Site design: shatteredguilds and dividedkingdoms

A member posted on here looking for some help with their forums so I got in touch. For me it was less about being in the trenches and more about high level layout and organization that would hopefully improve the user experience and, consequently, lead to more engagement

Taking it one step further than just one on one conversation about it, I figured that by sharing my comments here and inviting the members to give their own input, that we can all help one another improve our sites, share experiences, etc

Shattered Guilds - guild rp

For this guild site he indicated having one guild. I suggest making a template so that users could submit a standard form for him to review for the generation of new guilds, and that he himself make an extra 2 guilds so that new members hitting the site have a few options they can choose from. There are more people looking to play than there are looking to create and manage their own guilds so hopefully that will help bring in both types

Dividied kingdoms - kingdoms rp

For this kingdoms site I counted over two dozen boards with 0 posts. I recommended to him to collapse/condense these into overarching parent boards to 1) reduce the amount of vertical scroll and 2) reduce the amount of different channels that is dividing his "user stream". If you have 12 areas and 12 members and each one are playing in one of the areas it doesn't look so busy. But in 2 or 3 areas and you can anticipate a fair bit of interaction instead of isolation

I'll be posting any more thoughts I may develop with the owner here as the conversations occur but if anyone wants to chat about or get feedback on their site then feel free to contact me

 

The user had a particular fondness for his guild site so we focused on that one. We've discussed a fair few things but the takeaways I think are useful for those that want to run guild/clan/group/etc focused forums or sites come from these recommendations

1 - He had a template for the guilds he wanted to see people create which was great, but I thought it lacked the kind of detail that would sufficiently engaged a guest and convert them into someone ready to register on the site and jump right into it because they've been hooked. I show him one for a vigilante group I made and he liked it enough to use it as a basis to develop his template some more. The end result for his existing guild was a lot more detailed and, for me personally, more engaging as a consequence

He also gave a shout out to me for helping him with ideas which was unnecessary but really nice :)

2 - Part of the template asks about allies, enemies, and neutral parties. I suggested that the next guild he create be enemies of the first and vice versa, and that the third (and final guild he would be making himself hopefully) be neutral, and that either of the existing guilds could claim them as allies if the guildmembers completed X number of threads doing Y type of things. The first part of this introduces conflict right off the bat, and the second gives a means to advance the conflict by way of one side gaining an ally and then rooting that advantage into activity on the site. It will hopefully incentivize roleplay activity

Hope that helps anyone else doing something similar!