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I thought I'd start this here as a discussion instaed of posting on a site review board, because I'm sure I'm not the first or the last one in this situation - as in I believe this topic might serve better as a Tips topic / discussion. So I'm not asking anyone to review or analyse my site or anything like that - juts to ponder on this topic and share whatever tips or experiences they may have. How to get a site on its wings in a fandom that has tons of competition, when the site is clearly an underdog in two major matters? - The admin is a newcomer and thus doesn't have a group of friends to kick-start the site with as in can't hold a candle to the shit-tons of sites with numerous players, when it comes to activity level. - The site is not set in the currently popular era setting of the fandom. In my personal case, things I've done so far: * Run the site for almost nine months, so it shouldn't suffer too much from being new, as in people probably should by now trust that it's not going anywhere any time soon. If not for the age alone, at least in relation to how much time and work I've put into it. * Been an active admin, (on average several updates every month) but the game's universe is already so established I'm running out of stuff to do. As I'd rather not pull pointless threads/updates out of my ass just to have something new pop up all the time because then it would also start to look stupid/low-quality. I'd rather keep posting updates and development that have some substance and usefulness. * Generally tried to show that I myself am excited and inspired about the game, and a friendly admin. * Posted my writing samples in the bios of a couple of my characters so people can see my writing style and level even without diving into the in-game areas, which they of course can also do. * Advertised it actively in several directories, kept the ads updated regularly, have it on a couple of Top lists, my signatures on the fandom's discussion forums, gathered some affiliates and board ad exchanges, founded a Facebook page, even gone out of the RPG community over to general creative writing communities to advertise. * Put up a few Wanted Ads of substance for those who'd like to have a link with characters rather than randomly create one. Also posted those Wanted Ads on several RPG and creative writing communities and the fandom sites, and not just on my site. And actively bumped it to surface. (It has two or three fans at Fanpop's Harry Potter club, which is how I'm sure it's not a total failure as a Wanted Ad.) * Allow both canon and original characters, both equally valued. * While my site has a lot of established lore, I have made clear that it's not all manadtory to read before joining if ever - and provided a list of links to the bits that are mandatory which are not that much. As in, the amount of lore that a visitor would have to read in the end is not much more than on any other site in the fandom. It's also very easy and light to navigate through the lore. * Have normal, basic rules and nothing bizzare or limiting. * Made a couple of video trailers which are publicly viewable on YouTube and DailyMotion. * Tried to keep it relatively active in game posting, seeing to that there is only I and one other player. Hence, it can't be anywhere near the same level as sites that already have numerous players, especially not constantly. * Have a colourful cast of original characters already in the game. * Posted welcoming and friendly general discussion thread on the OOC area, to show that I do wish it to become a nice community and not just a gaming community - including that you don't have to be a pöayer yet to participate and start OOC discussions and so on. * Been discussing (semi)-actively on a couple of RPG Directories with my site attached to my signature, referring to it in discussions whenever see the chance and suggested it in RPG request threads other people post whenever it fits their request at all. * Some three weeks ago I moved the site over to a better forum host and increased the rating to free-for-all / 3-3-3. * Started to send a friendly and useful Welcoming private message to newly registered, in effort to make sure they feel I acknowledge and appreciate their interest in my site and that they feel personally welcomed and a part of the community from the very start. ^ All of that, and still we have only one player in addition to me. An awesome, relatively active player - but still only one - (while we're both mature adults with a life outside RPing) - which naturally makes it that much harder for us to provide enough activity to withstand the competition in activity terms. Especially when the era isn't popular as in isn't in itself drawing people in. Since we moved and increased the rating to free-for-all we've had a couple of new registered members but they haven't logged in since the day they registered. So - what else can an admin do? How on earth could one get visitors excited and inspired to join and become active members? I never imagined it would be this damn difficult to get a site on its wings in a large international community and popular fandom - where by all means should be enough individuals to find different eras interesting and inspireing as well as to find a lot of lore useful. I'm not giving up, though - I'm not even dreaming of it. I've worked way too hard on ths site, and its era as well as my characters there are very important and dear to me.

So I am always curious to see what venues people use to advertise and today I was discussing Social Media and I wanted to put up a poll to find out what everyone uses as well as what sort of frequency you use it. You know. Give me your Social Media story. Personally on DF we use Twitter and Facebook, we have a Tumblr but that's not as active due to not enough staff to cover it. So what do you use and how do you feel about it?

So on a similar vein to this thread: I recently found that a new member on my site may be an old member returned, an old member banned for PMing members unsolicited and unwarranted PMs asking for inappropriate plots with canons without any of the build up. That being said they don't appear to be exactly the same as before but they are exhibiting similar issues however I haven't gotten any reports of the unsolicited PMs. So it seems like they've changed however the person themselves makes me a little uncomfortable because of what happened last time. Now a few things: I can't guarantee they are the same person. It's been like three or four years since this person was even on my site last. The username is similar (since the prior username was actually banned and is unusable). The IP address is in a similar subnet but not identical but appears to be the same ISP. The behavior is extremely similar but I could also be looking for similarities due to the issues I had with the first problem member. That being said I am not sure if I should just ride it out, just get rid of them or something else entirely. If you found yourself in this situation what would you do? Anonymous poster hash: 7221d...b7a

Simple question: How long do you keep unfinished WIPs? And what do you do after that time has expired? Move them to inactive, delete, etc? I personally give it as long as it needs - providing there has been steady work on it. But if it's been sitting there for two weeks without any progress, I move it to the inactive section. I just ask because I still find it looks messy to have a bunch of unfinished apps sitting around, so perhaps someone else has a smarter approach to this. Delete the topic and PM its contents to the member, perhaps?

So recently my site had an issue with a member, and it was one, of many. I'm deep down, a kind soul. I wanted to give them a chance, but the complaints against the Player, and their characters kept building up, and I asked them kindly to leave, and I would happily provide all their character information back to them, but certain actions had crossed the line. They reacted not unlike what I expected, upset, and angry. To avoid problems, I banned their e-mail and IP, just to be safe. Certain actions, no matter the rating of a site, are just not okay unless previously cleared with your writing partner, you know? So all is quiet for a few days. Few new members show up, everything is rolling along. Then we get a mysterious application. The player not once spoke in our chat box, just all of a sudden, there is a 'completed' application submitted, but it's missing all the OOC info we require. As my Co-Admin and I are going over the app, the player PM's me. It's the one we banned. With a Proxied IP, and a new E-mail. Long story short, we are now having to doublecheck IP's for every new silent apper that appears, for fear it is this player again. If the IP doesn't match the listed locale of the player, we're hesitant to accept the application. Has anyone else ever run into something like this, where they've had to impose a Proxy Ban? We're very close to doing that, but I feel like that might be going too far. We just don't want this person back after threats were made against staff and players off the site. To top it all off, as I'm replying to advertisements, I see them floating around on other sites. Do you warn other admins of potential problems with a player's behavior? or just let them play in shark infested waters and hope for the best? I'm finding out after the fact that this particular writer has caused issues on just about every other site they were ever a part of.

There is a member who has recently applied for a second character after their first got denied. The reason that they got denied the first time is that the character over all was very unbelievable and overpowered. The weaknesses that were given, were not actually weaknesses. When explaining a weakness they would explain that this was not always the case and basically counter the weakness in the same statement. On top of that the character was the child of a famous person, yet the fact that they were missing did not appear in the media. On top of that they were semi famous themselves, yet when showing up in New York he wasn't recognized at all and no one asked questions. Now for this new character, once again the power this character has is a lot. Instead of starting with one like was suggest they started out with three while recently having gotten the abilities. They can manipulate emotions, sense emotions and through that predict action and on top of that overload people’s emotions rendering them unable to defend themselves. The weakness for these are mainly the lack of control, yet at the same time the character can manipulate up to 5 people at a time, can over load people’s emotions and pinpoint what someone is feeling in a crowd. This character also has a musician for a dad, somehow there is no mother in the picture yet it is not explained. They got kidnapped while on the way to a venue where the characters dad had to play, yet somehow their car wasn't found for a week and they don't explain why it took so long to find the car. After that the kid got experimented on, why is unclear. On top of that the businessman paying for the experiments treats the character like their own adoptive kid. All in all, it is a lot and in our opinion too much. Last time we wrote a lengthy pm explaining that it was too much for one character. There was more to the story than this, but it’s the basics. How would you deal with this situation and explain this to this person that they are not a good fit for this board? Anonymous poster hash: f46e0...397

So as an administrator I know how to do the base things for a site. i know how to run a site and I can do so very well however doing so alone is tiresome and tedious and often ends with poor results from my side because of discouragement. That being said when I look for staff I find similar results that are equally as discouraging. When looking for a staff member I look for someone that wants to build with me not me build and they follow however I'm finding that getting someone that is willing to put ideas out there is difficult. It's like just because you have an idea you have to do all of the leg work. That being said I don't have any friends I could rope into the setting as it's really my unique cup of tea (isn't that odd? I have few RP partners/friends that are interested in the genres that truly inspire me) so I have to look for someone new. Is it really that difficult to find someone willing to actually contribute and invest themselves in something? How do you find staff members? Anonymous poster hash: d2287...c60

So I'm bothered when I get a prospective member with a passive aggressive attitude. Example: GUEST: Disappointing (Failure to state what is disappointing, forcing someone to ask them) ME: What? GUEST: No <race/technology/lore>. (Note, I'm not against adding stuff, but in this example it's a huge sweeping change, for example adding elves to a human only fantasy setting) ME: That's right. GUEST: I guess it will have to do. So summarized, what have you guys found is the best strategy for responding to this kind of thing? I find it difficult, end up typing up all these differently worded responses, only to delete them all and not say anything. Should one respond concisely to something like this, or confront the person and tell them to cut it out, or just ignore full stop? Advice please, for when it undoubtedly happens again!

So most sandbox sites allow for the members to contribute their own lore and build on what already exists and that got me thinking about how I want to allow my members build the site with me and I came up with a moderately off the wall idea and wanted to know opinions as well as see if anyone else has done this before? Most of the time I would build the organizations, their hierarchy and allow the members to pick up the positions from there. This would include the inter workings of the the organization, the name, how they operate, what their purpose is and how they are viewed and whatnot. Pretty standard, give people the base and let them build. My idea is going even more skeletal then that, have an organization with a purpose and allow for a member to claim it and create all the details, from the name, when it was established etc. Basically instead of me building the organization the person that picks up the current leader makes this information the only thing I would provide is the organizations "purpose" so that they could build from there. So an example of this would be Naturalists (for my setting) which are the people that believe that putting technology in their body is unnatural and they won't do it. From there someone would claim the organization as the leader (subordinate characters would not be allowed until the organization is claimed and fleshed out). At that point people could actually be a part of the organization.

Tips, ideas, stuff? I have something in the works because I can't say no, and I expect it will be a small community as usual. I don't like recruiting staff beyond people I alreafy know and trust, though that isn't to say that known people are 150% guaranteed to work. :E I know what it is that I want for events and character ..boundaries(?), but I'm worried about the community atmosphere. That is, I don't have the lifestyle to hang around on the board for hours. When I'm at the mac, 95% of the time I'm working on posts, templates, fixing a skin or advertising. If I get drawn into a c-box, I get distracted, then nothing gets done. >( Have other staff ever run a game on their own, or with one other person? And it was a small game? Did it work, did it crash, was there a good middle-ground? I know that every game is different, has different players, expectations, activity, etc: but I don't really know how to approach this game, apart from sticking to my offline schedule / rp balance.

Do you do anything special for your site's big day? What about members? For the site, we generally change the skin, ad, etc. (Though, this might be made difficult this year by my graphics/coding mod being punched by RW) and release a new feature or something similar for the members. For members' anniversaries we have rewards they can use, adding to the special things they can do on the site (rare characters, etc) depending on the amount of time on board. For my WoW RP guild, we host an event a week for an entire month for the server. We turn 9 this year and our shenanigans start tonight! It's generally a good hit and gets other people celebrating with us. I'm curious to see what other people do, if anything.

So something I always think about as both a player and an administrator. Activity. Obviously if you want people to be active then the site has to be active. Proven to be true many times over. The question is: Does enforcing it strictly work? One thing as a member that often deters me is activity checks but on the flip side, in certain environments the activity of the member is key to the development of the site. Hopefully there has to be a balance somewhere in there that you aren't losing your members because the rules are too strict but not so loose that no one ever posts. What are methods that you use that you feel works?

So, I didn't know this (obviously now I do), but RP forums host their images on Imgur. Now I knew some friends hosted a thing or two on there or shared images to be from there but I didn't know that sites were fully hosting their layout design images on Imgur. Now, that being said, I guess the amount of people that host their files there is so much that Imgur has actually banned jcink from using their images at all, and I guess that would mean even trying to show a funny image in a thread is out now, due to the abuse. (You can read about it here). Now with the information there I feel I must ask, how many people host images on Imgur (including link banners and sig banners)? What are your thoughts on the massive ban hammer that they threw down? Where are you moving your content to?

I realize that some of us use mandatory templates for character applications and some of us prefer not to. By template, I'm off course talking about specific information fields like "Name", "Age", "personality", "history", etc - NOT fancy smancy layout stuff. Traditionally, I've always set up some sort of mandatory bare minimal because early in the long-ago past I've gotten too many character apps that were so atrociously vague that the member thought they could add any abilities they wanted per thread. But I can also see where there might be some benefits to NOT providing a mandatory app. Which way do you guys do it? And secondly, regardless if the member fills out a specific template or not, is it appropriate for the staff to ask said members to add anything extra once the application is submitted before the profile will be approved? Lastly, does anybody use an "Automatic approval" set up where the member can start posting with that character right away; with the condition that staff may ask the member to tweak a couple of things or be inactivated?

Alright! So I had a bout of nostalgia a little bit ago about a site I used to run. It's been forever and I honestly... sadly... don't remember the name (I must be getting really old). Anyways! I was thinking about a situation that arose and how I dealt with it and I want to see what other staff members would have done if they were in my shoes. Alrighty! So everything is fabulous and all that jazz and we get this member. They aren't a bad person, I think they were a little self conscious and negative (it blurs together a little) but they joined the site. Now here is where everything went a little sideways. I didn't mind the member they were fine, maybe said something a little annoying every now and again but overall they were fine. They weren't breaking rules, they were a little grating but they were active and whatnot. Well, they ended up doing something that did cross a line. I don't remember if it was in a conversation (in the cBox) or a thread I just remember it was in a public place that EVERYONE saw! It was pretty bad and my staff cried for blood, they wanted her banned immediately. Obviously the banning came down to me and my co-admin at the time. We reviewed the situation and the overall behavior and decided to give the person a second chance but a fierce warning. I didn't want this to happen again and I wanted the staff to feel like I had done the situation justice. Apparently, I hadn't done that and I felt like what's her face from "The 100" when she let the jerk guy live after he had killed someone else or whatever. We did what we thought was best and that wasn't good enough as we didn't do what everyone else wanted. To be fair, in my opinion, it's an administrator's job to deal with the hard decisions and while the staff is able to contribute their thoughts and opinions it still falls on the shoulders of the administrators on what to do in a severe situation as this one had become. This is part that I want opinions on. My staff members disagreed with me so vehemently that after a day, while they were still angry and wound up about it, a few of them send me a long PM that basically said, "We're leaving the staff" while they didn't say that it was because of this particular issue it was obvious from the "timing" of it that it was this issue that made them choose to leave the staff. I mean really? What else could it have been. I discussed and talked it out with them but basically I felt like I was pounding my head against a brick wall because they refused to see any reason or even discuss it. In a way I felt they were being immature and unprofessional about it. Putting it in perspective, just because my boss says "you still have to work this Saturday" doesn't mean that it gives me a good reason to quit my job (a little bit different since RPs are volunteer work but hopefully you still see my point). Continuing this story of woe, my co-admin wanted me to salvage the staff even though they were dead set on getting their way on a decision that we made collectively. I felt that salvaging the staff, while it may save face a little bit, didn't actually fix any of the issues and would just continue harboring ill will until eventually it blew even FURTHER out of proportion than it already had. Eventually the decision was to let go of the staff and made them normal members again. I had expressed to my co-admin that I didn't want this sort of thing to happen again and knowing that it happened once was stressful enough for me on my hobby without having to walk on eggshells all the time. My Questions: What would you have done in my shoes? Would you have saved the staff and banned the member? Would you have tried to keep both? What is your opinion on this? Unfortunately there is no tl;dr version of this you will have to read the full story to understand what I am asking! Thanks for the thoughts.

I got the idea to ask from Kieran's thread "What matters most" thread. Mainly as an admin, but also as a member. Which board host do you guys think is the best? Or even your favorites. I've always preferred Proboards myself, but I feel like the ToS sometimes can be a little...restrictive for certain game genres. At the same time, I can't complain about the ease of its skins, its admin areas, etc. Especially that simple-and-quick account switch feature they added with the remodeling a while back.

I didn't put this in the brainstorming idea because it isn't an idea, but a question without an idea. I made a deal with one of my members that if we got 1,000 posts on the board by April 1st, I'd open a new game. This is all with the understanding that a. I have time to admin two games, b. our current game is good and doesn't need 100% of the attention (it currently does) and c. there's enough support. So, it isn't a 'no matter what, there will be a new game' deal. My question to all of you is what would you like to see more? Me personally I'd love it if I had 5 pots of coffee a day and could run all the games I want because I have so many ideas I love, but not enough time/support to play them all, and I have no interest in a panfandom game. So what it comes down to (and I think it's a deal breaker pretty often as far as if a game succeeds or not) is what is lacking in the rp community?

So, As I stare at forums here on DF I am considering adding a forum to split Roleplay and from Coding/Grpaphics as the coding/Graphics get a little drowned out by Roleplay conversations. Obviously a little different than what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about you have a "general" area and a few threads pop up at some specific place (lets call the it a Restaurant named Food) when is that you take and make the "Food" area it's own thing and separate it out of the "general" area. For me it's 10 posts per location (which means the forum would need 10 that would stay and 10 that would go) each before Food would be created. How about for you? Do you choose not to make those areas? I will admit that I like when IC actions tend to create the areas via use. This includes like "Character owned" shops and stuff.

Concerning c-boxes, I don't use them often at sites, and I don't need one for me to join a game. Even so, I always have OOC c-boxes available at my forum games, but.. They never get used much. I'm not worried about it, but.. A question for staff that don't have a c-box: do you offer any disclaimer, an explanation as to why there is no c-box? For players, do you want to see such a thing, or is it not a deal-breaker? For my next game, a work in progress (moving a game from one host to another), on the original host: c-boxes are never used. However, for this particular game's migration, myself and my co-mod @Bonemeal just don't have the right timezones. We have 'boxes at our other games, but we only really use them for quick, random messages. The majority of guests, if not all of them, show up in the box at 2am our time. During daylight hours, we have various real life business to contend with; we're not staff who can chat for hours in the box, but whenever we do spot a guest- they're there for one minute or less and then POOF. What sort of disclaimer can we put up, likely in the FAQ area or something- that would explain our reasoning behind the 'missing c-box', etc?

Does anyone deal with flakes (people who say they'll do things, but don't) as often as I do? Doing the proper admin thing I hit up people and do advertising as much as I can during my free time. Often this involves hitting up old role-playing buddies or making sure members who have gone inactive are doing alright (Although this is more genuine than me adverting. I firmly believe Life > Roleplay and do get personally attached to people I get to know). Often this leads to them assuming I'm there to bother them back onto the forum and they feed me promises of their return. But never do. I'll hit them just for a conversation and as if they feel guilty about not being there, they make sure to mention that they intend to be on site, but as per the norm never do. This is more than one person (been running role-plays for more than a decade so I got a long contact list of people I talk to in order to keep up with old friends >.o). Curious about your experiences with this type of person. The one who promises, but never lives up to it or simply leads you on. How do you handle these people?

So I've found myself in a bit of an odd situation. I've had a domain name for quite a while [April 2014 or so], and at the start of this year I revamped the site that I'd been hosting there and changed it to an entirely different setting when the old one came to an end. I'd been working on this WIP site for quite some time and was close to opening when another site in the same genre [but not a crossover like mine] opened up using the same exact name. Now, I'm not sure if they happened on mine and liked the name/basics or just came up with the same idea, but I'm not sure what to do. I have several people eager to join and I've already put off opening because of this other site. I recently moved us from self hosting to jcink premium since I needed a break from the self hosting stress - I picked bad hosts apparently - one was bought out by EIG and the other failed to communicate when they caused issues that broke things until I reached out. Anyway, I have people asking about the site again and I'd really prefer to keep the name the same - I do own a .com domain for this after all and have had it long before the other site came about. But they opened first and it IS the same genre. I really dislike drama and don't want to deal with it, but I did purchase this domain and have everything mostly ready to go. What do?