The Start of Summer
Following on from May's slow month, we have had a pretty good stable month in my opinion. Some of that is from me not being ill all month, that certainly helps. Otherwise its just been a pleasant month, albeit a bit quiet from me as far as development goes.
Little bits
I've been keeping an eye on extensions and forum features already implemented, and updating those as new updates have come out. I have also been doing some tests on my own extensions for some desired features, however I am still lacking a lot of knowledge and havent wanted to break the site entirely in order to test out features. I may in future run a seperate test site, however there is an increased cost to that I am apprehensive about at the moment.
Profile comments
Profile-Comments has been a feature i've been looking at, as I think it would fill the gap people, and even myself feel is lacking on the site. Sometimes I and i'm sure you guys would like to ask a question to another user or the like, however its not entirely related to the thread youre in and you dont want to derail. I think profile-comments would be a good way to do so. Currently the concept is to have a section on a users profile page alongisde their 'posts,discussions' buttons. Then there would be a wall where you can post. In theory what I have should work, although admin-fe has been throwing a fit. I'm not much of a coder so I have worked with AI in order to add some of the more complicated features I didnt quite understand, however the double edged sword is that the GPT's basis is on data from 2021, which is not entirely compatible. This is likely where I am running into a wall. I may request help from a friend in future once I have a test instance up and running.
Chat
I have been looking a the chat options available, including an IRC shoutbox, currently I would need to develop an extension even for a shoutbox button for either an IRC or XMPP implementation. This is somewhat undesireable. I know that some element of website design and retention is about keeping users on the site itself.
Currently, I run a text-only XMPP instance and have done for what must be 3 years or so now. It was the first service I ran. It has open signups and anyone who uses the forum whom also wants to make an account there is more than welcome to. I am also happy to discuss clients if that is also something people are after.
The xmpp instance is chat@skyshanty.xyz. Until A more proper solution is in place, users can join that and then add their username@xmppurl. link. to their bio. It isnt the ideal or clean solution, however it does mean that you can self host your own and talk to users that also follow the protocal. Perhaps in future I will make another and tie in some SSO capability to this site so that everyone can have one without worrying about passwords.
Site usage/Question
For those reading this, I run adverts for both desktop and mobile users so our users are a mix of both types of users. You can add the site to your homescreen as a PWA (Progressive Web App). Many apps on the google play store are just those packaged so that they are entirely self contained, rather than relying on your web browser for rendering. Is that something that would be desired? In a similar vain, do you have desktop/mobile notifications enabled? is that something you would do in future, say if the site had more users? Just a couple of things to think about, please let me know what you think.
Reddit
As some of you may be aware, there has been a kerfuffle going on at reddit regarding their API. I did a trial run of ads on Reddit a few months back, but found they were quite expensive for what they were so I ceased. I also attempted to add reddit as a login option, but had issues so also ceased. The API changes dont affect me but I know they will for other applications. If you or others happen to discuss alternatives online, feel free to mention this site if you feel its appropriate 😉
Interestingly, I do not believe we have seen an increase in usage as a result of the reddit blackouts. I wasnt expecting some massive increase, but maybe one or two 'hey guys im from reddit'. We are listed on the redditalternatives page so I have already done my part as far as that goes.
Ads
I'm not sure how much interest information on the current advertising is, but I think its quite interesting and have been asked for details a fair bit.
As it stands, I pay on average £260 per month since I started the forum up on the site, costs and ads. Some months I pay more, some I pay a little less.
I run ads via Google Search, 4chan Self Serve ads and ocassionally a banner on SomethingAwful every couple months.
4chan ads have 4 options, header/footer and mobile/desktop. I typically split it between each, with footers somehow having the highest click through rate (CTR). Mobile has a higher CTR than desktop too. 4chan self serve ads start at a minimum of £20 and I think are a fairly decent value for me to run.
SomethingAwful doesnt provide any stats for clicks or the like, this is okay for me. It does have a list of active ads and an option to buy more than 1 spot. In a way it acts the same as how I have my rotating ads work on the header of this site.
Google gives analytics for most things, with a kind of jank UI (that theyre redoing and keeping just as janky) It is also a good value I think and provides the broadest potential increase in userbase, as its ads run on search results and also 'partner sites' (anything with adsense). I think the google ads are my weakest however, so I will spend time in future improving them.
Mindshare
An element to site growth that I think we all neglect is the concept of mindshare. Even if i dont get as many clicks as I want, the name of my site is out there, and if the ad itself seems decent, I may get an independant search later on. This is part of why I feature the site name so prevalently in the banner images, aside from paying homage to the chan banners.
New Banners
As I pretty much always am, I have been making more banner ads on ocassion, some I like some I dont as much. These will be in circulation in some form later on. If you have any thoughts on them please feel free to let me know.
Thanks
Please let me know if you have any ideas or comments and as always, thank you for taking the time to read this update post, as well as using the forum. we've had a good run so far and I hope to be of service for far longer.
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