Big Bang Burger Bar

Our little corner of the interweb has grown since it started some years ago but like all things on the web it needs nurturing to survive.

With the sterling efforts of a select few we have built up some very interesting areas on the forums but in the last year things have started to tail off. There are still a few people making vital contributions to BBBB but as good as those efforts are they are not in and of themselves enough.

In order to keep a high profile in the search engines and in order to even begin to get to the front page of the those searches when people look for topics we cover we need content and lots of it.

The fact is we get a lot of visits per day but the post count per day is low, coupled with the fact that because we do not post enough, we are not getting any new users who could swell and enhance the community we have built here. The odd few new users we have had unfortunately have mostly been Spammers whom we have had to ban.

The RSSFeeder was put in place to keep a constant level of content pouring into the boards, I have set it to pull in messages from areas of interest on this forum. It will take some time to catch up and therefore slow down the amount of posts but to be honest the level of posting it is achieving is where we should be aiming at as a normal level.

I will always keep this project going but it may wither and die of its own accord despite mine and CrazyFrog's best efforts to breathe life into it.

If someone else has any better ideas on how we can improve the daily use and encourage new people to come and use our site then please feel free to let me or Crayfrog know.  For now though, as far as I can see, the only thing to do is utilise this automated tool to keep posting as it is helping us being scavenged by the webbots thus helping people find us when searching for stuff.

---

As always I welcome your comments and feedback.  +:idea=+::idea:

Well, you asked.
ABC of Building a Successful Forum (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/587.htm)
Top Ten Secrets to Building a Successful Forum Community (http://www.vbseo.com/f34/top-ten-secrets-building-successful-forum-community-11298/)

I had a look around some places for suggestions and a few spring to mind as being quite relevant. Mind you, though I've helped run a forum before, I've not been involved in any kind of 'success' on this front. Infact both of the forums I was involved in running are very specifically dead and gone now, so do take this with a hearty pinch of salt. I didn't follow any of this advice, either.

The most important point is to have a niche, and to target it. Numerous articles as above stress this above all else. I feel that right now the Burger Bar is very general. It's a bit of roleplaying stuff, a few Hitchhikers references and a lot of subforums.

They also advise keeping the number of subforums down, so that activity is collected in a small number of places. This makes it easier to find things and makes it look a lot more active. The idea they put forward is that you only start splitting off into the desired subforums when they become necessary, because of the volume of posts.

I would suggest carefully considering majorly consolodating the subforums, removing over-specialisation and redundancy wherever possible. I've no idea what to suggest regarding prioritising a niche, but that could be as simple as re-emphasising what is already here.  

Content is another important point. Forums attached to existing websites will often have a much larger flow of new members, simply because there is more content to bring them. This touches on the RSS feeder issue. Whilst it might help the search-engine-optimisation having a flow of such posts, the RSS news feed posts are all simply sending links outside the forum with a tiny nugget of news attached.
Firstly, as far as I understand it's an inefficient method for Search Engine Optimisation anyway. What you want is links on other peoples websites pointing here, not the other way around.
Secondly while some of the titles are interesting, but I'm not sure it's really the type of content that people seek out.  Look at the number of views and replies the RSS topics get?

If the forum is simplified to three or four areas (not counting things like the group or campaign setting specific subforums) then similarly reducing the number and frequency of the RSS posts might actually increase their value. Specifically, instead of having it post a half dozen over a day, what if it posted one and people actually responded to it, discussing it?
This would be easier if it was posting the actual article rather than just a link, though. Reproducing the content in it's entirety would also increase the likelyhood of inward-facing links. I've no idea if the RSS feeder can be configured to do that, however, but several of the articles I read do suggest something along those lines.

Some thoughts on subforums -
I've had a look, and here's what I propose;
General Discussion - All subforums merged with main.
possibly also merge Events and Conventions section, though I'm unsure of that one.
Alternatively, merely merge Events & conventions subforums with itself, or that plus making it the only subforum of General Discussion.

Now, the gaming section as it stands -
I think this should basically be a single section, or at least three much simpler sections. Collapse Board Games, Minatures and Wargames and Roleplaying's individual subforums into their main section at the very least.
Possibly also merge them into a single forum section.
I'm unsure about Play by Post. I'd probably collapse it into a single section, losing the game specifiic subsections. The question would be whether to have it as a subforum to the general Board & Roleplaying conglomerate, a Subforum to the Roleplaying section, or leave it as at the level it currently is. I suspect that it isn't really active enough to justify the latter, but it's also appropriate to keep it seperate from the rest of what currently makes up the 'Gaming' section.

I've no idea at all what to do with the group specific section. It probably needs auditing, re-organising and archiving where relevant, but I'm not sure entirely where to begin and I think I've spent enough to pooring over this subject for now. :)

I'm not sure you'll find any of this useful, or helpful. They're just my thoughts on the subject as they stand here and now.
Make of them what you wish.

I think it all depends on what you personally want out of the website Zarni.
I like to go there and see whats happening with the games in the UK, to this end I mourn the lack of activity in Winchester.
I also like to see what is happening in Burton and read about the variety of games you play.
It's also interesting to see EvilG's wargaming stuff and Too Fat Lardies.
Things I am not interested in is links to things I am not bothered with, I have my own sources, newslinks etc and would be pretty sure they are tailored to my tastes no other geek would want them.

If your goal is to host a popular website then a bunch of gamers organizing a get together and (sometimes) writing up their escapades will always have a marginal audience.
I like coming to the bar regulalrly and see whats going on, if their are no new postings it's not a problem I know there will be again soon.  I normally game twice a month and post our adventure notes (just had a three month hiatus, but should be back in the slot now).  Now seeing all the news feeds pushing out the items from people I know (sometimes figuratively speaking) ticks me off.  I also like reading through our old adventures which stretch back for something like eight years now.

So if the BBBB continues as a bunch of links I have little or no interest in so be it, I won't quit and will continue updating things I write up for our group (as it is a great repository of information for me), but if the links churn out every hour on the hour I will lose any tidbits of information posted by real people and either have to spend more time searching for them or get hacked off and spend less time looking.  I have no desire to out spam the spammer (as I think Snakes has noted before).

And as I am in the USA can honestly say that this is my two cents worth.

I appreciate all the feedback as above all else this is a community, even if only a small one at present.

Here is what I have done....

Firstly I have suspended the BGG and SFX feeds, after taking a hard look at these they add minimal content and require additional admin work to tidy the resultant messages.
I have left the others for now, they do provide relevant information and the posts contain something worth reading.

I have created the "Basement - Filing Cabinet" which I have used as an archive for redundant sections of the forum, thus I have moved my old work Gaming Group and and the Bothellians group sections there as they are unlikely to get any further use but the content is good to keep around.

Whilst I will take a look at the many subforums with an eye to culling unused or unnecessary ones, on the whole the sub-forum structure makes things easier to find. As I, and I am sure you, are aware search functions on the this and other forums are never ideal. If I were to reduce everything to one or two message boards a lot of material will be lost in amongst unrelated topics making it harder for people to contribute to the subjects they are interested in.

The other problem with shrinking down is that moving whole forums higher or lower in the structure is relatively painless and requires minimal admin, merging forums or removing them altogether means moving the individual topics one by one which is a vary laborious task. I could, if I had the skills, possibly automate this more by hitting the SQL database at the backend but if I got anything wrong that could break the forum.

The newer versions of the forum does have mods that allow the user to mask certain boards from the "Latest Posts" and has more functionality but I am finding it increasingly hard to get the time to create a full offline copy of BBBB in order to work the kinks out of upgrading before I take the plunge. At the moment I am using one mod that does not have an updated version for the new SMF, so I would have to wait for that or just accept the loss. The mod posts events here to a google calender that people can use to sync with devices and I use it to link events to the Raiders Guild on BGG.

I will endeavor to post a lot more content myself, I have been deliberately holding back as I did not want BBBB to seem self-indulgent but in doing so I may have added to the stagnation. I would love for the Forum to grow bigger but on the other hand I don't really have a problem with it being a small community at the edge of the interweb (rather fitting really). I'd rather a happy small community sharing their enjoyment of various hobbies, than a huge one that ends up bickering as so often happens on larger forums. This project was started to progress my Old BBS into the internet age, as such the structure and diversity of coverage was to more or less match what I had before.

There is a lot of gaming going on in the Burton area and I would love to read more about the games I am unable to get involved in. In the past I have found it a godsend going over Slug's notes before going to Lefthandrule games as they have served as a good memory jog for events helping to keep the atmosphere of the games going from session to session. The other benefit of having game notes on here is that it will peak other peoples interest who may want to join in existing or future games. The painful reality is that with the best will in the world gaming groups ebb and flow so it is always good to have new people show an interest in order to have an ability to keep on enjoying the games we love.

It is good to know that people care enough to respond with ideas and suggestions and I thank you all for taking that time and effort.

Thank you Zarni, I will also try to get back to my old level of posting but its rather time consuming to create posts containing original content such as more background for my Exalted games & Death Watch games & resurrecting the online sections for the former.  This is not helped by my working an average 60 hour week, being let down by people I do manage to persuade to help out aggravates this, being chief & only working  Admin at Friends of Spirit Games on FB & my generally trying to keep supporting Spirit Games itself particularly with Magic, malifaux & cardfight vanguard .

I love the Burger bar I just wish more people used it for what its for after all a my post rate is only slightly over one a day & if I can manage that anyone can to be honest. So lets get on with contributing to the forum & make measures like the RSS feed less of a problem.


 >:DGinger

With my 'user' hat on, I do find the RRSFeeder useful as I'm too lazy to browse the other sites looking for the latest info etc, and it has delivered some interesting topics and keeps me up to date with games.  However I do remember that the BGG feed was something I didnt really find that interesting.

As I'm only gaming at Raiders these days, I'm not posting about gaming, but I do enjoy reading others posts especially EvilGinger wargaming and the Two Fat Lardies / Roundwoods world.   However I still watch movies etc so thats something I can do, which makes good practice because reviewing stuff is something I'm poor at.


Always remember reviewing games is a good idea as you can posted them into Spirit Games too and try to win the prizes at Beer n Pretzels. 
1 year I will succeed at this, I just need to wait for the farmyard to stop flying past the window first, lol.

Now that the automated mailer has been running for some time it has caught itself up on all of the RSS feeds it is set to look through. The upshot of this, as I mentioned to individuals, is that the number of daily posts has now dwindled to about 5-6 a day. This level should remain relatively the same.

I know the Recent Posts block, in the past, has been filled with the autoposts but you can always use the "Latest Posts (http://www.bigbangburgerbar.co.uk/Forum/index.php?action=newtop)" on the menu above which gives you the last 100 Posts to the Forum (I can always up this if people require) or use the Show unread posts since last visit. (http://www.bigbangburgerbar.co.uk/Forum/index.php?action=unread) link.

I am glad about that as I am certain that the recent posts block being full of RSS posts that this has put off lazy readers however never found it a problem myself as I tend to use the " Show unread posts since my last visit" method which I find quite manageable provided you are not off line for ages as I was recently & have to wade through pages of posts.

 >:DGinger

I think at this point it's worth sitting back and having a look at how the forums most controversial feature is doing, as it has been running steadily and stabley for a decent period of time now.

Has the RSS feed done what it was intended to do?
Well, that's an easy question to answer once you confirm what it was intended to do.

And there are basically three elements to this.

The first point is to provide content, useful and interesting content.
Well, it's certainly providing content. Up to a dozen new threads every day, on a wide variety of mostly entertainment subjects and the occaisional Spirit Games related announcement.

The second point would be the raising of the web profile itself. This is harder to adjudicate though I suspect there are tools out there that can do so. It does show up as the first two results when searching for the name, but didn't show up for midlands roleplaying or any variations thereof nor for Hitchhiker's Guide Forum. So, tentatively a mixed success.

The third point is to hopefully attract new members. Does anyone have a list of new members brought in by the RSS feed? Perhaps we should do this scientifically. If you joined the forum, or found the forum in the first place because of the RSS feed's mix of entertainment news and Hobby Links, leave a reply below.

Broadly speaking yes, daily new content and without new content of any kind we are likely to go to the back of a dusty cupboard on the internet. Better would be loads of new content in all of the areas of the forum but this would need more of the userbase to actively post regularly. This is why the Feeder has not been a total success as on it's own it was never going to be enough but without it we would not be where we are.

I have scaled back a lot of what the autoposter does, reducing the number of feeds and the frequency of polling them. The Spirit Games posts for example I stage to hidden boards where I manually edit them into one message otherwise the forum would be flooded with even more posts as each game would be posted on it's own. This does take up a chunk of time but does give me a chance to tidy up the content to make it a bit more human friendly.

Am I interested in every post it makes, probably not but then others may like those and not the ones I do. Which also applies to the general posts on the forum as well which is just the natural order of things.


Search for Midlands Roleplaying and BBBB is on the second page of google (for reference).

The Autopost will not help with every search for that we have to be posting content containing keywords matching that search criteria. This goes back to the earlier point and the reason for the Autopost we need content to be found:

• Interesting & Relevant posts
• Posts in the subject areas we cover
• repeated daily posting adds to the amount of hits for that subject area increasing our chances of being found by people looking for it.

There are numerous companies that will take as much hard earned money as you want to throw at them to allegedly improve your SEO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) but these are mostly money making schemes or charging you for common sense solutions. The best way is and has always been to have active, ongoing posting of content. Ideally this should be structured to have key phrases used in common searches used in the message conetent. However, we are all human and one can not expect everytime someone posts a message about roleplaying or a board game to phrase their posts in a rigid fashion to make it work better for google. No rather we want people to post messages that other people would like to read and reply to.

Eventually this all adds up to us being crawled more, the subjects we talk about getting higher up the search lists because we are talking about them more.

I can not and do not want to force people to post that is their choice. If people want to join our little community to lurk I have no issues with that. The problem comes if we all do that then this all falls flat. I like the community we have built here and we have thus far avoided the usual internet foibles of forums, keeping everything more or less on a friendly basis. Long may this continue.

If I had a more viable alternative or the activity here increased way beyond its current level I would seriously consider the ongoing usage of autoposting but so far there does not seem to be a more viable option.

We have a decent sized user base here and so far either publicly or privately there has only been a couple of people arguing against the use of the autopost, which means the rest are either not bothered or like some/or all of the content provided. If there is a concensus against it's use then I will of course listen to that, this is not a dictatorship but I also have an opinion.

Thankyou all for your opinions and continued contributions to BBBB I am always willing to listen to ideas/suggestions either publicly or privately if you prefer lets continue to build something here that we can all be proud of.

Best Regards,

Zarniwoop

It's not about consensus or the lack of consensus. It's been running for over a year, do you feel it has acheived it's goal? It's really that simple a question, and one you should think about very seriously.

Simon, with respect I have answered your question at the start of my previous message and thought seriously about my response. Whilst the question may be simple the answer is decidely not and is rather complex.

However, I do not want to bog this down going round in circles on the same point. You have raised some valid points in your original message and I have addressed those in my response.

Going forward we all need to discuss ways in which we can attract more usage of the forum across all apects of its coverage as well as ways to attract new memberships. There is no one-size fits all approach to this, we will need to implement multiple measures for this to be successfull and for this we need help from the wider community on ways this can be achieved.

I have sadly not been posting as much as I should be on here and part of that is the time taken to sort and post the Sprit Games new release posts. Whilst I really want to help support the shop by re-posting the new releases here I am unsure whether it is worth the time and effort to do?

Jamie has done a sterling effort with posting details of the Pathfinder games on the Thurs night sessions, Evilginger is doing a grand job posting the RPG and other Spirit Games events into the calendar as well as posting the interesting Wargaming/miniatures blogs. However, I still would have been interested to hear about the games played at the Wed night sessions, the other boardgames being played on wed night that I am not in :)

Still this is old territory and I fear it will not change, it would also be nice to hear from some of the other gaming groups but I suspect most of them do the FacePalm thing. Facepalm is just something that does not interest me, especially as it seems to be becoming a corporate giant with targeted advertising and such. It getting less a social network and more of a market place or advertising billboard.

I will keep trying to post my event blogs, gaming sessions and I will try and get back to doing some more reviews, though again some more from other sources would always be welcome.

 +:dontknow=+::dontknow: I probably need more  +:coffee=+::coffee: or  +:beer=+::beer: or certainly some  +:help=+::help:

Till next time...

Here here is all I can say to that

I also apologise for not posting at my usual rate but I have been heavily involved with the moving madness shifting boxes & covering the shop whilst Phil did shop fitting & other move related stuff.

I am even more knackered than normal  :o :o


 >:DGinger

Latest changes and updates:

I have killed the Film Feed the content is getting less useful and the ad pics are annoying even me  :-\
FFG posts will now go into a single thread, which should produce less clutter on the recent posts list.
Boardgamegeek "The Geek Weekly" has also been stopped as these seem to just be clutter as well.

Days of Wonder/WOTC news posts will keep under review as they are less frequent anyway.

Still undecided about FFG continuing its relevant content but they post a lot and edit those posts which causes frequent duplication that needs to be tidied.

The Spirit Games posts will stay as I feel they are useful for us all and have the benefit the autoposts were originally started for.


As always I will keep an eye on how things pan out post these current changes. I am trying to post a bit more human content myself and hopefully by reining in the clutter we may encourage some others to join in again or start joining in.

As always your comments are welcome and appreciated.

I also appreciate you working out and adding my humble blog to the RSS feed since I am beyond having time to duplicate post every thing - Bravo Zarni

I am left with the horrific thought that I need to be three or four of me at once

 >:DGinger

State of the Nation:

Well SMF have released 2.1 beta of our Forum software which means the branch I am currently running on (1.1.x) is end of life with no future support.
We can continue to run as we are but there is always the risk of undiscovered vulnerabilities being found and exploited which would be a risk as there will be no more security updates released.

Recently one of the key mods that I use, gcalsync, has started to cause problems. It provides automated syncs of Calendar entries here with my Google Calendar, which is attached to the BoardGameGeek guild area. I'm sure of the exact mechanics of the problem but it essentially breaks the calendar, no longer able to delete or update entries, so I have removed this feature to enable normal use for the forum.

This one one of the blocks for me to update the forum to the 2.0.x branch, so I think I am going to seriously look at moving over to the new version. This move may mean that some of the tweaks and added features may be lost or have to be recreated (if I can) once I get used to the new code. We may also lose the current themes, which may have to be replaced with defaults from the new one whilst I look for suitable themes to use.

The upside would be a more up-to-date feature set, the look and feel of the forum will use more modern browser features so there will be improvements. There will be the added bonus of being able to set more preferences on what you see of the forum.

The next step then would be preparing for updating to the 2.1.x branch once that has become a stable release or potentially awaiting the completion of the 3.0 branch but that is likely to be sometime off in the future.

Not sure what the timescales will be for this as I will have to create a test site to practice the updating, this will not be a light undertaking. There will also be a significant outtage of the site once I start the live update as ALL the scripts will need to be replaced and the database updated to a new schema model. Assuming I don't break anything irreversibly then we will have a new-look site with all the existing membership and data.

I will post more information soon as I work towards this, unless there are any huge objections to this move.

Thanks for your patience and I hope this will allow us to keep this community going and allow us access to more mods with on-going support so we can add useful additional features to aid our community here.

Cheers

So I finally got off my collective backside and have spent way too many hours on creating a virtual offline BBBB to work the kinks out of upgrading to SMF2.0.13. The work is on-going but so far it looks to be not too bad, the upgrade takes a bit of time but was relatively painless.

Finding updates or equivalents to the mods we are using has taken a bit longer :(

Going forward we will have a lot of the stuff we had before but not all or different takes on how to achieve a similar result. For you guys you should see s cleaner, faster code base with some new features to explore and enjoy.
I had hoped to avoid making any manual edits on the back end but sadly to keep some of the nicer "look and feel" elements I will need to frankenstien some code to make stuff work. Hopefully this will be minimal and not cause any undue problems going forward.

Upside I will have an offline environment to play with new features which means I should never break the live site x-fingers! :)

I couldn't find a designed theme I liked so I have handmade a similar theme to the BBBB Theme (Default) used here and there will be the default theme for SMF2 available as well. I will change the gfx a bit on both but they should be sufficient for most use cases. There is a version of the Enterprise theme but it is not perfect and I'm not sure I have the time to maintain 3 different themes if anything in the future requires hand-edits to their code.

I will post an announcement when I plan to swap over and the Forum will be placed in maintenance mode during the transition. Everyone will be reset to use the default theme in oder for you to be able to see anything post the upgrade but you will have the option to swap once you get back on.

As always please be vigilant in letting me know any quirks, glitches or problems and I will do my best to rectify them, sadly this will be a one-way trip so once I have converted I really won't be trying to reverse it. This should mean any updates to the core software needed to run the forum, SQL and PHP, should not break us. I will also start looking at and testing SMF 2.1 which will be the next iteration of the software with a view to going live once it has a release candidate, still in beta test at the moment, providing this update does not break me :)

Real life has taken its toll on these plans again I'm afraid. I still intend to do this work but work is getting stressful and there are major building works planned for our house which is taken a toll on our free time.

The lack of usage of the forum of late also has a factor in that it means it feels like I am only doing this for my own benefit. This is and always has been a labour of love but lately it certainly feeling like I am alone in wanting to keep it all alive.

The internet seems to be losing its sense of community, the one it replaced was much more direct and sociable and somewhere along the line this has been lost to be replaced with commercial, soulless social medium that care more about making money then making communities.

I am sitting in a chair facing down the inevitable tide of progress but I do lament that this progress is not always for the better or greater good for social interaction.

I still intend to update when time allows and I am also investigating other options as I have found there are scripts to create integrated social media like sites. The downside is that if I switch to one of these I either keep the forum, leaving it disjoint, or mothball it and move everything over but that would lose the history of the old site.....

There is also the question of whether it is worth the bother....

I don't know about the social thing. There are plenty of communities kicking around, they're just not using the internet in the same way or the same places they used to be. It's a different world, these days, but the changes aren't all as stark as they might seem from certain perspectives.

There are a lot of communities that actively reject the corporately mandated advertising friendly sterilization of such gathering places, just as there are others that are run like soviet gulags where all unauthorised thought is stamped out in the name of keeping everything ad-company friendly.

The internet is a big, confusing mess of a place.

Well, blimey another couple of years of past and I still have failed to complete this.

I have recently started over and created another version of the offline site. The first attempt needed me to do some hand edits of code, not happy doing that again on the site as it makes adding/removing mods more complex.

Having started over I plan to see if I can do any customisation as a homebrew mod thereby being more in-tune with the script. I make no more promises of when, but I will need to do it as my host provider has already upgraded the underlying php version and if changes to the newer branch there is a real danger the forum will break.

So heading to 2.015, this may mean some features change or get lost as not all of the current mods have been updated. That said some features are now added in the core code and there are some other mods for the later software which could be interesting.

2.1 has reached release candidate stage so there is a real chance that could be final release in a year or two so I'll need to be ready for that as it should be another significant leap forward.

I will keep tinkering on here and I hope to get back in the habit of posting stuff around the place. If others join in great but if not this has been a fun playground for my thoughts and ideas as well as being able to learn new skills.

Well that's enough for now, hopefully I'll have an another update here in under 2 years this time ;)