Rescuing a sinker

[Nariko 15]

Recently, as in the last few days, I have come to incidentally inherit a site from the founding administrator. The site's come under attack at least twice, so there's some history here and it's honestly quite messy. Upon the founding administrator's leave, about three or four other players left, and we're down to a very small, very tired and wounded cluster with no idea as to where to go from here. I'd like to get it moving and thriving again, but to be honest, there's so much to figure out, I don't really know where to start.

 

I suppose I'm looking partly for ideas on what to tackle first, and partly for success stories and advice. Where do I begin? Is it worth it at this point? Has anyone else ever done anything like this? How? Did it work?

[Morrigan 1,826]

Always a difficult place to be. However still salvageable. A big thing is knowing that you WANT to save it. No matter what, if you don't "think" or "want" it to be saved then it won't be and you'll put in the effort to just watch it die an even slower more agonizing death.

 

As it stands if you know you want to save it the next thing to do is actually to reach out to your wounded few and find out what they want to do. Getting their feedback will certainly help figure out the direction that you want to take the site. This is an important step in cultivating a trusting relationship with those left, you don't want them to feel like they stuck around just for you to ignore their needs.

 

Next I'd change the feel of the site. Change the theme. Give it a new makeover. Version 2.0!!! This will shake off a lot of bad vibes and help with bringing you a happiness that the current theme is probably bringing you down on (its subconscious, don't think too much on this step).

 

Lastly.... get back into plotting, playing and whatnot. I'd say set aside an hour or so to figure out how you personally want to manage the site and do that slowly yet surely while hyping the changes etc to your current and hopefully new member base.

 

And always remember to:

[ChrisOwl 59]

Not the exact same situation as I was the site owner to begin with but we had some key members, my co admin, who had a lot of characters vanish so activity died way off as many plots were affected and people left hanging onto their characters like "ok what to do now". It was a good time in our play to do a fast forward 100 years. People could then do the fun thing of playing their character's grandkids, and it changed up our setting, plot, villainy, etc. We also used it as a nice interlude to switch to jcink after we'd been on proboards a couple years. 

[korini 3]

Morrigan had a lot of great advice. Denny too! I've seen a handful of sites do the 'time skip' when things got down and needed a breath of fresh air. Definitely get the members involved though and try to pull them closer together and get them playing with each other. Its unfortunate when people leave that it can make your characters hanging in the wind, but starting up new plots with those that remain can be really impactful. 

[Minx 29]

While I didn't technically inherit my RP group, my co-admin did leave due to personal issues and thus a good chunk of characters were removed from our already small community. I had to scramble to learn how to do everything she did for us, on top of figuring out how to tie up her character's exits with those characters that would be greatly affected by her sudden absence. That in addition to losing a few other people, we ended up turning the exodus into part of our main story. Student's mysteriously disappearing or getting pulled from school for other reasons. It was a crappy situation that we turned into inspiration to get the government body involved which opened up more spots to be filled. We also did a jump shortly after my co-admin leaving, which helped some as well. Just to get us over the initial shock so to speak. 

[Rem 8]

I second Morrigan's suggestions! Especially the skin change idea. Just take things slowly and one day at a time!

[Orion 33]

It's definitely hard. Do not get me wrong there. Like Morrigan mentioned, you have to WANT to change the website. Putting forth that effort is going to take some time and will not be immediate. It's important to know that. Like the other suggested, change things as you go along and see what sticks/works for your community. Whether that's changing the look of the site, the concept, timeskipping. I also recommend advertising in sort of a 'rebrand' type of way, if that makes sense? Show you've changed and moved on in a positive direction.

[valoura 6]

As long as there's two people who WANT to play, you can resurrect any site. ❤️ Heck, I've even played by myself until more like-minded people showed up. I know, super helpful.