Stormraven
Trusted Member
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2010
- Messages
- 1,836
I wasn't sure wether to call this a discussion or an article, but in the end the I decided on an article. This is my first article, so please go easy on me and if you spot any errors or spelling mistakes please don't hesitate to point them out. This article is exclusive for XenFans.
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I've been running online communities for a few years now and as much as I love seeing new members registering on my community, I try not to continuously prompt guests to join or to limit them to what they can view or can't view. What I mean by this is only allowing guests to reading 10 threads only, disallowing them to visit pages like member lists, viewing signatures and any other add-on pages that a community admin may add such as a member map .
I once knew a community owner who was constantly looking for ways to force guests to join, for example, hiding the forum statistics in order to hide the fact of how many members were logging in each day, and to hide the true values, member list and allowing them to only read 5 threads then they would be presented with a login box or a register form. Even when members had joined he would remove phrases from watched thread emails so that when a member got an email notifying them that there was a reply to a thread they posted in, he would make it so that the member could not see the actual reply, until he or she logged back in and visited the thread.
Some may think that this it was a good way of keeping members coming back, even though his community was full of spam, but the lengths he went to just to keep members coming back was, in my opinion ridiculous.
I believe in a bit more of a relaxing community environment. I believe that if a member likes your content regardless of how little members or discussions you have, they will think it is work joining. Potential members aren't stupid, it's easy to notice a community that prioritises money and statistics above making their community a nice, pleasant community to be a part of.
Some may also think that disallowing guests to view pages like member lists and profiles is good SEO practise so that bots don't crawl pages with useless information on them, but in theory, any website will get indexed regardless. SEO only speeds up the process.
I think there is a point where you have to draw the line. If your content makes good reading, then a member will spend time and join your website. Focus on content rather than forcing guests to join.
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I've been running online communities for a few years now and as much as I love seeing new members registering on my community, I try not to continuously prompt guests to join or to limit them to what they can view or can't view. What I mean by this is only allowing guests to reading 10 threads only, disallowing them to visit pages like member lists, viewing signatures and any other add-on pages that a community admin may add such as a member map .
I once knew a community owner who was constantly looking for ways to force guests to join, for example, hiding the forum statistics in order to hide the fact of how many members were logging in each day, and to hide the true values, member list and allowing them to only read 5 threads then they would be presented with a login box or a register form. Even when members had joined he would remove phrases from watched thread emails so that when a member got an email notifying them that there was a reply to a thread they posted in, he would make it so that the member could not see the actual reply, until he or she logged back in and visited the thread.
Some may think that this it was a good way of keeping members coming back, even though his community was full of spam, but the lengths he went to just to keep members coming back was, in my opinion ridiculous.
I believe in a bit more of a relaxing community environment. I believe that if a member likes your content regardless of how little members or discussions you have, they will think it is work joining. Potential members aren't stupid, it's easy to notice a community that prioritises money and statistics above making their community a nice, pleasant community to be a part of.
Some may also think that disallowing guests to view pages like member lists and profiles is good SEO practise so that bots don't crawl pages with useless information on them, but in theory, any website will get indexed regardless. SEO only speeds up the process.
I think there is a point where you have to draw the line. If your content makes good reading, then a member will spend time and join your website. Focus on content rather than forcing guests to join.