Zelaron needs an overhaul

[Sovereign]

I got bored so I thought of some suggestions. Looking for input.

Forum News, Suggestions and Discussion
- Get rid of New World Order

Introduce Yourself
- Rename to Member Introductions

The Symposium
- Rename to General Discussion. Merge all the subforums

Science and Art
- Merge the sub forums. With current activity there is no need for individual forums for news, tech, and math help.

New Forum Suggestion
- Anime and Manga. Bring it back please. There is a decent sized fanbase I'm willing to spend time to bring new content to it.

Flame Forum
- Keep the same.

Video Games
- Change to General Gaming. This will allow people to post about anything from pokemon cards, magic the gathering, or monopoly along the posts about Skyrim and any other games out there.

Diablo Series
- Merge all the forums. A sticky can be made of all important topics like d2 bot info and such.

Starcraft Forums
- Probably wont be very active, but If we post news about the upcoming second expansion to starcraft 2 we can get some new signups.

World of Warcraft Forums
- Split into Discussion Forum and Maybe an Auction House. Have an option for people to sign up to use zelaron as their guild forum hosting.

[kaos]

Call of duty forums!!!

Change the name of the forums from "Zelaron Gaming Network" to "Zelaron Gaming Forums"

I can do SEO for us for free if you want.

________________________________________________

I just did an analysis for SEO on Zelaron, and it's fucking terrible. No wonder we're not getting any good traffic or new members.

For the least part, change the SERP title and description from:

Zelaron
This is a cool place to hang out and talk about computers, computer games, and life


To:

Zelaron Gaming Forums
Zelaron Gaming Forums is one of the best forums for video games, computer games, and any other gaming discussion.


Since this is a gaming forum, we're trying to target the "Gaming Forums" keyword. When someone searches "gaming forums" on Google, Yahoo, etc. Zelaron will not show up AT ALL because the keyword is no where to be found in the SERP title or description the way it is now.

I'm pretty sure if you change just that we'll see alot more people in here, this forum is aged and shouldn't have a problem with popping up within the Top 10 results for that search phrase.

I'll write up some more tips later. I'm at work right now.

[Lenny]

We need an active admin to even begin doing all of this, alas, and whilst Chruser and WW visit most days, I get the impression that they only drop by to check on things.

Either way, though, a bit of a refresh may do some good for a while. Disturb the mud at the bottom of the pond, as it were, which should give us some activity before everything settles again.

[WetWired]

I certainly don't have time. I barely keep up with my studies. This semester is brutal.

[Skurai]

New Forum Suggestion
- Anime and Manga. Bring it back please. There is a decent sized fanbase I'm willing to spend time to bring new content to it.

This would be an easy way to keep me out of regular conversation. I would spend soooo much time here, just giving reviews.

[Sovereign]

What about during the summer?

How hard would it be to make these changes? Do you need to rewrite the code of the website or does vbulletin have some easy forum creator sort of thing.

[Lenny]

There's a forum manager in the Mod CP. Whilst we can see it as SupMods, the only thing we can use it for is to post announcements at the top of each forum.

[WetWired]

Creating and nameing forums is easy enough; merging forums is a bit more work. Mostly I meant I don't have time to actually manage the forum.

[kaos]

I vote for Sovereign, Lenny, or KA to be Admin while you guys are taking a break. They're on here enough :P.

[Skurai]

I agree. I pretty much already consider them admins, anyway, personally.

[!King_Amazon!]

I think we should make everyone but Skurai an admin.

[kaos]

I second that.

[Skurai]

Can I be a Super Mod, then? :o

[WetWired]

No...

[!King_Amazon!]

I still say make him mod of the trash can, but make it the only forum he can see. We can start calling him Oscar.

[Skurai]

Oscar? What?
And all honesty, I wouldn't mind being a mod in the lounge. It's pretty much the only place I post, anyway.

[!King_Amazon!]

Oscar? What?

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090819003839/muppet/images/c/c3/Oscar-can2.jpg

[Skurai]

Oh! He was my favorite, when I was little.

[Sovereign]

Thread locked due to faggotry. PM me with good ideas and I will add them to this thread.

[Sovereign]

Alright here's a few things I'd like to add


-Thumbs up/Thumbs down of each individual post/reply

-Integration of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc etc (sharing of stories more easily/integrated)

-Fix the YouTube posting method.

-Delete unnecessary forums (you mentioned most of them)

-Zelaron mobile site? -Future members would want easy access. This site has been around for 10 years and hasn't really changed at all. Good/bad?

-Revamp the entire portal. The idea is fantastic, the implementation is soft though.


After we get a few more ideas from whatever active members we have, this thread will get unlocked for discussion.

Just a heads up, any spam or bullshit posts will get a minimum 72 hour ban.

[Sovereign]

This might seem complex, though. Okay, here's the idea:

A playlist, that each of us contribute to. Now, to keep it balanced, each member can have a total of three songs on it, but we can switch out the songs we want at will (that way I couldn't just put a bunch of spammy sounding music, to piss people off, but I still would have the right to at least 3 songs, if I wanted).

Or perhaps the number of songs would be linked to your post number. For example, since I have significantly less posts than !K_A!, let's say I can only put in about three songs, but he can put in a good ten or fifteen.

OR a different (probably better, and maybe even easier to program), we just have one player, but everyone gets their own custom playlist, and each member can just select who's list they want to hear.

Just an idea that might be fun to tinker with.


That would probably require a lot of coding. Maybe an easier thing would be to incorporate youtube playlists. Find the song, make the playlist, and have it automatically go to the next 'track'. An anime board I go to has a youtube tag.

Testing:
61Cn_CTRFog

Edit: Yup it works. We can just embed the player on the website. They stay on zelaron the whole time.

I don't think we can, or wetwired will even let us, host actual songs on the website. We don't have permissions from the artists and that leads into a whole lot of copyright bullshit. If we can link to youtube, then the problem is on their end.

Test2:
DPWjclRjsB0&list=PL9858FABAB56EFBA5&index=1&feature=plpp_video
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9858FABAB56EFBA5

Anyone know how to use vbulletin to embed youtube playlists? I can only get individual songs.

[Sovereign]

Theres a vbulletin mod that embeds the cb on the actual homepage.

http://screensnapr.com/e/WikKqO.jpg

my photoshop color skills suck but it would look like that but with matching css attributes. i can look it up if u want.

I've asked our resident pot head to look further into it. Thanks Kaos.

Keep the ideas coming guys. No matter how stupid it may sound, we may be able to tweak the idea into a good thing.

In b4 skurai spams my inbox.

[WetWired]

It'd be 50% Rick roll...

[Sovereign]

I really do think that we need to update the metadata info for this site. I've been gone a few years and when I came back there aren't any new people. We say we're a gaming forum but there isn't actually that many forums dedicated to specific games. I think if we did that that could help a lot.

As far as the metadata is concerned, we have:
<meta name="keywords" content="wow,worldofwarcraft,warcraft,d2,diablo,diablo2,dia bloii,starcraft,star craft,sc, war craft,,rpg maker,game,gaming,discussion,vbulletin,forum,bbs,b ulletin board" />
<meta name="description" content="This is a cool place to hang out and talk about computers, computer games, and life" />

Yes we do have gaming and forums seperate but i've found if you also include them together it'll boost google hits. Also, we do not represent every single game that is listed in a forum. We just have a D2 forum and a general gaming forum. If we make a WoW, SC, Warcraft and such forums then I think it'll really boost how many people sign up and stay.

Never gonna give you up.

[Sovereign]

Asamin is right we need to change the meta description to something more relevent in general, but DO NOT use the keywords meta tags. Post titles are automatically updated and since we have general discussion posts with general titles that have nothing to do with the keywords, Google is going to think it's a page about "keyword" but since the page is irrelevent to the actual keywords it's going to rank low.

Zelaron is over 10 years old and still has a pagerank of 1. I have an autoblog that's less than 5 months old that I started it and it's already Pagerank 2. Not saying anyone doing anything wrong, just saying that search engines have changed alot since Zelaron first started and doing a little bit of tweaking can drastically improve our rankings and give us more traffic.


Keep the ideas coming. I'll unlock this thread in a week or so for discussion.

[Sovereign]

Totally forgot. Unlocked if anyone has anything to add.

[Asamin]

From my experience recently, we really need to implement some of these since the only new intro thread since mine has been a bot.

[!King_Amazon!]

Asamin, go look at the introduction forums. We haven't had a real introduction thread for years. Literally.

[Asamin]

Ok so lets have a real debate and get some changes really going. Since me and you seem to be the most active intelligent users (besides Kagom) lets brainstorm. Of all the stuff that we have here so far, what do you think we should do?

[!King_Amazon!]

Delete the forums, sell the domain, split the profits and move on with our lives?

[Asamin]

What profits? What lives? And who would buy the domain Zelaron.com?

[!King_Amazon!]

There are 466,647 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Zelaron.com. While roughly 45% of the site's visitors are in India, where it is ranked #80,048, it is also popular in Pakistan, where it is ranked #53,086. The site's visitors view an average of 6.0 unique pages per day. Approximately 20% of visits to Zelaron.com consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces). The site is relatively popular among users in the city of Calcutta (where it is ranked #7,753).

[Skurai]

What profits? What lives? And who would buy the domain Zelaron.com?
I would. I would buy this place in a heart beat.

[Asamin]

There are 466,647 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Zelaron.com. While roughly 45% of the site's visitors are in India, where it is ranked #80,048, it is also popular in Pakistan, where it is ranked #53,086. The site's visitors view an average of 6.0 unique pages per day. Approximately 20% of visits to Zelaron.com consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces). The site is relatively popular among users in the city of Calcutta (where it is ranked #7,753).

But still, they're coming for the games and posts. If someone else bought the domain it would be for their own site.

Anyway, so you're basically saying that this is what zelaron now is and will always be? An in active wasteland?

[Skurai]

Why's it so popular is Pakistan of all places? I figured South Korea, since they're big MMO freaks.

[Asamin]

Maybe we're what they think Americans are like. That's a scary thought.

[Skurai]

We basically are, when you break it down.

[Grav]

http://i.imgur.com/Q0bLZ.png

Pretty much this

[Asamin]

Well, I tried. I gave it my best, but we're just over :P This forum is very much dead. I believe 99% of site traffic is the arcade.

[Skurai]

http://i.imgur.com/Q0bLZ.png

Pretty much this

I giggled.

[Grav]

But it's been like this for years. I remember a summer where weeks would go by without anything to read.

[Asamin]

The real question is do you guys love this place enough to try to resurrect it or are we gonna just leave it dead?

[Skurai]

But then we'd have to remember all kinds of new names, and personalities, and it'd just be a hassle...

[Asamin]

See? So lets revive it. Quick! Does someone have a Phoenix Down?

[!King_Amazon!]

I think we need a Phoenix Pinion.

[Chruser]

I implemented some of the suggested metadata changes a week ago. My next priority is to look into the prospect of making registrations mandatory for guests (on an IP basis) who have viewed more than 5 threads.

Keep posting your suggestions!

[Asamin]

Registrations aren't our problem. I see tons of new people a week, it's getting them to post that is the problem. They all come for the arcade.

[!King_Amazon!]

Registrations aren't our problem. I see tons of new people a week, it's getting them to post that is the problem. They all come for the arcade.

Most of the people who register are spam bots. You just never see them because new users have to be approved unless they are posting in the introductions forum. That's why the only time you see spambots, it's in that forum. The mods probably see 10x more spambots than normal users do.

[Asamin]

Well that would explain things.

[Lenny]

It's nowhere near as bad as it used to be - during the first half of 2010, we regularly had more new spam posts than actual posts by a factor of at least three. These days, I'm lucky if I get to delete one spam thread a week. :(

If anyone is interested, the current stats are: 5059 deleted posts and 1619 deleted threads on the forum. Now these are "soft" deletes, which means that they can be retrieved. I have no way of finding out how many posts and threads have been deleted in total (soft and hard deletes), but it's bound to be a lot more (particularly as this is post #697,061).

I suppose it's possible to go back through every post and see which I can view with my permissions, and which I can't, but I don't want to do it manually, and I can't be bothered writing a script.

As an aside, this is the earliest accessible post: http://zelaron.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4.

[Asamin]

I think on May 15th we might start to get some activity as a lot of people here play diablo III. I'm currently playing the open beta (I love it)

[WetWired]

We also improved the CAPTCHA around that time. I don't hard delete much, so your stats are probably good. I do move a lot of soft deleted spam threads to the trash.

[Asamin]

Is it just that you don't want to take the time to sift through to hard delete them? Because I don't see much of a point of leaving them to be resurrected.

[Lenny]

Two reasons why things are soft deleted: in the Mod Drop-down Menu when we select a post/thread, there's an option to "Delete post/thread as spam", which soft deletes the post (and allows us to ban the user in one fell swoop)l and Admin's are the only ones with the permissions to hard delete posts and threads.

---

I remember the discussions about changing the CAPTCHA's! Good times. :)

[Asamin]

Well what I meant was why not go through and hard delete them all, or would that unban the spam bot?

[WetWired]

More work. Also, we don't generally hard delete things so that if questions arise, the evidence is still there. At this point, it probably doesn't matter; more habbit than anything.

[Asamin]

I think that our best bet right now would be to harness the influx of people looking to discuss the upcoming blizzard games since a lot of people here already play them

[Skurai]

I still think we should try and make our own game. No idea how, though...

[WetWired]

Zelaron had its own game, for a while.

[Asamin]

We had a game? When did we have a game?

[WetWired]

Long ago. I don't even remember what it was called. Mercurial?

[Asamin]

Was it before I joined? Was it any good?

[kaos]

Nice, we're already popped up on page 3 for Gaming Forums. I'll have someone blast some links to help speed things up a bit when I get some time.

[Asamin]

Nice :D We're getting a bit more active, for instance, I just went to new posts and it wasn't all skurai.

[D3V]

We need more content. allowing anonymous users is the only viable option at this point.

[Asamin]

Agreed, we could allow a few posts per IP address then require them to register. Like D3V said in another post, put captchas on it.

[Lenny]

We did try guest posts once.





Shit loads of spam.





Turned them off.

Of course, if they can be coupled with a CAPTCHA and a daily post-limit by IP, they may work better.

I've just been going over a few threads in the Staff forum to find the ones about guest posting.

We decided in the beginning that CAPTCHAs and limits by IPs were a pain, because people wouldn't be able to quick sign-up and post - they'd have to wait for all the confirmation e-mails.

After a while, which just so happened to see a huge number of spam posts, it was decided that guest posting was to be stopped, as the vast majority of posts were spam, and we had a tiny ratio of people registering (something like 200:1).

[Asamin]

I was thinking an ever post limit by IP, so they can post like 10 times then they have to register.

[!King_Amazon!]

You're missing the fundamental problem. Our problem isn't that guests come here and are too lazy to register. Our problem is that nobody comes here except for people who are already members and spambots. There are occasionally people playing in the arcade but even lately that is rare. On the off chance that we actually get a real guest, they are usually brought here because of some ancient RPGmaker thread or WC3 maphack thread. They are still going to have little to no interest in posting on the main forums, so if they could make guest posts they would just be digging up shitty old irrelevant threads.

Allowing guests to post is going to do nothing for activity, unless you consider a crapton of spam activity.

[Asamin]

In that case, I think we simply need to increase our placement on google for gaming forum. We have an interesting enough name that if someone sees it they are likely to click on it but these days being on the third page for a search means you'll never get clicked.

[D3V]

Zelaron needs to turn into 4chan or 9gag to increase stats, IMO.

[KagomJack]

But we don't need that shit here too. Then we'll be oldfags, then Zelaron will produce too many memes, and then we'll get cancer.

[!King_Amazon!]

Zelaron needs to turn into 4chan or 9gag to increase stats, IMO.
I take it you are volunteering to pay the team of moderators required to keep our host out of trouble? Because otherwise turning into 4chan will just get Zelaron taken down.

[kaos]

Gameplay videos + URL Watermark + Youtube.

Got no time for it myself atm (maybe when d3 comes out :D) but just throwing it out there.

[Asamin]

So we should make gameplay videos like Machinima does?

[kaos]

Yep, alot of forums are doing gameplay and how-to videos.

[Skurai]

I take it you are volunteering to pay the team of moderators required to keep our host out of trouble? Because otherwise turning into 4chan will just get Zelaron taken down.

I'd do it for free.

[!King_Amazon!]

You probably aren't even old enough to legally view such things.

[Asamin]

Yep, alot of forums are doing gameplay and how-to videos.

If I had screen recording software and my computer wasn't complete crap I'd do it in a hear beat. But, sadly, I don't have a good computer or the proper programs.

[!King_Amazon!]

I could probably do some gameplay videos, but I don't really want to. I mean, I wouldn't mind recording myself playing games, but narrating myself playing games doesn't sound like much fun and I don't have a radio voice.

[Asamin]

It's ok, some of the people on youtube who do it have just terrible voices. I think it could work out. We just need to actually do it and get our videos noticed.