Idea to make FC Wars bigger and spread publicity.

I suggest...

1. Renew website. It MUST look legit.

2. Look out for local Halo tournament events and even unrelated LAN BASH parties. Have FC Wars members attend, and ask them to try and post up at least one poster (funded by donations of course) or some sort of large graphic that will get people asking. You dont have to sell the idea to them, you can just put it up there with a link and people will wonder. Like a movie poster.

3. With a new website, make 5 pieces of merchandise representing FC War. Maybe something like two shirt styles, 2 kinds of stickers and a patch or something. Anything relatively cheap to produce. Nothing cheesy obviously. And put these items for sale right on the site like a "store" page, really small nothing flashy. And every penny that gets made from that can be put right into funding for the FC community OR making more merch.

(also going to a LANBASH wearing an FC Wars/R.E.D.D./B.L.U.E. shirt could be a good conversation starter and it would be nice to recognize fellow members out in the real world.)

Some advice: Now, im no pro at this kind of stuff, But think of it this way, if you present people with an online community that looks legit and organized, its going to be a lot easier to trust it and give donations to keep the community going. Its kind of tough going on a forum based site and think about forking over hard earned money to keep it breathing.

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1. You don't think this site looks legit? While there may be room for improvement, this site looks perfectly legitimate from my perspective. Just because you think a different skin design might be more appropriate for clan-type communities doesn't make others illegitimate.

2. We've got a few members who go to LANs. If they wish to do so, they can, but forcing them to do something like that isn't something I agree with.

3. We have a shop here. It doesn't have stickers/patches, though.

1. . If by legit you mean functional and it does what you need, then sure its legit. By legit i meant a home-base that looks secure, it looks fun, friendly, it looks engaging, it looks alive (community-wise), that's what i mean by legit.

For example, when i first came on this site my first time, even though i knew what it was for, i was really hoping to land on a website that looks sturdy, secure and professional. I actually had to be convinced like 2 - 3 more times and visited the site a few more times after that before i was like "ok ill take a risk, doesn't look like a fun place to socialize and share but everyone tells me it is". On the internet you get 8 seconds to catch someones attention, that's it. The splash page you guys have on the entrance, 4 seconds right there lost. Homepage loads, they scan it left to right, "oh wow... its a forum", a bunch of jargon, an advertisement placed in a vital attention area smack center ( big minus ), no introduction, no welcome, no brief explanation of what they are getting into or whats going on in the community..your time is up, the user is gone.

Look, i actually work at a web development firm, im not saying this stuff to be mean and im not pulling it out of my @$#. I work with professionals that design and program all kinds of GUIs all day. We study the psychology of the online user every single day. Please don't take offense, im saying all this cause i really would love to see this community prosper, and the first step is making a spiffy home-base.

2. Please quote me on the part that says i think we should force members to go out and represent us? Cause you took my words out of context. Obviously your gonna have to ask a few people to do it but its all going to be voluntary.

>>> and before anyone accuses me of advertisement again, let me repeat I AM NOT ADVERTISING and I AM NOT SELLING. Funny how hard it is to offer genuine caring help, donation of services and advice without getting accused of selling something. .

Do you have any suggestions as to what we could do to improve the website then? There isn't much we can do without donations without it looking very generic. Only thing I can think of is perhaps sprucing the forum board up with more graphical material that looks to fit the war-sim theme. And perhaps something around the "Forerunner Conflict Insider" page, like a list of active Squads with pictures representing them. Then again, that's breaking the Community-aspect a bit more, because we are a Community first.

What you have suggested is much easier said then done.

~Kuhblam

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Originally Posted by DeadSun511

On the internet you get 8 seconds to catch someones attention, that's it. The splash page you guys have on the entrance, 4 seconds right there lost. Homepage loads, they scan it left to right, "oh wow... its a forum", a bunch of jargon, an advertisement placed in a vital attention area smack center ( big minus ), no introduction, no welcome, no brief explanation of what they are getting into or whats going on in the community..your time is up, the user is gone.

Look, i actually work at a web development firm, im not saying this stuff to be mean and im not pulling it out of my @$#. I work with professionals that design and program all kinds of GUIs all day. We study the psychology of the online user every single day. Please don't take offense, im saying all this cause i really would love to see this community prosper, and the first step is making a spiffy home-base.

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You're not the only one with web development experience... >.>

Indeed, the average online user would glance at a website and only continue if they become interested. However, we aren't looking for the average online user. If some random internet user stumbles upon our site (the situation you are talking about), they probably wouldn't even give it 8 seconds, and we probably wouldn't care about losing them, since chances are they wouldn't be interested anyway.

We want mature, respectful people over the age of 15 that are interested in Reach and the concept of a war-sim. If someone has talked with a current member in order to get the address, chances are they won't be as fickle as the average user.

Our site is dozens of times better than the average gaming community site, and yet even those clans are able to recruit members. That is because the average gamer who is looking for a clan or community to become a part of isn't looking to be enthralled when they visit a website. These members would have been recruited off of XBL and already briefed about the community. If they decide to visit the site, they've probably already decided to join, and if that is the case:

1. The splash page wouldn't be a turnoff as you describe. It is meant to catch the attention of those who would be interested in the community. It immediately shows that we are a Halo: Reach community, and focus on wars between REDD and BLUE. (This is the brief explanation/welcome/introduction you say we are lacking)

2. The Google AddWords advertisements are extremely common on the internet. Heck, even sites like ForgeHub have them! If someone is turned off because of seeing something so common, then we wouldn't care to lose them, since the probably aren't the type of person we're interested in having within this community.

We are not looking for random internet users to find us. If we are going to change our entire site and system so that we get like 1% more recruits, then it isn't worth it. Even people recruited from the internet are already introduced to the community, such as here. If someone was recruited by that and still expects redundancy on the home page, then losing them isn't much of a loss.

I understand your perspective, and I agree with it. However, our unique perspective as this specific community would cause minimal benefits from such a change for the specific intended audience we aim for.

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Originally Posted by VerbotenDonkey

Do you have any suggestions as to what we could do to improve the website then? There isn't much we can do without donations without it looking very generic. Only thing I can think of is perhaps sprucing the forum board up with more graphical material that looks to fit the war-sim theme. And perhaps something around the "Forerunner Conflict Insider" page, like a list of active Squads with pictures representing them. Then again, that's breaking the Community-aspect a bit more, because we are a Community first.

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More widgets and plugins would clutter the site. We would need to remove other content if we are going to add more.

Also, remember that we are already using too much CPU (via script executions). The load that such a list would put on the server would likely be too much. (If donations became regular, it wouldn't be a problem, but currently it is impractical.)

Fair enough. Thank you for reading.

as a programming major sometimes you have to sacrifice fun for efficiency, we dont force people to join this site.... its only if they truely want to. it would be nice for you to provide examples of what your looking for in this website then we can compare our examples that weve gathered and form an unbiased opinion

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Originally Posted by Kuhblam

What you have suggested is much easier said then done.

~Kuhblam

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This is correct, thank you for your suggestions nonetheless!