[The Starport News]Server Switch & Site Direction
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Sorry it has been a while since I have posted here last and I definitely know where w0dk4 is coming from. For those that don’t know I am the admin of SSC and it’s tough running these sorts of websites they are not huge money makers. Yeah I have VPS hosting and it runs me about $600 a year for it all (not too bad really) but that just means I have to make $600 in advertising which I usually do when I add the donations.
I think its all worth it because the games are a passion of mine so its worth the expense and my personal time. And it definitely takes time and as the Starport knows you need to be around for a while to get that name recognition.
Social media helps only a little in my experience. But you have to be active in posting to it for it to be effective and its like a full-time job and its a job you don’t get paid for. So the motivation for social media isn’t really there for me either. I don’t advertise at all and all I try to do is just focus on the games and help out any developer I can and usually just word of mouth gets the traffic flowing.
SEO (ie word placement for titles is big) has helped a lot for getting SSC noticed and the use of tags when you can do it help get you noticed on the search engines.
For forum software, I use IP.Board… its ok and would like something more lightweight. But I am invested in IP.Board for now. But this forum software looks amazing http://www.discourse.org/ and is super fast and the SEO potential is amazing. It’s just they don’t have a converter yet for IP.Board. But you will need a VPS I think to run it unless your host allows Ruby/Rails based websites because you will need some extra software most general hosts don’t carry by default. I know a few devs that are using this software and it is slick and its 100% free
If you need any help from me just ask away, I could always post something on the site that may send some freelancer fans your way. Or feel free to post in the FL area on SSC to bring people here for new mods and news.
We both know Star Citizen is going to be a huge game and I wasn’t even going to bother trying to cover modding for it (I’ll make a download area for it, that’s about it) because I think it will be tough to pull the traffic away from the SC website when it comes to modding. That’s just my opinion, this game is gonna have a huge following and it will be a tough fight to become the ‘place’ for modding or just plain information on SC thats not covered on the SC homepage.
Nothing wrong with more focus and I am sure there is current FL modders that will be SC modders that will bring traffic here if they post about their mods here exclusively. So as long as you have a good base of mod developers you should see the traffic pickup and all it takes is mod developers to post youtube videos and telling everyone to visit here and that should help a lot.
I will quit rambling. If you need anything from me just ask I will do what I can, space gaming websites have to stick together.
-D1-
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We’re already running on a dedicated server so we could technically run Discourse, I just wasn’t convinced last I checked - it seemed very “social media-y” and lacked structure. It looks a lot more modern, that’s for sure, but our current forum has a very clear structure that I’d like to keep to a certain extent.
I’ll also agree regarding SC: it’s going to be a big game (unless Roberts manages to run out of money again…), but I doubt there’s much of a market to cover it. That’s the problem with every game that gets official forums, it becomes redundant to make a fansite and extremely hard to attract traffic. People will just go to the official forum, where you get everyone and possibly even the devs interacting. That’s largely why I saw no point in expanding Starport to cover SC.
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The dev for Shallow Space actually put me on to Discourse after I commented on his forum software. You can use categories if that’s what you mean see it in action here: ‘http://forums.shallow.space/categories’. I think it organizes well if you put the effort in, but how painful will it be migrating a large forum into it? So if you try it please let me know how the migration is
Really our sites are in niche areas and are focused in content so population will probably always be an issue. For instance on the avg day I get about 60-90 registered users to login per day. But at any given moment I have 100+ guests on the site at all times. I have been trying to figure out how do I get those lurkers to become users, contributors or even donators?
That’s been the tough point for me because SSC tries to provide just general game information for anything and everything out there. So people can read that without logging in. But if I make it hard for people to get at the info I could push people away.
I do make people register to download, just because I don’t have unlimited bandwidth. I don’t know how much you pay in dedicated server fees but I pay about $50 a month for my VPS, dedicated server is even more through my provider so are you utilizing all the server that you need to have dedicated? I would go with a cheaper plan but I need the HD space for the download area.
But to get back to my point was that maybe looking over your threads and use SEO techniques to help classify your discussions better. Making sure the words MOD, PATCH, FL or Freelancer, etc are in the post titles (if it makes sense too) or at least in the body. Build internal links to related content on your site, google loves that. You are already on page 1 search results for ‘freelancer mods’ so you are already there… it’s just how do you get more people to play freelancer?
Especially when SC arrives I think a lot of people will be very absorbed with that. And depending on the experience and if modding is good for SC will give FL scene more looks or less looks. I love freelancer myself, but I will be honest I haven’t played it in a few years now, been so busy with all these games that come out I don’t have time. And looking back the game is what 10+ yrs old now and still has a decent presence and its a shame MSoft never capitalized on that fan base.
As long as we can play FL people will have a need for a mod site and starport is the #1 mod site for FL. So your already getting it done. It’s just how can you provide the same service that costs less for you or figure out how to get more people playing.
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Maybe it could provide being useful to either post things @ https://www.reddit.com/r/freelancer/new/ or make some kind of auto post feature of news articles or sth?
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2x: It looks like here are quite some recent posts about FL, maybe we should jump at the train and stay there a bit? Might end up becoming so advertising for us, after all;
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/categories/starlancer-freelancer -
The subreddit seems even more dead than we are, about a post a month.
RSI of course has way more traffic, but Roberts has been pretty clear about him largely not caring about Freelancer and Starlancer. Wing Commander is his pet series, the rest can rot. It certainly doesn’t make me feel particularly welcome, and I don’t think posting about TSP there would help us much anyway (not to mention it’d probably be removed).
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If you do a pure advertising post, maybe.
But probably not if we pop in once in a while and post solutions for their problems. -
FriendlyFire wrote:
The subreddit seems even more dead than we are, about a post a month.RSI of course has way more traffic, but Roberts has been pretty clear about him largely not caring about Freelancer and Starlancer. Wing Commander is his pet series, the rest can rot. It certainly doesn’t make me feel particularly welcome, and I don’t think posting about TSP there would help us much anyway (not to mention it’d probably be removed).
Well, I don’t agree with that.
The company who import EVE into China also build up a Official community for CEVE as well.
In the mean time, in China, there is another community build by player call EVE-China-Fans site (or ECF), and which is way more popular than the Official one.
I think the key is: Be Unique
Maybe you guys can figure out how to make this community more adaptable with those Key games.
By adaptable I mean not only make something like skin theme (simple one), news source etc but also doing something like data sync so player can see their game data in this website. Don’t know if that’s possible through.
And also, don’t bind yourself with one game
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Thank you to keeping TSP alive !
A great website to learn how to make a mod with some precious knowledge about that !
Cheers
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Hmm…
I am looking for a new fun project between my 60+ working weeks.
Would be fun to transform this site in to a more up to date system with more expansion features.But its still amazing this site even exists. Old game, old site software and forums. And (DO NOT HIT ME) old members
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Worfeh wrote:
Old game, old site software and forums. And (DO NOT HIT ME) old membersAnd one of the oldest members just turned up apparently
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You can delete this bot, since the post is a copy of a post from Vital: http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?post_id=60133#forumpost60133
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SC should be covered imho, as the poll suggests.
