Senkusha

Earlier today while I was explaining my new forum to a co-worker (who's today is his last day though), he seemed interested. I spouted off my website and thought, that's really long. Maybe I should make some business cards for when I'm out in the wild?

I had an epiphany in the shower this morning. For five years I've been trying to create the same forum experience I had back in the early 2000s. Back then it was so easy to run a forum! You'd just slap one up on the Internet, and the people would find your forum, register, and post. It was a happy place. Sure, the more successful forums had a vision, maybe even an official mission statement, but even me with a loose concept of being a fan shrine to an anime character was good enough to have regularly participating members within a community. Fast forward to 2020. I tried again. I had the passion. Anime + Role Playing, means that I'm not trapped within a specific fandom, which in reality is only temporary anyway. I wanted to have room to grow, to explore and try new things that I'd fall in love with. Because that's what happened with my first site. I had a really strong affection for a character in a specific anime, a television show that happened to be, not main stream popular, but popular enough within the subculture of the Otaku (anime fans). But as the years passed, I was pointed to other anime, specifically shoujo (girls anime featuring heroines) that really got me excited. But I re-branding is never an easy option. Anyway, so this new site, was left totally open, and would feature all the anime and role playing games that I'd experienced. It would be a place for people to come together to discuss these things-- we'd share similar interested, and bond and form friendships , and junk. Right? After five years of struggling with hardly any member growth, and a dead community with a bloated, ancient looking website, I had reached that crisis point. It's time to rebrand. I thought long and hard about what makes me tick. Yes, I do enjoy anime and role playing, but what I had wasn't working, it was too unfocused. And therefore, it was difficult to create an identity, which is necessary for marketing and finding other like-minded people. Something that a forum desperately needs-- like oxygen for us human beings. After all, a dead forum mind as well be a blog or maybe a static webpage. It took watching an anime for things to finally click for me. I'm obsessed with genre of magical girls. Pretty cute and vivid heroines, coming of age stories, awesome abilities and powers, and enough tense drama to occupy even my level of chaos seeking boredom. Thus, Prismatica was born. A magical girl's role playing paradise. Here is a space where I can focus on the genre of magical girls within an anime sphere, and host a dedicated role playing game as part of the site's identity. Having recently stumbled onto the concept of dedicated forum role playing spaces, this structure allows me to create parallel concurrently running settings for role playing to take place. This solves the problem that is so frequently observed with Play by Post role playing. If a player goes missing for a substantial period of time, the game stops and ultimately dies. And defining the site as a genre specific topic point, rather than a specific media title point, will give me room to experiment and expand, and if need be, start other games-- because I do have a passion for creative writing. Prismatica gives me that identity and branding potential that I was missing from my previous forum. Now it's much easier to write advertisements and to find other like-minded people. I have a classic color palette to work with, font styling, naming conventions, all of which help to put together a polished and coherent object for presentation. This solves the fundamental problem I had-- an identity crisis. But that's only half of the equation. Now I need to actually find other people! And for that, I have a strategy as well. People initially judge something based on looks. And while I was comfortable and familiar with SMF as a forum platform, it was lacking a lot of the little things that I was simply adoring while using other sites' platforms. I was also concerned with how little development seemed to be happening with the software, and looking at the selection of themes available, only a couple had recently popped out to me. So, I did what any aspiring forum admin would do. I went joy riding! I quietly tried out several other forum platforms, and made a list of features that I wanted, placing emphasis on the writing experience. With each forum I tried, I was eventually lead back to XenForo, but that price tag was a hard pill to swallow for somebody who had experienced the joy of running a forum on the free-side. With my vacation around the corner, I made my decision. I was going to build, build, build and have fun doing it while relaxing not at work! I applied for a credit card, and got approved for $300. Just enough to get me started. Yeah, I know, putting a hobby on credit is a bad idea, but I have a plan for that too. So all this previous week, I fell in love with the XenForo software. I managed to get the add-ons that would help make a role player's experience next level better, while keeping the site fun, yet not completely wacky. Phase One, complete. But what about this epiphany? That comes with Phase Two: Attracting members. I knew that word of mouth advertising is the best form of advertising. So I started talking about my forum (my old one that was), and tried to promote it on other sites that I would visit: Facebook, Reddit, and other forums, whether they be discussions dedicated toward anime, directories for role playing, administration of forums... And I wasn't really getting anywhere. Because this is the problem. Look at what these other places cater towards. Discussion about anime, sure has people who enjoy anime, they enjoy talking about the latest and greatest anime available, and maybe sometimes a classic. But they're there to talk and debate. People on role playing directories might be looking for people to role play with them, but primarily on their own forum, and the discussions are about making your forum a better role playing experience for others. Administration Forum, like this one, most of the people probably couldn't give a rats-butt care about role playing, let alone anime. We're here to discuss growth strategies for our forums. Popular mega-platforms on Social Media, like Facebook and Reddit, I've found don't convert into memberships. They're happy getting their dopamine burst by posting an endless onslaught of me-me-me posts or worse yet, debating the political circus we have going on right now. So right now, I'm kind of clueless where to go searching for people who want to role play anime magical girls. Sure, there are subReddits for magical girls, playing by post role playing, even Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Facebook has some interesting groups, like I'm Begging You to Try... and various other anime based groups. However, I'm not putting too much hope into gaining anymore than maybe five new potential members from these sources. Discord is a popular role playing platform, but, converting somebody from Instant Chat to Delayed Posting is a tough call, especially where there's no active community at present. I think the only true and tried method of getting a forum like mine to be successful, is just to go out and make genuine friendly connections and casually bring up the forum. If the idea resonates with that person, they'll join. But I've been trying to do that since I moved to the East Coast. I'm still pretty friendless. Sorry this turned into kind of a rant, but I thought it would be a good idea to share the magical thought I had this morning, as it could be useful advice for anybody else who's struggling getting their forum/site off the ground. (Note, as I wrote the title to this post last, I'm not entirely sure which Tag is the most accurate.)

I did it. I took the plunge and got more mods. HAHAHAHAHA. Now, I'm broke for another two weeks. But I got the DBTech Credits, Shop, and Donation mods. And I must say that I'm impressed! The donation mod is way superior to the thing I tried making a few months ago. The Shop, blows away the mod I had for my SMF forum with all the different usable things that can be bought. And the Credits system allows for people to actually purchase credits, so they don't necessarily have to earn them via posting, although that's the highly encouraged method. Now if only I can figure out how to purchase something from my Shop. 😅... [mention=701]hacxx[/mention] , those are some great ideas for earning Credits I didn't think about. I am a veteran Play by Post role player.

I'm looking at DragonByte Tech's Credits and Shop extensions, and I think I may be onto something. Credits would allow my members to earn forum currency/tokens by posting... presumably. I'm not really sure how else somebody could earn them, beyond out right purchasing them. Shop could be configured (and I'm confirming this with the developer) to allow me to automatically increase the user permissions for the Linked Accounts extension. Like 100 credits could earn an additional slot beyond the default of three Regular members get. I also have Advanced Forms on my site. Members could pay to have access to special Character Sheets for specific role playing systems (like D&D or Shadow Run). I'm not sure, but maybe Credits and Shop could also be configured to work with the Media Library (once I can afford it). Finally, if and when I ever finally decide on stuff that I can create/sell, I could use eCommerce and it's been confirmed that Members can make purchases for real world items using Credits. If I can figure this piece out, I think that implementing a Credits system would be very beneficial to my community.

I'm totally drawing a blank. What's a potato sandwich?

You hit the nail on the head. Forums require people to participate actively. Without people, contributing their ideas, life experiences, and idle chatter, all a forum is, is a static website with some information on it. Trust me, I tried for five years with my previous forum. There's no members on it, it's just me spouting my own ideas-- information broadcasting. This point further illustrates what I'm saying. Engagement is critical. However, I would say that even low-effort posting is better than nothing at all. I mean, let's look at Reddit and Quora! There's tons of low-bar energy there, and as [mention=5]Cpvr[/mention] mentioned, they're doing fine.

I see the problem boiling down to greed. We are more productive than ever with the use of computers and the connectivity of the internet. People are literally at arms reach away. But as much as our productivity has increased, so have the demands from leadership to produce even more. I know I'm not the only person experiencing burnout. My body hurts, my mind is exhausted. My soul is neglected. Despite having instant communication, there are so many people who are lonely. I think technology could correct some of issues we have, if only the greed is squashed. In the 1960s it was predicted that we'd only be working like ten to 20 hours a week. What ever happened to that? Greed. I think that if people are given a proper opportunity to relax, get out of constant Flight of Fight mode, many of the problems we're facing will be resolved. Exhaustion, addiction, social isolation, could all be solved. We need rest, we need time.

Ever since I began setting up my new forum, I've been thinking about ways to encourage not only finding members excited to be there, but finding ways that would allow those members an extra incentive to contribute. Naturally, being a creative writing forum, writing content is an asset. Many of the role playing directories I'm on, have people looking for members to join their forums. One thought I had was of creating an exchange, and using the virtual tokens that could be redeemed for my time and energy in writing on their platforms. I just need to be sure that I'm comfortable with writing under some of the prerequisites of those other sites. One potential problem with this approach is that any sort of post exchange like this would be short lived. A member racks up some Credits on my site, turns those in for say 30 quality posts, then after I'm done with those, I'd vanish, unless more credits were exchanged, and that's assuming I don't get hooked on their content, which would totally negate the purpose of the gamification on my site to begin with. It's a danger. I could implement something like the ability to purchase additional Character Slots. A member would have to post to earn say 15 credits to purchase a character to post in. Thinking about this on the fly, I'm not too sure that would work, it sounds like an awful lot of maintenance for me to track. And, I'd have to constantly create other things Players would need. Once a character is created, they're in the game. Maybe I'm not seeing the possibilities in their true depth yet. I'll need to think about this some more. Maybe I could have a "Rewrite the Plot" or something, for like 100 credits, but that could end up being a lot of work too, because if you change the history of a post, every other subsequent post would need to be modified in the chain. Yes, much more thought is needed on this.

YAY! I'll toss my hat in. Brand new shiny forum. She's a good girl! A magical girl! Prismatica is the perfect place to imagine yourself in a galaxy far far away, or in a completely different realm of existence! We host complete role playing immersion, utilizing creative writing and collaboration techniques that specifically caters toward the Magical Girl genre within anime fiction. Multiple games for multiple tastes, all 100% magically delicious! (sorry, I couldn't resist!) Come check out the all new Prismatica site today and Refract Your Destiny! https://prismatica.animerpgs.com

I just integrated Discord into my forum, but only as another method to register/login to my forum. Let me know if you notice any uptick in forum traffic. I'd probably go further with my discord integration as well, but I have nobody on my Discord server anyway, and I'm okay with that. I'd rather be playing on my forum, my new shiny forum. Be careful with that. There's cases of people writing legitimate work that's being flagged as "AI" unjustly. Unfortunately, AI is probably here to stay...that is until we ultimately end up nuking ourselves over something totally stupid.

I'm already an Administrata+ subscriber. If I get chosen, do I have the option of applying it for my renewal or donating it to somebody else?

I think it also kind of depends on the content focus of the forum. In a creative writing platform like, Prismatica, deletion would cause a nasty mess, as it would completely disrupt the flow of the story being crafted. So I disallow deletions for a majority of my boards. However, members have the Right to petition a Moderator or other Staff Member to delete posts--this provides Value given to a class of members, Staff. I do allow my members to edit their posts. And reflecting more on this, I find it uncomfortable when I see a post has been deleted. Maybe it's the cat in me that wonders "I wonder what was said?"

Thank you! Next month I'll be able to add more...funds are a bit tight right now! 😅 But that just gives me time to create some good content!

I'm not really sure if this is the appropriate place for this topic, but here goes. Credits. There's many different Credits modifications available for various software platforms. Usually, these are attached to some sort of Shop for gamification purposes. And I'm thinking about possibly adding a Credits system to my site as well. But, what benefit could I provide? Like really, why would a member want to generate Credits? I guess the typical things could be bought, such as profile customizations, but specifically for a creative writing forum, what would the motivation be to use Credits? Maybe I'm just not looking at every possible angle here. On a site such as this one, Credits are used for things like Post Exchanges, maybe graphics work, but unless you can figure out a way to redeem this virtual digital currency for true financial power, most people would just assume not to bother. What am I missing here?

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