a mix of many problems.. which first? How? when?

Slashdot

Hello everyone.
my site is at http://www.sddesign.biz and the community is located at: http://www.sddesign.biz/forums.html. The site is moderately big . i basically deal with phpnuke designs. i have a few problems that didnt fit into any specific category so i am posting all of them here.

i am lacking good staff members. people who are dedicated and can keep the community active by chatting or starting chats or topics on their own. i have searched far and low and have failed to find anyone who can really say what they said they can or would do. i am tired of addina dn deleting mods. its not that i just allow anyone to be mods but i dont know what happens. i see many sites where the mods or staffs alone keep the whole community running. but i dont find any like that. i have searched many communites but i dont find any.. why? is my site not appealing? if not isnt there people who can make it appealing?
as you can see i have a moderately large userbase. people sign up everyday. ask for help. i try to provide as fast as possible with the help from the staffs. we design nuke themes and people come to download them also ask for help with issues relating to them. it has always been my dream to turn the community into a more "graphic oriented" community where people will come download stuffs share their views show their work and communite be friendly .. i have attempted a few times via SOTW and other stuffs but nothing has taken off.
a few friends told me its mainly cause we dont have the right userbase.. how do i attract the right userbase? first thing everyone say is tutorials.. well with sites as big as ps tuorials why will anyone even bother coming to mine? even though i tried looking for some help in that category but failed to find any.
i would also appreciate some suggestions on any or all other departments.
i have posted for help on some other sites but people havent responded with any suggestion. maybe cause its all built wrong?
hoping for some help.
thank you

Slashdot · Posted: 3/4/2006, 8:04 am Post subject:

oh i also forgot to add... i am trying to venture into phpbb, postnuke, oscommerce designing.. but finding help in that category seems to be REALLY hard. no one seems to be interested but then again we are so successfull with nuke designs? whats wrong here?
maybe some web guru from here can shed some light?
thank you

Truestar · Moderator

Basically one of your problems is people signing up for support, and that's it, they don't stick around t chat? I know how you feel for I'm a support member at another community, and they are going through a similar problem. No one sticks around to chat, they come with their problem, it gets solved and they leave. There really isn't much you can do about it.

Try changing around the look, and make sure you hire the right staff. If you have any doubt, ditch them. Don't bother with a promotion. A staff member should have a few characteristics that are essential:

They need to know what the site is about, and have at least some knowledge of what's going on. They should at the very least be able to answer some basic support questions.
They should be friendly, and active. And willing to post, post, post. Your staff should have a viewpoint as an admin, and understand that new users won't start a new topic unless there's a ton of them already made. I don't know why, but that's how it is.

That's my opinion. And I'd think they would work. Smile

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~HG~ · Posted: 3/4/2006, 3:42 pm Post subject:

A rethink of your forum layout would be a good start as you have what I see as the following in the wrong area's.

Copyright Rules should be in SDDesign News
Suggestions / Requests / Bugs should be in PHP-Nuke Help

Chit Chat should be changed to General Discussion as Chit Chat sounds childish whereas you are no doubt trying to attract quality posters and the forum title does not allure to that.

You could probably further intergrate others forums together or into other categories making your index page smaller in size and therefore easier to navigate.

As already pointed out above, it is first and foremost a *help* forum and it is only to be expected that people who seek help and find it will tend not to stay around for a long time.

In fact a perfect *help* forum should have very little activity if every person who uses the internet learnt all about it before using it. Then of course we dont live in a perfect world. Laughing

Now if you really want people to post then I suggest you write an interesting newsletter and mass email it to all the members (keep it short as most people dont have a long attention span when it comes to reading emails) but make sure you invite them along even just to say hello and let everyone know how their sites are going.

A good lead in would be to get them to come along and post a link to their sites but if you do that, make sure you visit each one in turn and give them some feedback as posting a site review that gets no replies is a real downer for Admins.

Good luck.
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