So I currently have a dilemma, I purchased a domain and have been working on a site for 2 weeks now (maybe more) for an Alice in Wonderland RP site hosted on IPB using my Character mod. Now this idea came about after Bioware Bazaar which was a Repo Men based RP that seems to be doing dismally but my Dystopia is still floating albeit a small ship. Well, long story short, I'm not sure there will be any interest in the Roleplay portion of the forum but I've worked rather hard on the banner and the skin altogether just to have it all go to waste because I don't have time for another slow/failing forum before it even starts? I'm hoping not. So that being said I've been trying to think of another thing that the site could be repurposed as that might be more successful then a roleplay and haven't thought of anything except maybe a writing site which is equally as dull and doubly as unsuccessful (that I know of). So the question is, where do you find/gain purpose for your site? What sort of things interest you enough to want to seek out a forum about it? I mean I have plenty of things I'm interested in but there are only so many things I go to forums for so finding a purpose that I would find worth adminning is always a dilemma. I go to forums for a few things that interest me: To show off my work (normally writing or otherwise) To talk with friends that I don't talk to in other venues (or even if I do about a different subject possibly) To code (mostly IPB type sites) To get help To get access to things that interest me. I mean I guess I could always have a Morrigan fansite. >_> I don't know how popular that would be. >_< I guess I'm just lacking in inspiration at the moment and some help in how others find direction would be fantastic!
Great question! I think this is kind of related to something like a Mission Statement. And I remember I had been asking about that a while back too, because for a little while I didn't know where what my own site was about. Regarding your questions, I'd say when I'm out looking for info in forums I'm looking for answers. I'm a gamer, so when I play games there is always lots of questions regarding builds and quests. I then go to forums to find them... not necessarily wikis or databases... but discussions whereby which I can also see the method that an answer for a game is derived through...which is, to me just as important as the answer is. When we were building our forum we kept wondering why our forum was not as busy as a competitor site...one day while chatting to a friend he told me that a while back when he used to play video games the only reason he would go to sites would be for answers. That convo changed everything. All of a sudden we swung our entire forum away from just trying to find general off topic stuff to chat about...to becoming the world's number one site for finding reference info and guides on Sacred the Game. Once we knew our "purpose" it was easy to see our road and what we had to do next. We immediately started writing pms and emails to everyone person in the net that had a good guide out and asked for permission to reproduce it on our site. When we had a collection of more than a hundred guides we then went and offered the index of guides to all the other competitors sites out there for everyone to peruse. From that point it was an easy step to understand that we had to build a SacredWiki to reduce our reliance upon casual discussion which requires a ton of "real time" and move to having a dbase for our game which, being ROM only, would have an excellent return on time invested specially with a community of devoted gaming fans. We now do have off topic banter, it's important to be able to relate to our community...but mostly all of our work now is committed to creating the ultimate resource for Sacred. It's a simple one sentence mission statement, but it's purpose keeps us on track and very very busy. gogo
