Gamer Exit - Looking for Feedback

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The site's got a nice design, shame the site doesn't get enough traffic. I think what's contributing to it is not enough content.

Most of the topics are too niche. Expand.

EDIT: If I were you, I'd start posting more Call of Duty articles in there. Like for example, the new map pack? It drove a lot of traffic to CODForums on New Year's day.
 
The site's got a nice design, shame the site doesn't get enough traffic. I think what's contributing to it is not enough content.

Most of the topics are too niche. Expand.

EDIT: If I were you, I'd start posting more Call of Duty articles in there. Like for example, the new map pack? It drove a lot of traffic to CODForums on New Year's day.


We're more a close knit gaming community than a wordpress with articles. We've actually grown at a rate we're pleased with, right now we prefer low members with higher postings than say 3300 members to its 6600 posts :D
 
We're more a close knit gaming community than a wordpress with articles. We've actually grown at a rate we're pleased with, right now we prefer low members with higher postings than say 3300 members to its 6600 posts :D


I always went with the thought that activity > numbers. Eventually, the numbers would be there, or so it would seem. I'd rather have really good conversations, a paragraph or two, good discussions, etc... than a bunch of single line posts with links to somewhere else telling you to go read there. What is the point of having thousands of members who only register because they are forced to and never come back?

Either way... Russ, love what you have done Showcase. If I ever ran a gaming site again, it would be in that mold. The only bad part about a general gaming site is the sheer amount of games, types, etc... It's hard to grasp what "everyone" wants, and it is always the simple rule of "you will never make everyone happy". You've got a great mix going imo, and I like the direction you guys are taking it.
 
The site's got a nice design, shame the site doesn't get enough traffic. I think what's contributing to it is not enough content.

Most of the topics are too niche. Expand.

EDIT: If I were you, I'd start posting more Call of Duty articles in there. Like for example, the new map pack? It drove a lot of traffic to CODForums on New Year's day.

We are expanded, we constantly review what we have and if isn't getting attention it gets the boot until a later date possibly.

Gallery (for wallpapers), Wiki ( covering a couple games ), Showcase ( for reviews), Shop ( to buy in game items and forum features), and Community game servers (4). We only add more topics if and when there is interest. Call of Duty is its own niche also, we ran with what was giving us traffic and members. One of the games was a complete fail (The WarZ) that gave us a lot of traffic and members but luckily those members stuck around. DayZ continues to be a huge game for us and our community members so we concentrate a lot of effort there. COD has it loyal following, I still play from time to time but not like I did with CoD4, but I think if it wasn't for consoles that game would be dead by now.
 
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We are expanded, we constantly review what we have and if isn't getting attention it gets the boot until a later date possibly.

Gallery (for wallpapers), Wiki ( covering a couple games ), Showcase ( for reviews), Shop ( to buy in game items and forum features), and Community game servers (4). We only add more topics if and when there is interest. Call of Duty is its own niche also, we ran with what was giving us traffic and members. One of the games was a complete fail (The WarZ) that gave us a lot of traffic and members but luckily those members stuck around. DayZ continues to be a huge game for us and our community members so we concentrate a lot of effort there. COD has it loyal following, I still play from time to time but not like I did with CoD4, but I think if it wasn't for consoles that game would be dead by now.

Really liking the site, the direction it's going you both have done a great job and clearly work very well together. *applauds*

I am a little disapointed that there's no L4D areas or much discussion as it's the game I am fond of and play daily. Does your member base not play the L4D games much?

Great job regardless. :)
 
Really liking the site, the direction it's going you both have done a great job and clearly work very well together. *applauds*

I am a little disapointed that there's no L4D areas or much discussion as it's the game I am fond of and play daily. Does your member base not play the L4D games much?

Great job regardless. :)


We all own it and play it every so often but not really sure why it's not one of our main games :(, I myself have 450 hours logged on steam with it, use to play it ALL the time.

Right now the main game is DayZ, a zombie survival game which is mighty fun, it's also one of the main games because we let users purchase in-game items using credits on the website.
 
Really liking the site, the direction it's going you both have done a great job and clearly work very well together. *applauds*

I am a little disapointed that there's no L4D areas or much discussion as it's the game I am fond of and play daily. Does your member base not play the L4D games much?

Great job regardless. :)

L4D is always on the table with us, we wanted to have a section at first but we couldn't devote the time required when we started the site. Love the game though, just not much of a fan of the versus mode.

We are always looking to expand to other games, you more than welcome to manage the section if you wish. :p
 
L4D is always on the table with us, we wanted to have a section at first but we couldn't devote the time required when we started the site. Love the game though, just not much of a fan of the versus mode.

We are always looking to expand to other games, you more than welcome to manage the section if you wish. :p

Totally understandable, you have to include the games you play and are current. :) Yeah, i'm not at all into the survivor/versus mode only the campaign online were your playing with friends and co-op is key to surviving each campaign.

I play l4d2 daily so anytime you or Russ ever get around to playing it again give me a shout because if i ever find out you are secretly playing it and not invited me for a campaign i'll... i'll... probably just play more l4d2 on my lonesome :D
 
We're more a close knit gaming community than a wordpress with articles.
What's that supposed to mean? I run a few blogs, but only because I do not have anything else to "prove" at the moment. I originally wanted a CMS that allowed me to attach game info column to my articles. Wordpress' nice, but it doesn't feel like I can build a gaming website with it. So, beginning with MW3Blog, I started going niche. And what a turnout it made for me: 170k visits, and 150k uniques. That's a stand-alone blog. And the best part is, I bought MW4Blog, and Black Ops 3 Blog. :) So, two years from now, my network will have reached 300,000 people worldwide.

After BO3, my company will focus on series websites, as if it hasn't already.
We've actually grown at a rate we're pleased with, right now we prefer low members with higher postings than say 3300 members to its 6600 posts :D
It's nice to have a tight knit community, don't get me wrong! :) But your site had a really, really good design, it looked like you or your handyman spent a lot of time on it. Let me put it this way; if you didn't have someone like Qwk86gn (whom I assume is your handyman), you would have to shell out $1000 for a design like GE1.0.

Most people don't want to invest that much time or money unless they know or feel that they can scale that website.
We are expanded, we constantly review what we have and if isn't getting attention it gets the boot until a later date possibly.
Okay, when I say "expand" I don't mean, expand to have dedicated game forums - like you do now... when I meant expand, I meant, do news that people are interested in. Most of the time, I see your threads are mostly about patch notes, server news, and whatnot. Expand this further to include the latest news about games. I already pointed out one example: Map Pack.

T'was one of those reasons why I've decided not come back often. The other one was the site was a little heavy when loading a page, once again: Your site was a nicely designed site. So do not take this as hate towards you, Russ. I've never hated you, and I've always been nice to you. :)

If you want some examples, check any one of my niche websites... I do news on forums just like I normally would on a blog.
Gallery (for wallpapers), Wiki ( covering a couple games ), Showcase ( for reviews), Shop ( to buy in game items and forum features), and Community game servers (4). We only add more topics if and when there is interest. Call of Duty is its own niche also, we ran with what was giving us traffic and members. One of the games was a complete fail (The WarZ) that gave us a lot of traffic and members but luckily those members stuck around. DayZ continues to be a huge game for us and our community members so we concentrate a lot of effort there. COD has it loyal following, I still play from time to time but not like I did with CoD4, but I think if it wasn't for consoles that game would be dead by now.
Yes, those are great features, and additions to a site, but you need to feed your users with news in the industry. xenForo has SEO out of the box - TAKE advantage of it!
I always went with the thought that activity > numbers. Eventually, the numbers would be there, or so it would seem. I'd rather have really good conversations, a paragraph or two, good discussions, etc... than a bunch of single line posts with links to somewhere else telling you to go read there. What is the point of having thousands of members who only register because they are forced to and never come back?
This is aimed at me, so I'm going to go ahead and address this. Website owners vie for attention every day. The ones with the "I got this news first," are the ones with the insider contact... With me so far? Okay. A lot of fans are excited about the news, right? But some sites, like some Call of Duty communities - they copy and paste the whole post from that particular news piece. 1. That's lazy posting. 2. Websites that allow this kind of posting run the risk of either a cease and detest letter, or the very worst: A real lawsuit. Some hosts even take down the website for the owner. I don't want this. So, I only post a summary of the post, and a quote and a source.

Other times, I don't need the source, so I type out the whole post to include the information, and the video and/or images.
 
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Carlos... I thought about typing out a long winded response but I think you have the wrong idea about our site. The news we post is relevant to what our members joined the site for in the first place. We also keep up to date with things such as patch notes, betas and other misc. things.

I made a post congratulating the community on hitting 5000 posts back in December 10th and as of today we're going on about 9000. For a small gaming community I'm pretty proud of that actually. [GE] was never meant to be a cash cow but meant for pure fun, we work for our gaming community members.


As for your comment regarding 1.0 not really sure what you mean by it, Steve and I put in a tremendous amount of work for 1.0 and 2.0. XenForo styling isn't hard at all, you just have to jump into it (y). 1.0 was far too image heavy and required us to jimmy rig in a lot of places to make the design work. We like the cleaner approach :)
 
Why are you fighting back against me, Russ? I've been nothing but positive about your site. I'm giving you feedback, and all you do is tell me that I've got "the wrong idea," and "not sure what you mean by it."
Carlos... I thought about typing out a long winded response but I think you have the wrong idea about our site. The news we post is relevant to what our members joined the site for in the first place. We also keep up to date with things such as patch notes, betas and other misc. things.
Nope, I registered to your site. Do you see me coming back? No. I just outlined why. You should listen to my suggestions or feedback because this is the mentality of the industry today. Just because your users joined up for the reason of you posting those types of news... doesn't mean you've captured your intended market. Your market is the entire video game industry. GamerExit sounds like a general purpose gaming site. Act like it. If you don't, you won't spur more discussions on your site, which is why I felt that the site doesn't get "enough" traffic. Throw me your numbers and I will see right through it.

Because here's the thing: If your site got this much traffic you're telling me - against the number of posts in forumhome; it tells me that you, the admin - failed to be as relevant as possible to the other fraction of that traffic.

Let me put it to you this way: CODForums could have gotten more than 3,300 members, right now.... A. I don't have enough members posting. B. I don't have help. I'm doing everything. MYSELF. And C. I feel like I am missing a market somehow, and somewhere.

The other COD communities are getting more 6,000 members, the fastest growing Black Ops 2 site is gathering way past 14,000 members.
I made a post congratulating the community on hitting 5000 posts back in December 10th and as of today we're going on about 9000. For a small gaming community I'm pretty proud of that actually. [GE] was never meant to be a cash cow but meant for pure fun, we work for our gaming community members.
Good! It doesn't have to be a cash cow, but just know that you could have been making money. CODForums was never intended to be a cash cow, as it my hobby site. I put advertising because at some point, I'm going to need that money. It's like right now, I don't have money for year-to-year domain renewals... That's how bad it is for me.
As for your comment regarding 1.0 not really sure what you mean by it, Steve and I put in a tremendous amount of work for 1.0 and 2.0. XenForo styling isn't hard at all, you just have to jump into it (y). 1.0 was far too image heavy and required us to jimmy rig in a lot of places to make the design work. We like the cleaner approach :)
The amount of work you put into G.E.1.0 is high, against how much discussions you've spurred. That's low ratio.

Put it this way, if you put in $1,000 for a skin like that, you've lost $100 per month.

If I bought CODForums for $1000, I'm expecting a ROI. But it all depends on me. Me! I'm shouldering this responsibility! I am!

The worst part is, I'm not supposed to be using this money the way I did! I took a risk. A huge risk. It's just as risky as putting up your home for sale, in exchange for the success of your company.
 
Has it been done intentionally when you hover over the bold links in the header area, that they move a little to the side rather than remaining static?

Think you've done right thing covering multiple top games with your community, rather than covering one game only or different versions of the same game. Most gaming forum I see doing well, that's how they do things so they always add new games to talk about coming through to keep interest going on the forums. Gaming forums covering one game, or a series of that same game fail in that area keeping interest going.
 
Has it been done intentionally when you hover over the bold links in the header area, that they move a little to the side rather than remaining static?

Think you've done right thing covering multiple top games with your community, rather than covering one game only or different versions of the same game. Most gaming forum I see doing well, that's how they do things so they always add new games to talk about coming through to keep interest going on the forums. Gaming forums covering one game, or a series of that same game fail in that area keeping interest going.

Our navigation/user nav needs adjusting period, I'll look at it in a sec, padding is a pain sometimes with the XF nav.

Carlos I'm not going to go back and forth with you, I'm not fighting with you and anyone who disagrees with you doesn't mean they're instantly fighting with you. Thanks for the feedback though we'll take it into consideration Carlos.
 
Our navigation/user nav needs adjusting period, I'll look at it in a sec, padding is a pain sometimes with the XF nav.

Carlos I'm not going to go back and forth with you, I'm not fighting with you and anyone who disagrees with you doesn't mean they're instantly fighting with you. Thanks for the feedback though we'll take it into consideration Carlos.
Not when you have about a million style properties for it :p.
 
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