Shill thread / update

Lumeinshin

update

I have made some changes to the site, silly of me, but I didnt realise that:
a) introduction threads were hidden from the home page, apologies to anyone who made a thread to say hi
b) people had made intro threadsat all, so i didnt reply to any, I am debating just moving things about, having 1 intro thread where people can introduce themselves and such. im not quite sure. my mistake

shill stuff

I am thinking that I will start making the arduous journey of advertising the forum on other sites, so far i've only looked at 4chan and reddit ads (yes yes i know i know) although I still need to get exact quotes and such. I spent some time making mock ads for a banner (fitting 4chan desktop requirements atm) i'll try to be picky about boards or subreddits if i do advertise there.

if you guys have any sites or services you think i should advertise with let me know, I will add assets here so you can give me your opinion on them.
thanks as always everyone

Lumeinshin

They are a bit shitpost'y really but I think they might be fun

Financier

Lumeinshin

The fourth banner was the one that got me.

kroner

Man these little banners you made are fuckin great lmao 😂

friffri

Simply linking works, but few people will make an account right now. We need to have threads that people will want to post on. Otherwise people will open the site, see there's nothing interesting and close it.
I personally made an account because I was actually thinking of making a forum like this myself but I am happy to help you out, bigger chance to succeed together.

So, first thing first is to make this place fun!

Once we have cool threads we can link them on reddit, people come and end up visiting the whole site.

Lumeinshin

friffri
yeah for sure I understand that. I'm still going to put some money towards advertising (i have already now)
aside from this, i've mostly been working so I havent been as terminally active as i'd like.
I think we just need to grow the userbase a little more then the threads will come naturally.
Theres a reason why currently more general threads work alright but hyper specific ones a bit less so.
perhaps it might be wise for me to set the default view to the tag view? that way people can use it a tad more like an imageboard for now.

i'm not quite sure, any ideas in general are appreciated as always. Feel free to start some more general threads to get peoples ideas going etc

gingermilk

friffri that is a common dilemma for most new forums. you can't have a lot of interesting threads if there are no users, yet if no users sign up, there will not be a lot of interesting threads. I guess the best we can do right now is just to promote the site wherever we can.

GARR

friffri
you'd be surprised. Maybe its just me but I find the idea of going onto a website and seeing nothing kinda interesting. Its like seeing a frontier: the wild west of the internet. Then again that's 90% because I use last.fm, and seeing that I'm the only person on the website to have scrobbled a certain musician makes me feel kinda smug

dog

I think you should drop the email requirement to make an account - just username and password is enough until traction starts to build.

This is how Reddit works and I think it’s an important reason for their success. Decreasing user friction is crucial at this early point

Lumeinshin

dog
I think i'll need to reach out to the devs of the software itself, since the most i could do was remove the email validation. so currently you are required to have 'an email' in the field, but so long as its unique it doesnt need to be checked against.
I think that the ability to log in with other services, twitter etc, might be a good enough compromise between the two for now?
I do have to fanny about to sort that out too, so regardless i've got docs to read and people to contact lol

friffri

dog
Agree, like no offense to the admins but I kinda don't trust that you'll never be hacked and my email won't become part of some spam database, that's why I used a temp email from 10minutemail.

Lumeinshin
Maybe for now you could add a notice that you don't check for email validation? Idk if it's hard to add a little message in the signup form

dog

Hello lumenshein 👋

Very comfy site. How did you choose this domain name?? Does it mean anything or just a cool phrase?

Lumeinshin

dog
heyo!
thank you, I have an odd taste in names but asked my users on the fediverse to pick between some and this is what was the most popular (it is my fav too)

Lumeinshin

I have added Subcategories to the site, There are some that i've added and plenty that i'm sure ive forgotten.

If you make a post and think there should be a subcategory, just feel free to add it to the end of your post 🙂

an unrelated thing and perhaps a risk:

Would you like to see a political or drama focused tag, I would likely have anything like that hidden from the front page, contained or such. general ideas would be
politics
e-drama

These would likely require some more explicit rules and more moderation but if that was desired I am open to adding them at some point. anything NSFW might also have to be considered in a way but we'll cross that bridge at some point

let me know what you guys think

gingermilk

Lumeinshin sounds like a good idea. I don't think anyone here is obsessed with or interested in politics and drama (could be terribly wrong) so I won't expect any heated argument that requires some attention. same for NSFW.

I guess you can leave it as how it is now and we will see as we go.

Financier

Lumeinshin

That take is a tough one for me, as politics is such a charged topic that it does wonders for the 'life' of a forum, brings more people into it, encourages more discussion. 'Drama-free' forums don't attract nearly as much attention, which hurts as much as it helps.

Conductance

Would be interesting but would have to not change the vibe of the fourm drastically.

Lumeinshin

Financier I think i've read your post right, apologies if i havent.
I dont mind "passion", I just want to avoid outright "drama", shit stirring, stuff like that.

For now I've added 'article' subcategories for tech and games, this means we have somewhere to post links on current news related to those tags.
For the time being they will appear on the front page, but in future I might make them hidden from the front page. I wrote a little about that idea in my recent pinned blog post. I think that will be a good test bed. Maybe more explicitly political stuff at a later date once I can justify it as far as time investment goes.

Financier
Thanks, I think its one of my favourites. I do intend to do others (and have done) it is interesting to see what kinds of ads get the most clicks and such.

Lain

I discovered this forum due to an advertisement I saw for it on /lit/. I love niche, smaller forums, and hate discord and reddit so it looked appealing.

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