Grabbing member attention - ideas?

Ryan Kent

Well-known member
With a large forums, many users get into a routine where they just head to the section which interests them. I would like to gather user feedback often with 1-2 polls per week, and 1-2 weekly threads with helpful user info.

How do most forum admins achieve high member participation in polls and reading important info? The best idea I can think of is a pop up window upon logging in. I don't like the idea of e-mailing members. The next best solution I have seen is the Alert add-on.

Can anyone share their experiences or suggestions?
 
Mailing stinks. Popups are good but not always effective if (a) a pop-up blocker can stop them, and (b) users find them annoying. If there is one thing I like about VB it is the ability to put an announcement on all forums which can be clicked closed after reading. (I think it appears on all pages.) If that could be done with a eye catching background, it works well... at least IMHO. :)
 
Horses for courses.

I absolutely hate those annoying, nagging messages on seemingly every vBulletin forum I ever visit.
If I wanted to register, I would have already!
 
Brogan, I am not referring to messages for guests. I would like our existing member's to know important information such as:

- Our forums will be upgraded and all users will need to reset their passwords. Plz be sure your e-mail is current

- Security notice! Please understand that your usernames are open to public view. The world knows your username after you post. The ONLY security you have is your password so please add a degree of difficulty to it.

- These forums will be done next Thursday between 2pm GMT and 5pm GMT for planned server maintenance.

etc etc. Sometimes you NEED to know every member read this information. If I just make a post and throw it in one of the ?25 forums on the site, it would probably be read by well under 50% of members.
 
You could achieve that quite easily with a template include in PAGE_CONTAINER
It would be visible on every page.

If you didn't want it on every page then you could do it in the forum_list template.

Of course you can't force people to read it, but it would be pretty hard to not read it.
 
could it be a 1-time thing? Once a member sees it and closes the window it would not re-appear for that member? Such as appear once on log-in?
 
I'd recommend against mass mailing or PM unless it's non-commerical, very important and happens sporadically. Everyone hates pop-ups so forget those. IMO important messages should show at the top of the forum index page (possibly with a notable background color) and members should be able to click them away.
 
could it be a 1-time thing? Once a member sees it and closes the window it would not re-appear for that member? Such as appear once on log-in?
You would need an add-on for that.

You can always try asking in the add-on requests forum.
 
As Brogan said, Oracle, you'd need an add-on to either cookie-store or database-store the closed notification. Perhaps you should consider the custom alerts add-on for a guaranteed way for your members to see the information.
 
Make an ice cream contest where the user who participates the most gets to select their favorite ice cream from an online shop. 60% of the time, it works every time.
 
60% of the time, it works every time.

your idea is nice, but your last sentence is priceless! Might just be sig material
cool.png
 
could it be a 1-time thing? Once a member sees it and closes the window it would not re-appear for that member? Such as appear once on log-in?
You could try the mass alert addon? In that case you can send an alert 'today at 13.00 the site will be updated' or whatever. One time only, everybody will notice this, it's not that annoying (most people love alerts), it's clear without annoying people... seems decent?

Stuff like how usernames are visible to everyone could be added to an automatic PC whenever someone registers, if you want. I think there's an addon for that as well. Those aren't that annoying as well, and will be read automatically when someone first logs in..
 
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