Ownership - do something to bring in new traffic

[Oz]

This place is dying ever since you purchased it from Q. People have been leaving and not coming back, and no new blood has been coming in to replace the lost. You want to continue this to thrive, you need to do something so we can get traffic in here!

Start reading this, then take a look at all the people who haven't been around for a while vs all the people not coming in: https://perfectmancave.com/forum/showthread.php?t=87609

[zathras]

Good idea Oz.. I fired off a PM to admin since they haven't logged in for nearly 2 months. I asked them to come on here and chat with us about things...

[Admin]

For drumming up traffic, we are definitely open to suggestions.

zathras, in your PM you mentioned opening some or all of the Off-Topics to be viewed by guests. This is an easily doable suggestion and would help bring users in from Google. Having them being viewed by all means they will get "crawled" by google search bots, and therefore added to their Search results

Besides that, I could see what could be done to bring more content to the site. Perhaps articles that would relate. There isn't really an official place for them to go at the moment, but we could add a subsection for that sort of thing.

We also have a forum layout upgrade that we could pitch you. It's something that would probably be coming some time down the line, but I could see about getting the site bumped up the list. It would have some slightly layout changes, including the addition of a homepage (having a homepage increases your standing with Google), and we could make sure that the traditional forum layout would remain available for those who want it.

Here is an example the a site that got the upgrade: JeepForum.com - Jeep & Off-Road Discussion Community

The colour scheme would be whatever fits best, but the general layout would be the same.

That's what I got off the top of my head. Thoughts?

Kevin

[gps4]

i think the best thing to do to get new traffic is for participating members to invite their friends to take a look and get involved in the forum.

i just happened to catch wind of this place when SK's poker table forum was on its way down and there seemed to be a migration over to this place. I was moving into a new house with a 16x24 workshop i aspired to turn into a mancave and this site fit the niche i was looking for. once i got involved with the forum, i visit several times a day and try to contribute when something comes up I think is relevant to the group.

I have found the diverse group of regular contributors offer a lot of different angles or opinions on things i want to know about. i'm not sure why folks have left, but perhaps those of you who have some kind of friendly relationship with them can ask why they left to get an idea of what might be turning folks off.

[Shadow]

Originally Posted by gps4

perhaps those of you who have some kind of friendly relationship with them can ask why they left to get an idea of what might be turning folks off.

That's not a tough question to answer.

The PC answer is life happens. And that is true to some degree.

The non-PC answer is that they were run off by some other members for various reasons. Whether that was a good-natured ribbing that got out of hand or plain-old asshattery is a matter of opinion, as is whether or not they had too-thin a skin. Unfortunately, a fair number of the folks that left were very significant contributors to the off-topics area.

[CRAW]

Originally Posted by Shadow

The non-PC answer is that they were run off by some other members for various reasons. Whether that was a good-natured ribbing that got out of hand or plain-old asshattery is a matter of opinion, as is whether or not they had too-thin a skin.

Bingo Christmas Vacation - YouTube

Then for some members it was a matter of seeing the infamous " " and all was good, but not for others... apparently. IDK what happened here, but wasn't Q the one to always offer up the emoji.......?

[Oz]

Kevin,

Thanks for checking in. Read the link in my OP and there are some great ideas in there. Thanks for doing something - we don't want to find a new place to dwell. Opening the OT - or better yet - directing people to the OT area by registering.... any chance to show some threads and not others?

[zathras]

Originally Posted by Oz

Kevin,

Thanks for checking in. Read the link in my OP and there are some great ideas in there. Thanks for doing something - we don't want to find a new place to dwell. Opening the OT - or better yet - directing people to the OT area by registering.... any chance to show some threads and not others?

all the threads within a given forum will have the same properties. They'll all be visible or not, to a user based on the usergroup they are in. so you could make a subforum off of the main off topics, and block that to unregistered/guests.. which is exactly how it is now.

eg

PMC > Other Topics > Off Topic Discussions > Off Topic Chatter

Any of these can be set to a 'category' or a 'forum'. Categories can contain only other forums, but forums can contain threads and other subforums.
PMC, OT, and OTD are all categories, and OTC is a forum. I think this is one level too many really. Maybe 2 levels too many.

It could (should?) be

PMC (category)

PMC > Man Cave Projects (category)
PMC > MCP > Design, Plan, Build (forum, public)
PMC > MCP > Showcase (forum, public)
PMC > MCP > Other projects (forum, public)

PMC > Inside the Cave (category)
PMC > ITC > Gaming Tables (forum, public)
PMC > ITC > Audio Video (forum, public)
PMC > ITC > Wet bars, yadda yadda (forum, public)

PMC > Other Topics (category)
PMC > OT > OTC (forum, public)
PMC > OT > OTC > Back Room (forum, registered users only)
PMC > OT > Sports Book (forum, public or possibly registered users only)
PMC > OT > Meat Locker (forum, public)
PMC > OT > Poker/Gaming/Casinos (forum, public)
PMC > OT > Trading Post (forum, public)

'public' means that unregistered guests including the search crawlers (google, yahoo etc) would be able to see the content and it would eventually show up in search engines.

so the backroom would be the only content hidden from search crawlers and unregistered guests. It would also be a subforum off of the OT Chatter, rather than at the same level as the OT Chatter.

Thoughts?

[Shadow]

I like.

I wonder if Meat Locker should actually be in Inside the Cave rather than OT.

We might need to scan the OT forums for any pr0n and such... Or not...

[Hirize]

Maybe add a general woodworking section under "Mancave Projects".

Oh yeah as soon as I get a chance I'll change my picture.