So I just got things mostly running over on our sister website, TabletopTribe.org. Which is to say, I tore out all of the news aggregator links, images, and articles from the last couple of weeks, and instead turned that aggregator feature I was using onto the forum itself. This will allow us to populate the front page with forum posts, which link directly back to the forum, letting people who visit see what is being discussed right off the bat. I also have the aggregator scanning this site for News articles and posts regarding my TTRPG projects, linking back here of course, to perhaps improve our SEO a tad.
Yeah, that’s kinda cheap, but hey, whatever works, right?
What’s cool about this setup over on the Tribe’s site is that anyone posting on the forums can get their thread up on the main page. It makes posting to the site quick and easy, and I like that a lot. Not that posting to WordPress is difficult – I’m doing that here right now – but the forum route works great for my community website. The whole site feels more focused now, than when it put news from other gaming websites on the main page, and the forums sat in the background.
The only remaining problem is with bots. I’m the only active member of the forum right now, but I keep having to clean out bots that sign up and try to post spam comments. I have software that is blocking said comments and replies, but that doesn’t remove the posters themselves. So I’m checking every day for bots, and hoping that eventually I’ll get some real members to join.
I will probably give it a few months, see where the site goes, and decide what to do at the end of the year. If the forum doesn’t seem to be catching on, that’s fine, I’ll just figure something else out to do with the website. Worst case scenario, I pull the plug and let the URL go. But I do hope that some real people join at some point.
