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
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.