Over 3,000 members???

Wrye , the attachements won't open , but I'm still with ya

Tony

 

Good Morning Pat, I am just trying, to see things, from an active members, point of view, While Larry gets his end sorted and at this time, only Larry, can answer the Question you ask. I was sitting here saying to myself, We, the members, can be our own worst enemy, Forums need members, as well as Administrators, I was merely trying to urge more members, paid up or not, to participate, in a Forum that the majority, want to remain. or do they?


JP

 

Most of the sponsors are still onboard, but almost none of them did any posting to begin with. We now have 6 new sponsors, which puts the sponsorship at a record high. The SOS forum is a private forum for those that helped, it will remain only for those few, as they showed incentive to help when help was needed. There is really very little there anyone else would want to read anyway. The Dane is no longer involved in ANY way, except as a member, he holds no interest in the site. After several months of intense stress caused by the takeover of this site, once the stress was over, I decided we needed a break. Once we get caught up with our other business ventures which were badly neglected while we worried about this site, we will start working on this one. It is badly outdated and there is so much to do on it it is overwhelming. There will be changes in the upcoming months, many of which I will seek suggestions from the forum as you all have seen me do in the past.

Most of the 3000+ are people who signed up to spam the forum or who needed to ask a question or two, once they get what they want (or not) they go away never to return. This is very common among forums, I am a long time member of many forums, but haven't logged in the most of them in years. There are MANY members of long standing in this forum who no longer are posting due to the way they were treated and/or attacked in the past. The current active members can help get them back by assuring them that they can post here now without being degraded, that attacks and insults are no longer the main order of business on this forum. This is allegedly the city of Gentle People, and this will be the forum of friendly people. Those that show respect for the forum will be treated with respect. Those that do not respect the forum will be banned post haste.

Please do carry on!



Larry

 

We have in fact hired several writers, who write one or two articles and then we never hear from then again. Getting anybody who wants to work in Dumaguete is NOT an easy task. On our facebook page (yes we have one) we recently posted for employees. If we find the right kind of people they can make good money and the site will prosper. I suspect, though, that we will get NOT ONE inquiry from those positions posted. I agree the site is badly outdated and most of it needs to be rewritten, edited heavily, or deleted. I have considered to leave the forum up and just take the site offline until it is presentable, as it stands now it is so badly in need of an overhaul in places I am almost ashamed to admit it is ours.

Great suggestion on Tapatalk, I'm not into mobiles so was not even aware of what it was.

Thanks for your input.

Larry

 

Larry,

You can try to find authors on odesk.com for example. You just register there and post a task where you explain in details what exactly you wanna get and how much are you ready to pay for such job. After that you choose among candidats which applied. After several not-so-good articles you may find a good employee and go on colaborating on constant basis.
I agree with every single word said by Wrye but I'm afraid we (younger audience) really are minority and out of target group for DI.

 

Over the course of the last few years the number of younger visitors and expats to hit Dumaguete has increased 10 or 20 fold. It is now quite common to see the younger generation here, from many walks of life, whereas just 10 years ago I was considered the "young kid" on the block.

Would you be interested in writing some pieces about the local nightlife, etc.?

Larry

 

First off, congrats on pulling this off. We can't criticize much because the site is successful. You wouldn't have been able to pull this off if it wasn't. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is.

In deciding what changes to make to the site, the analytics should tell you most of what you need to know and what direction to take. The great thing about an existing site is that it has data, so use that. This will give you the keywords people are interested in, what to change and what to keep. Keep your links intact with whatever changes you make (use redirects to prevent broken links.)

You might have an issue with content quality from writers hired locally and hired from Odesk. On the other hand, the content would probably be good enough for search engines and getting basic info. A good editor could also clean up quality issues. It might be a good idea to get some decent expat writers contributing to the site if possible. Maybe you could offer a share in the ad revenue for link ads on that page. Some people may even have businesses they could promote. I know of one freelance writer living here as an expat.

I think dated information which is old is generally an eyesore. Maybe other people don't think like me, but when I see a section on the front page of the site which is rarely updated, then this reflects badly on the rest of the site. I'm going to question that anything else is regularly updated. It's also a waste of front-page real estate. Something more useful could go into that space or the site could be streamlined.

Whatever changes you make, you basically have no idea what's going to work and what won't. You just have to experiment. Try something for X time, check the analytics, see if it's adding value to the site and then act accordingly. If isn't adding value, then it's probably best to just cut it or demote it (remove it from the front page.)

Don't half @ss anything. Doing anything on the site takes precious time. It's better to focus on getting one thing right than to distract yourself and half @ss three other things. For example, a good news section could be very useful for content. But if you don't have the time to do a good news section, then it's probably best to cut it from the site and focus your effort on other areas.

Keep a journal or something for every push you make for the site so that you are getting maximum value out of everything you do. You want to know what efforts are valuable and what efforts are a waste of time. For example, a Facebook page is basically one campaign for bringing in traffic. Use analytics for everything you post. Track the interactions, change up the content, try different approaches. Use it or lose it.

The term for "mobile friendly" is responsive. You can find responsive templates for the forum. Forums can be tricky to get right for mobile because of the over-abundance of features - all which require buttons and other methods for interaction. Forums are both info and feature dense. Personally, I would simplify the features as much as possible and use the site with nothing but a cell phone to get a feel for the design. If something is frustrating, improve or remove.

The front page could be far more useful. Banners and links don't give me much info. A picture of a beautiful resort or an enticing plate of food might send me out the door to go to these places. Have your advertisers provide you pictures that you can regularly post on the front page. If advertisers can't take good pictures, then you might see if you can hire a good photographer here. You could also post coupons and other deals. Look at sites like Buzzfeed to get an idea of the sort of content which is highly shareable on social sites like Facebook.

You don't need much in design. Again, look at a site like Buzzfeed, it's super simple and does the job. The more design you try to do when you don't really have design skills just makes the whole thing look worse.

To get more interaction on the rest of the site, you could add something like a Q & A section which is easy to post to (sign in with Facebook / Google / Twitter and post, no membership required.)

The list of things you could try are endless. Again, it's trial and error. Try something and see how it works. Look at the numbers to see if it's something that draw people and and if it's "sticky" (people spend more time on the site rather than just bouncing out right away.)

Other ideas...

Trip reports

Events

Voting features for user generated content. If you had a section for community postings which people could vote on, then you could have items hit the front page feed if it hits a certain threshold for votes.

Tap into API's. There are a lot of travel sites which have reviews for places (restaurants, resorts, hotels) and you could use those API's to bring more content to the site. You could tap into Facebook API's to automatically post popular content from the community. If a forum thread gets popular, post it to Facebook. The followers of the page might get that itch to jump in!

Maybe create an ideas section in the forum so that people could add input on different things to try.

Geez, I better stop now. I could probably spend a couple hundred hours coding all this stuff. So, I may have gone overboard. But some ideas may be relatively straight forward to implement.

I'm not a designer and I don't have revenue generating sites myself. So, I may just be talking out of my @ss. This is just my two peso's worth.

--
Dude

 

Unfortunately Wyre,:( that's the price you have to pay for being young You need to work. Have a good year or so and I for 1(one), wish you well, in your endeavours

The one and probably only Good thing, us Oldies have here, (maybe I mean best thing) is that someone, somewhere, pays us, to sit on our Backsides, all day. (Pensions,I mean)

Take care and have a safe Journey.
I am sure we will soon, see you writing from wherever, you land and settle, to earn those much needed Piso so you can return and continue to live on the "Fantasy Islands"


JP