Some random thoughts:

- If possible create a homepage with links to the forum. This way, you can provide a landing point that has info about what the site is, who it's for, and recent updates. Then, from here, users can navigate to the forums.

- Be nicer to new users. As a total noob as far as both Rockman games and your site are concerned, I didn't know where to go. So I went to the Questions/Guest Forum that basically says "Go here if you don't know what to do." There, I found a post that says "About the forum - read this." The first line of that post is:

This type of forum tends to be a bad idea alot of the time

Then the post goes on to chastise imaginary people about using the site for advertising.

OUCH! I'm not signing up now.

Make it so a brand-new user has a link to click on (hopefully on the first page near the top) that takes them to a place that explains exactly what they should be getting from the site.

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Adventures in Kensing D&D

Thanks much for the tips! On the Guest forum, I see what you're saying there - that's a big communication error on my part. When I'd said that about it being a bad idea, I meant that particular section allowing guests to post, usually because they spam the section with links to their own forums. I see why you'd think I meant the whole forum and I apologize for that - I'll be sure to fix it, likely by renaming that topic as "Guest Forum Use" or some such. The link at the top of the page would work well, too, for that matter.

Either way, I see what you mean on having a homepage. I'm working on different layout ideas for that, mostly concerning getting the site's content easily shown. The last thing I want is confusing new guys/gals to the forum. Thank you very much for the help, I'll fix those things right away.

You deffinatly need a main page before going to the forum. It makes it more likely that someone will join your game. Also don't let guests post. I run a pbp site and had a lot of spam when I did that. Only let members post on your site.

The layout is hard to understand for a total noob. Try and have a place for noobs to learn to play, or at least ask questions about how your game works. You should also, (I am not even following this advice at the moment) get a URL that is yours for your site. It runs about $9 a year. Like I said, I havn't followed this either.

The easier the layout the more people you will get to play. I moved Shadowrun Online to MSN groups back in 2003 because of the versitility of the boards. We moved from Yahoo!

Digital Doom

the creators may die, but the game lives on.

Yeah, I'm still working on the main page layout and such, no question about that. And if noobs can't see the link towards the top of the page that says "New to the site? Click here to learn more about the game!" then something is wrong with them. And that's exactly what that section does - it lets noobs learn how to play. Individual URLs are not all that important, honestly - at least it's not at the top of my priority list right now. And there's even a forum named "Questions" which leads me to wonder how good of a look you actually took at the site. As far as guests, I haven't had any trouble with letting them post yet, but if it does become a problem then I won't allow it. It hasn't yet, so we'll just have to see.

I appreciate the advice, but I'm quite sure I won't be following some of that.

EDIT: On the note of URLs, I found a sweet deal over at Yahoo and have taken it. I'll use it with the site once I'm done adding pages and getting everything just so.

Alright, it has been quite some time now since I've had my site reviewed. If it's quite alright, I'd like someone to take another crack at it. I've come a little ways since then, and our one year anniversary is drawing close.

Thanks in advance!