server, how to register, a version of the rules of both server and forums, and other trivia like a FAQ (Ban appeals, WebTrade etc). Only by logging in would the rest of the forum unlock, such as discussion, off topic etc..

On your topic of donations, this, along with other things, need to be clarified and updated, but then a lot of things need updating :s

What we don't want is walls of texts. They be massive turn off... Yet again, I am unsure who would do it, but a set of kreatious YouTube tutorials may be useful, I believe there is one for WebTrade, but again, its hidden within a bunch of other stuff... These would show how to do thing (i.e. set up WebTrade, How 2 Ban Appeal, Grief Protection)

[Nezark123]

Here's my long winded discussion on the topic. Prepare yourselves, this could get long. I'll put it in a spoiler so it doesn't spam up the page.

Spoiler:

Can't do anything without zerg.
Nuff said.

[_DeathKiller_]

So we might try my website out and put webtrade on it?

Edit: I've made the tag thing today too with Vtn- dark green CMod- light green Owner - purple XD
Donor- Blue Rsd- Gray.. Member-Light blue LOL Mod-orange

So when u post something it would look like this.
Owner-PartyMix
Donor-masy1
Vtn-FPSrusher
CMod-007coolcube
Mod-Neko
Rsd-_DeathKiller_
Member-Notch

The tags will look better on my page because the background is black

[masy1]

[emeraldcreeper10]

Deathkiller, avoid making forums for Zerg. He would probaby want to make his own, better, and decent forums himsef.

[_DeathKiller_]

[malandrix_bunny]

Try to avoid making a fkrums for someone else as it tends to agrivate them especially if they want to modify the code or link their domain/subdomain with it. After seeing zergs work with these forums I would ASSUME we would stay with forums similar to phpBB as I believe that is what we are using. As an owner of another minecraft based forum I would recommend giving it more minecraft orientated icons such as blocks for threads. My suggestions are usually invalid or stupid for 999/1000 times but react as you wish.