Ideas for front page, and attracting users

[CRSP]

I've been working overtime, trying to attract users here. I'm quite impressed with the number of new users, in such a short time, but eventually, posters from the SDMB moving here will slow down. We need to attract some new blood, otherwise the messageboard will become cliquey and stagnate.

(Of course, encouraging posters who you are friendly with on the SDMB to join is always welcomed )

Right now, the root for this site (http://domebo.net) is an empty page. We could do something, here, and attract new users in (even if its only a few a month, it's better than nothing). Does anybody have any good ideas?

[tirial]

Just to get things started, a few ideas:
- An online ezine updated once a month (doesn't have to be much: review, story, blog) etc.
- An FAQs or factsheet download site.
- A weekly facts column and archive.

To rotate content frequently there are a number of syndicated columns available through RSS which could also be incorporated into the site, along with news feeds if possible. This has the advantage of requiring minimal work from the site admin.

To reduce work a basic CMS could allow a number of contributors to submit items without allowing anyone to affect other content, which would take some of the strain off the admin to produce everything.

[CRSP]

The CMS thing is easy. I can install Joomla on this webspace as easily as I installed this forum (i.e. one click). I was thinking of trying some DamnInteresting style articles, but with better research (DI is a bit sensationalist, and relies too much on Wikipedia). The use of syndicated material is also a good idea.

[Giles]

People have to get to a site either because their friends tell them about it, or because search engines like Google take them there. So far this site is unknown to Google (a search on "Domebo site:domebo.net" currently gets you zero hits), probably because it's new and because hardly anyone has pointed to it out on the Net.

[tirial]

A few things to consider are whether you want to provide all the site content yourself, or have other contributors. The rule of thumb I was taught was if you are doing an e-zine you need 3 months of content stored, which is quite a bit (once you have archives to call on it gets easier).

Once you've got content turning over regularly, submitting it to google and other search engines should help it get found. If you are doing unique articles, another way would be to syndicate your own content through RSS, as long as it has a link back to this site with the article. Reciprocal links don't help as much since most of the search engines deprecated them, but it's better than nothing.

The problem isn't just getting people here, it's making them want to stay and use the forum.

[danceswithcats]

Regarding the attraction of new users, I'd suggest everyone employ their existing media, be it LJ, Facebook, or other to make them aware of this place.

[featherlou]

How about banner ads, paying for posting, a board that goes down for days at a time, and a head cheese who ignores the board for a decade then storms in and messes with everything? No, wait, we tried that...

As people were mentioning back on the Dope, there don't seem to be a lot of good quality general discussion boards available (possibly aimed at your older than teenagers audience). Maybe keeping it general and lolspeak-less is your niche.

I don't know if this is the information you're looking for, but the sites I visit regularly are lolcats and failblog, Go Fug Yourself, Dear Abby, and Youtube. I really appreciate other people finding interesting articles on the net and pointing them out to me.

[Ensign Edison]

This won't attract new people entirely, but to continue the momentum in Dopers signing up here, I'd suggest offering the first X people who sign up some special title, if that is possible in this software.

[prr]

I've composed the following message to e-mail to every Doper whose email addy I have handy. LMK if you think there's a reason I shouldn't it and if there's a reason you can't find your own SD acquaintances to send it to.



Just thought I'd write to every Doper I've ever communicated through e-mail and invite all of you to an alternate MB. Please look at this (some of you already have) and visit, whether it's just to say hi, to discuss issues you can't discuss comfortably on the SDMB at this point in time, to register a protest, to vote with your feet or your wallets (so far, it seems cost-free) or just because you're bored.

Personally, I'm pissed at being treated with such patronizing contempt by the SD admins, but hey, maybe, that's just me. Some of you are probably aware of this website already, and some of you may want to invite people whom no one has thought of yet.

index.php

Best,

PRR

It keeps cutting off the url to this place but the truncated version seems to work.

[LOUNE]

How about banner ads, paying for posting, a board that goes down for days at a time, and a head cheese who ignores the board for a decade then storms in and messes with everything? No, wait, we tried that...

As people were mentioning back on the Dope, there don't seem to be a lot of good quality general discussion boards available (possibly aimed at your older than teenagers audience). Maybe keeping it general and lolspeak-less is your niche.

I don't know if this is the information you're looking for, but the sites I visit regularly are lolcats and failblog, Go Fug Yourself, Dear Abby, and Youtube. I really appreciate other people finding interesting articles on the net and pointing them out to me.

I can haz lol?

[Cluricaun]

Those of us already here should indeed take advantage of whatever outlets we have (Facebook, etc) as well as think about changing your SDMB location to DoMeBo (half joking).

What if we gave Cecil and Answer.com and the like a run for their dwindling money and opened it up so that we'd be like the Snopes Dope and people could hit us up asking any question that they wanted, but instead of writing a short newspaper article about it and taking weeks if not months to respond we hashed it out in here and published answers the best we could.

Of course we'd have to attract some of the smart people first.............

[SilverTygerGirl]

As far as content, I'll be (re-)starting a webcomic soon, and I'd be willing to let it go up here too. The plan is for it to be weekly, but we'll see.

[tirial]

I have a shedload of game reviews, short stories, etc archived. if you would like any as content.

[TheFlame]

A suggestion:

How about a competition to design a logo/banner for DoMeBo? I won't be entering (there are small children with better design skills than me), but I'd be happy to contribute a few dollars towards a prize for the winner.

[Ensign Edison]

I'd kick in a little scrilla for that, and I'd also donate a $15 iTunes gift card I've had lying around to any board-promotion related causes. And yeah, it would be more classy to PM this. Pit me. 8-)

[CRSP]

There's a banner competition taking place in TDR. Check it out.

Also, I've been thinking more about site content. We've had decent membership takeup rates for the past three days, but it's going to level off, soon. So, we need to get something sorted, to stop board stagnation, and attract new blood. I also think that it's quite easy to revert to the old days of the Internet and have a homepage full of unrelated content, so we need a strong theme, and all content should be related to that.

So, we're all Dopers or ex-Dopers, and the Dope did something well. The problem is, it didn't really change much, with the times. Articles were limited to being printable in a newspaper (correct me if I'm wrong), and there was also a limitation that articles were replies to reader supplied questions. The obvious thing to do is to scrap any size limitations on article content. If something calls for a short article, then so be it. If it calls for five pages, then that's fine. We could perhaps have a series of articles called "Tidbits", or something similar, which are a couple of paragraphs in length. Doing something like this might mean we could get an article out on a current piece of news within a week or something. Then, it may be expanded upon.

Similarly, we could just let authors write about things that interest them (with the caveat that they are vetted first, to make sure they aren't writing about something too specific). DamnInteresting does something like this, but they suffer from having poorly research articles that border on sensationalism. The SD always had well-researched material, which was one of its strengths.

We could also look into doing e-mail interviews, with board members suggesting questions.

Of course, this would entail some participation from board members, to write articles, etc. So, I suppose the real question is if there is enough interest to do something like this, and whether it sounds like a good plan? SilverTygerGirl has suggested using her webcomic. But, I think this would not fit into a theme, like outlined above. So, what about illustrating articles?

[NinetyWt]

How about posters who want to write articles, write them, and then let the artsy ones illustrate them? Let everyone have a turn, so to speak.

I don't know how interesting any of what I do is, but I can generate some articles explaining things like dam breaks and flooding.

[WhyNot]

One source of "tidbits" might be culled posts. Not to toot my own horn, but I just gave a pretty good (though I admit, not directly researched, just based on what I know already) answer to a side question of what's the deal with flat feet. It's inside a thread about "What's wrong with you," and so not really worth a Threadspotting kind of pointer, but it could be excised as a Tidbit.

Tidbits from threads appeal because a newcomer can read it alone, and then check out the thread for larger context if they wish and then BLAMMO! we've got another victim. Member, I mean, member!

[TheFlame]

What sort of theme are you considering? Are we looking to stick to something close to the Dope's "fighting ignorance", perhaps moving to encompass more creative avenues (e.g. poetry, short stories etc) than the Straight Dope did, a combination of these, or something else?

[WhyNot]

'Nother thought (sorry.)

One of the names being bandied about for Domebo users is "Domoebaes", like, amoebas. Maybe we want to play with that image. We're a board of immigrants, assimilated from the Dope, the Dope rejects (at least, I hope some of the cool banned posters will find us) but hopefully we'll begin assimilation beyond that. It's like the kid's game, Amoebae Tag, where you start off small, with just one "It", and then anyone that person touches has to stay in contact, and "It" becomes a group of children, all "stuck" together, one giant amoebae. Kinda like us, y'know?

The benefit of working the Amoeba theme is that nearly anything can fit. We can absorb and integrate a wide range of topics, formats (i.e, graphics and text) and knowledge bases while still being a giant connected Amoebae of goodness.

[TheFlame]

One of the names being bandied about for Domebo users is "Domoebaes", like, amoebas. Maybe we want to play with that image...

I really like it. I was one of the people going with the 'ameoba' thing (largely because my instinctive pronunciation of DoMeBo was 'd-amoeba-o', rather than anything so creative as in your post). That's lovely.

How do you draw an amoeba though?

[NinetyWt]

I thought of something else, too.

How about a weekly paragraph from different areas of interest? Blurbs about some breaking news in the medical field, or art world, or physics, or what-have-you. We could have a handful on the front page; members could submit these as they learn about the news.

Goes right along with WhyNot's tidbits.

[WhyNot]

How do you draw an amoeba though?

Any way you want to! But never the same way twice.


Here's a cute one, although he looks kinda panicked.

[SilverTygerGirl]

The other forum I read selects really great stories to put up in the front (kinda like threadspotting). It'd be an easy way to get content, and would tempt people into the forum.

And I second the idea of short stories. How about poetry too?

Why not have have a different Domer expert write a bit about what they're expert on each week or so? Leave it open as to what they write - whether exploring an aspect of it, explaining what it all is, critiquing something, whatever.

I think the biggest problem is going to be continuing to update. Teemings on the Dope ended up dying. Whatever we do, it should be easy to update - maybe blog format? I like the idea of tagging each one, since then people can easily find more of what interests them.

[SmartAleq]

I kinda like the amoeba thing--it allows for us to do whatever the fuck we want without having to be pinned down to any particular rubric. Content will definitely be a huge component needed to draw new blood in, and we have some extremely talented people around here. How's this--front page has regularly rotated content, short-short stories, really creatively insulting posts culled from the Pit (and linked back to the thread, to drive interest in the boards,) poetry (somebody get a haiku thread going, stat!) a link to the latest Feud game (bats eyes at Rebo) cartoons, factual articles--whatever the hell shows up that week. Put a sticky "submissions to the front page" thread in ATMB and it'll be up to us to kick each other's asses to provide content. Anybody around here good at maximizing Google results?

Oh yeah, if the board supports any kind of titles, ratings, anything like that then the more content that ends up on the front page reflects in the user's status... Little incentive to be productive.

Don't forget to put the "Grown Up Content Inside" disclaimer up so we don't have to fret about pee pee pantsers getting sand in their vaginas and Bob's yer uncle.

Stream of consciousness, it's what's for dinner! :mrgreen:

[nyctea scandiaca]

Just wanted to say, I am the admin at The Straight Dopers Facebook group, and I posted a link to this board in a couple of places there.

[fireblight]

I think the idea of modeling the site as a source for information and cool stuff (arts, factoids, links, etc) is workable, but it's kind of been done. We need something that truly distinguishes the website to really generate traffic. We don't just need linkbait and an identity, we need interesting "products." (Um...I do stuff like this for a living, sorry if I geek out a bit. ops: )

I'm thinking maybe a format like HowStuffWorks or Lifehacker would go well with the ideas suggested here, but I think brainstorming in the direction of content might be best? SmartAleq's ideas are good, but I think they could eventually really be just the tip of the iceberg. I really like your Tidbits and "Domoebas" points, WhyNot. It seems like Domebohemians is the favorite, though, so a mish-mash/granny-square/quilted mix of multiple subjects and viewpoints will work with that, too. Approachability and eclectic tastes and abilities are probably going to be the biggest strengths that this group has going for it.

We might consider joining side-businesses of members or sponsoring their products/services in a section, too: say someone designs t-shirts, and someone else is a part-time copy editor, and someone else does this or that--and we have a section that's a bit like a store that people can browse by section.

I'm totally all over that banner design contest if it's still open, too... *rushes off*

[CRSP]

Is anybody a member at Snopes, or places like the Bad Astronomer blog? Perhaps slyly posting a link to here there may be a good idea... Similarly, if you're a member of an arts board, programming, etc. etc. Anybody interesting. We need more members!

(Oh, and we're finally listed on Google.)

[Claptree]

In a week or so we should have quite a bit of content on the boards, and quite likely a lot of both funny, interesting and illuminating stuff. I'm thinking that could be a basis for a blog of sorts, where solid content posted on the board can make for a blog - just copy debates/rants/jokes/whatever and post on the front page.

[CRSP]

I've posted a link over at DamnInteresting, GameDev.net and PhysicsForums. I tried signing up at Snopes, but I'm stuck in a moderator approval queue.

[Zombies! At the Window!]

We need an agony aunt column.

Whether it be written by one poster, or we have a sub-forum where people can submit their questions, and then the posters all have at it, and the best answer to the question gets a little box on the front page for a week or something?

Ummm. Apart from that, I got nothin'.

[CRSP]

That's a pretty good idea!

[SmartAleq]

Ooh, ooh, I know! SpazCat does these screamingly funny Agony Aunt pieces in her LiveJournal where she takes the columns of the real advice people--Ask Amy, whoever's doing Dear Abby, etc., and inserts italicized snark comments into them. Wonder if she'd be willing to do something similar here, because they are teh funneh...

[Julie]

Some sites do things with "guest bloggers" or something similar. Authors, pundits, humorists, etc. would all be possibilities.

Having "guest experts" who do "ask the... " threads could be cool.

Contests with third-party judging and real prizes.

Eventually, I'd like to have a domebo t-shirt. I like t-shirts.

Group goals/projects can entice people in.

[jali]

We also need a spokesmodel. An Unca Cecil-like personage composed of a team of posters.

The Agony Aunt person could be the one. Perhaps with an old fashioned name and a snarky attitude. Attitude I guess like "Churchlady".

[XJETGIRLX]

I like the idea of running contests on a regular basis. Whether it's something like photoshop, caption contests, trivia, recipes, or whatever. Something to keep people involved, and draw them into the boards.

I also like the idea of integrating feed articles with articles researched and written by posters here.

Further, I think it is important to tie everything together, so there's not a mish-mash of stuff, but I also think there's room to include a wide variety of interests under one umbrella. In the logo thread, someone came up with the tagline "absorbing" and I really like that. I think it captures the idea of absorbing knowledge like a sponge, much the way an amoeba absorbs things. So I think the main goal or overarching idea needs to be broad in nature, but specifically defined.

I'd be willing to lead a JAD on all this to sort it out and come up with our requirements

[XJETGIRLX]

Other things that have been mentioned already, but I think bear repeating:

Networking, networking, networking: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. Think outside the scope of the world of message boards and just try to draw in interesting, intelligent people.

[Scathach]

Just to get something up as a placeholder - maybe we could have a thread of "Things you never knew" or "Things you thought you knew that actually aren't true" or something and then put a list up as an article on the front page.

I'm thinking something along the lines of

• The Immaculate Conception refers to the birth of Mary, not Jesus
  Gum doesn't stay inside your body for the rest of your life

Not sure how workable an idea it is but it might be nice to get something up on the front page as quickly as possible.

[CRSP]

OK, I'm going to start putting some stuff up on the frontpage. The forums are now listed on Google, but not the frontpage yet. This will change within a few days, I think.

So far, I was thinking of doing the agony aunt thing. I think this could be done by a small team. We don't need to solicit questions yet, we can just make them up ourselves.

Also, some sort of threadspotting, but not just providing a link to the thread, rather snipping interesting posts out of the thread and providing a kind of humorous commentary. I think something like the "do you look forward to death" thread could be a good example.

Do we have any volunteers for writing tidbits, too? These can be pretty much on any topic, for the time being, as long as it interests you, and has a chance of interesting others.

I also like NinetyWt's idea of having a small paragraph summarising news in certain fields.

CRSP

[featherlou]

Ooh, ooh, I know! SpazCat does these screamingly funny Agony Aunt pieces in her LiveJournal where she takes the columns of the real advice people--Ask Amy, whoever's doing Dear Abby, etc., and inserts italicized snark comments into them. Wonder if she'd be willing to do something similar here, because they are teh funneh...

On that note, Annie from the Dope does a summary of "Heroes" each week that is better than the real show. That kind of thing might be a nice addition to a front page of various content.

[pepperlandgirl]

I agree that we need to utilize social networking sites. I don't use MySpace, and I have a Facebook, but I don't think I really use it the way I should. However, Twitter is an awesome tool. We can do plenty with it, including have somebody (or more than one person) in charge of posting regular updates. Like every few hours a list of new threads, or a heads-up for interesting threads people should check out (ie, the do you fear death thread). If people are intrigued by the question or the subject, they'll come to read/post. And the way Twitter is set up, it's not difficult to amass a huge number of "followers". I'll be happy to help with that.

[SmartAleq]

Ooh, good one, featherlou, you're right--those "Heroes" summaries are a scream and we neeeeeeedz dem!

I also asked Dogzilla via PM at SDMB to come do a "Big Love" thread, because some of his/her observations regarding how the show relates into Mormonism in general are absolutely fascinating...

I would be totally onboard with writing content, I'm very good at spinning stuff off the top of my head on pretty much any subject--I used to co-edit an SCA magazine and was also a Chronicler for several SCA groups so I know ALL about having to write a bunch of stuff to fill up space! Please do not hesitate to ask--something as simple as "Can you do 500 words on genital warts by next Tuesday?" is all I need...

I'd also love to contribute to an Agony Aunt (Aunt Amoeba?) column because if there are two things I love it's giving advice and snarking...

Hit me, I'm ready! :mrgreen:

[Exy]

I hate to rain on people's parade, but realistically, it's very hard to get people to generate content that is interesting to outsiders. I'm not saying that the skillset isn't present, but I am saying that writing message board posts is a lot less work than writing magazine articles, and people just tend not to continue to do these things for very long. There are lots of abandoned blogs out there to illustrate this; a lot of people will put in the effort for awhile, at first, and then stop when the novelty wears off.

I was part of a now (essentially) defunct web community that developed for the sole purpose of people sharing writing -- that is, it formed around a crowd of people who mostly already wrote as a hobby -- and it formed longer ago than Wikipedia and had a pretty large number of active users for a long time. But for various reasons, new signups slowed down and suddenly all the content dried up, because it was being overwhelmingly produced by new people. Less new content meant a lot of people drifted away and new people had even less reason to sign up.

It's just hard for me to imagine how a thus far comparatively small group of people like this one is going to produce enough content to create a "magazine" or the like that is of interest to anyone other than the people who are already here.

I'm not saying don't try it, because it's a nice enough idea. And if we could create something kind of akin to the Straight Dope brand, that would be neat. My personal bet would be that "Cecil Adams" won't exist for much longer, because it seems firmly tied to a medium that was already dying and suddenly has had a car battery tied to its metaphorical genitalia by the economic situation. But the focus should be on finding good ways to repurpose existing content -- i.e. rework posts into articles -- and some particular person is going to need to be proactive in seeking out content. I'm willing to bet that people will be more likely to write 1000 word informational columns if, say, Crispy sends them a PM saying, "Hey, I saw your great post about underwater basketweaving, could you expand that into a six or seven paragraph long article? Try to touch on this, this, and that." Whereas if there's just a thread that says, "Hey, leave pieces of professional-quality content here" it'll probably stay empty.

Also don't forget issues of ownership.

[CRSP]

Excalibre, that's a good point, and you're a voice of reason. No matter how fired up we are right now, eventually people are going to get bored, and content will die off. I take your point that people are going to be more motivated if there's somebody approaching them and encouraging them to do it.

So, I'll take that approach for the tidbits.

I think, though, for stuff like threadspotting and the agony aunt stuff, we can still manage a group effort. In fact, the way I envisaged the agony aunt stuff working is by posting the question as a thread, and having people contribute to the answer.

[jali]

Excalibre, that's a good point, and you're a voice of reason. No matter how fired up we are right now, eventually people are going to get bored, and content will die off. I take your point that people are going to be more motivated if there's somebody approaching them and encouraging them to do it.

So, I'll take that approach for the tidbits.

I think, though, for stuff like threadspotting and the agony aunt stuff, we can still manage a group effort. In fact, the way I envisaged the agony aunt stuff working is by posting the question as a thread, and having people contribute to the answer.

And a Plime or Fark member can choose an odd headline and link for the day.

[Exy]

Excalibre, that's a good point, and you're a voice of reason.

Oh god, that's it, we're doomed.

I think, though, for stuff like threadspotting and the agony aunt stuff, we can still manage a group effort. In fact, the way I envisaged the agony aunt stuff working is by posting the question as a thread, and having people contribute to the answer.

That's a great idea, turning normal message-board content into the front page content means that people don't have the responsibility to write long, professional articles on their own. Although as I'm gathering your idea is that someone (you?) will then synthesize the answers into one single piece of writing, right? Don't be surprised when that's more work than you imagine.

This is something I even run into at work, where I'm sort of vaguely in charge of our website -- there's a lot more ideas for content we should produce than actual content; it's just MUCH harder than people ever anticipate to actually get that stuff done. I think your instinct to try to produce stuff out of group content is the best approach, but be prepared to end up very busy. Make plans to find volunteers, eventually, to delegate parts of it to. If things work out, there will be enough content generated to make that necessary.

[pedescribe]

If I ever get my blog up and running again (no linky, because it's currently comatose), I could provide the occasional fauxfactual article. That is, write it just like a regular one, but about something completely made up.

[Tuckerfan]

Another suggestion. I pulled up an old Dopefest thread, and PM'd everyone in it (save Bosda), without paying too much attention to who had posted in the thread. I just got a PM back from one of the people thanking me and stating that they hadn't been paying too much attention to the Dope of late and had missed all of the controversy. I've also PM'd folks on other boards that I visit, that even if they've no connection to the Dope, I thought might like this place. I don't know if it'll make a difference or not, but we shouldn't automatically assume that folks will know/find us.

[Exy]

save Bosda

*snerk*

[Tuckerfan]

save Bosda

*snerk*

Hey, either he knows about this place and has decided not to join, or he's somehow managed to remain ignorant of it. I'm betting that he knows about it, but isn't going to join because he's so tightly wedded to the Dope. AFAIK, the only splinter board he's joined has been FFF.

I'll be honest, when Nashville Dopefests have been announced, there's been a number of people who've said privately that because Bosda was considering being there that they wouldn't show up. Mind you, Bosda, despite his frequent weirdness on the Dope (not that someone can't say the same about me, mind you), has been well behaved (if a bit eccentric). Neither he, nor anyone else, has brought any of their board "drama" to the Nashville Dopefests.