Is Apolyton ready for the announcement of Civ5?

[Theben]

Signs point to no.

I fear we could become a 3rd-tier site, behind even the panda pushers. What are you guys doing to get us recognized again?!

[Nikolai]

Poly has already been behind for far too long to regain the #1 place. Both CFC and WPC have had a Civ5 forum for ages, and the owners of both sites have historically good connections to Firaxis. I'm not sure Poly's have... When Civ5 was announced, a day passed before we got a dedicated forum. After that, nothing.

[Ming]

There is no mention of Civ V on the home page yet

The biggest news in recent years and the only place you see it is in the forums.

Come on guys.

[Krill]

Poly is already third tier. Realms Beyond has about 80 to a hundred regular readers now, up from about 20 this time last year due to exhibition Pitboss and PBEM games. This place is dead. So, the idea that numbers of posters drops off the longer since a civ release is obviously false (suck on that Solver and Locutus).

So, to the admins and mods, I'm sorry to say this but your ability to get people to view this site sucks. Look at what Asher has posted here to help you sort it out. For gods' sake why don;t you ask competent people to help?

[Asher]

For real.

Civilization V / Civ 5 / Civ V / Civilization 5 needs to be mentioned liberally ALL OVER THE SITE as soon as possible. You need to give it its own section.

Also, look at SEO:

1) Every news post should be an individual page (right now they just link to the main index page). This makes it easier for other sites to link to it (++ ranking), it provides an opportunity to place the keywords in the URL (++ ranking, eg http://www.apolyton.net/civilization...Announced.html instead of just a link to http://apolyton.net/misc/ ). You wonder why the ranking is dropping, but there's no ****ing key words in that URL that make any sense to people's queries unless they specifically search for "apolyton misc". Whyyyyy?
2) Forum link URLs should also include the thread title's subjects (or at least vague guesses to its keywords, eg...strip out words like "the", "a", etc): http://www.apolyton.net/forums/Off-T...ounced/5753962. Nothing in this URL is important except the host (apolyton.net), the main directory (forums), and the thread ID (5753962). All of the others just exist for SEO purposes and are ignored. This can be done via a combination of simple tweaks to vBulletin and Apache URL rewrite rules...I've done this a bunch for work recently, it does phenomenal things at increasing page rankings.
3) POST MORE NEW CONTENT. Make the content DIRECTLY LINKABLE.
4) Have an RSS Feed which points to this new content. More links = BETTER RANKING.
5) Have a twitterfeed set up to automatically tweet new content to the site. Provides better traffic, viral possibilities (I could've just RT'ed the @Apolyton post about Civ5 being announced rather than link to the Off-Topic post Mike made, which does virtually nothing for our rankings).

The #1 way you'll get new blood is via searchers for Civilization 5 or variations of it. You won't get there unless you take SEO seriously...you want Poly to be #1. Right now it'll be on page 4 or 5...

Also seriously consider installing this plugin: http://www.vbseo.com/
The forums are our only reason for existing right now, you might as well increase their visibility...

[Nikolai]

[Ming]

At LEAST ASK LOUDLY FOR VOLUNTEERS... DO SOMETHING... ANYTHING.

[Asher]

The whole site needs a major refresh. Front-page design (probably the whole CMS system), URL structure (SEO! SEO! SEO!), new content teams (CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT!), etc.

I'd really like to know these are being worked on. If they're not being worked on, why is no one being asked to help. I know of many people in the OTF that are web site developers or designers...

[Asher]

The front-page is hideously ugly.

- It is WAY TOO BUSY...
- What the hell is with all of the mini-image banners on the centre-right in a column? Seriously?
- The spacing is all wrong. Massive gaps of whitespace in the prime real estate in the centre, massive density all around it?
- Line wraps matter. Look at the header of the right column, why is the closing bracket on a new line? Why is "Civ 4: Colonization" on its own line so it looks like "Civ 4" and "Colonization" are different links, when they are the same?

I'm not a designer so I can't tell you how TO design it. But I can tell you general guidelines:
- Keep it CLEAN. This is too busy and hectic.
- Rather than dump all this text flat-out on the screen, consider dynamic menus. Maybe tabs at the top focusing on the "Primary Games" (Civ 4, Civ 5?) and another tab that has a flyout menu for other games? Things like that.

I can tell you more about what's wrong than specifically how to do it, design wise. Others in the OTF are web designers and could help more on that.

[Ming]

You would think there would at least be a comment about this from the owners by now...

[Catfish]

I think they've given up. The home page is a disaster, the downloads section is broken, the server struggles to handle even modest levels of traffic and the forum is full of spambots. I only come to Apolyton for the hosted sites. Maybe they should start looking for new hosts.

[Ming]

I don't think they have given up, and I'm sure they must have some good stuff planned.
(I REALLY HOPE SO)

The problem is, we don't really know since nobody on staff wants to provide any information.
A response from the staff would be easy and a nice gesture to the members

Again, the fact that they haven't responded in this thread is surprising.

[Asher]

Is it?

I was supposed to be helping them with some technical stuff back when The Transition first started but I've been ignored since the initial discussion, no word on why.

[MikeH]

Stuff is definitely happening. Hopefully someone will be able to come and tell us exactly what and an idea of when soon.

[Nikolai]

"Stuff is definitely happening", but from the rest of your post, it's clear you have no idea.

Great.