Major Game releases should be on the Spring frontpage

[Warlord Zsinj]

Well, like I said, I'm not anti springinfo - but there are advantages with the spring frontpage that aren't offered by springinfo.

Firstly, I always go to the frontpage before the forums, because I can check for news that way and secondly, the frontpage is a first point of contact for anyone who wants to find out more about the engine, so seeing a list of news 'S44 released! new map huzzah! new LOS widget!' shows a very active and vibrant community.

[Caradhras]

I agree with Zsinj

[Forboding Angel]

you're kidding me right?

http://www.springinfo.info

Am I the only one who hasn't even heard of that until FA started posting it everywhere last week or so? How many people regularly check the site?

lollobbyintigration? http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtop ... 12&t=17415

Interesting KDR, considering that you posted in the 9 page thread when it originally came about. So did you, pxtl.

[SinbadEV]

I like the idea of occasionally graduating release posts to the news page with some kind of criteria so Mods don't get abused over it.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Sinbad, how about the rules I proposed on the first page?

- New games/mods always get their first release frontpaged
- games/mods receiving over <x> downloads or games receiving over <y>% total play time on the server get frontpaged when they make a release, except:
- A mod cannot be frontpaged twice in <x> amount of time (a month?)

[Forboding Angel]

With policing it, aren't you setting yourself up for failure? Some mods would get a day's worth of exposure, whereas other luckier mods would end up with weeks.

You're assuming that there is equality in your idea yet there isn't.

On another hand, springinfo generates well over 200 unique hits per day, and at one point spiked up to nearly 500, why have we never seen any IW news there? It's free... it couldn't possibly be easier, and you get frontpage and soon lobby exposure. I mean, tbh what more could you want?

I don't really see how a 300x300 pixel blurb on the main spring site would do much for you when you could have a fully detailed newspost complete with pictures, etc etc, on a front page of a site that a LOT of people visit each day. Additionally, the more news we get from ppl like you, the more people visit. THis is how websites perpetuate themselves.

I can't tell you how many of the recent bugfixes I haven't even been aware of until tasclient updated spring for me. The front page of the spring site is pretty, and boring. Springinfo is for the players, so that they can keep abreast of the latest developments, and from reading your posts it seems as though you almost scoff at it which while the lack of willingness to help pisses me off, it confuses me too.

Look at s44, the made some big announcements in great style and got a lot of exposure from it. I don't see how that is a bad thing.

As far as the spring site goes, a ticker of the news from springinfo really wouldn't be a bad idea (you can even break each category of news into different feeds -- that is to say, each category already has it's own feed). It would require a minimal amount of page space, and everyone posting would have equal opportunity.

[AF]

The frontpage should only show the biggest and latest news and not in full. Otherwise its the old site wall of text with a handful of pics at the top. Its bad enough that there are no images in our news posts, even when some are made for them.

We should show a handful of boxes with news titles and intro text and 'read more' and then have a news page in our menu that lists them in a blog format with links to other sites for more details.

[Warlord Zsinj]

I think springinfo is great, and you can bet when we release we'll be huffing and puffing about it on there - but it doesn't change my belief that major releases should be on the spring frontpage. I always navigate to the frontpage to check for news before heading for these forums. It also shows activity and life for the engine.

[SwiftSpear]

Do we have a web dev on board working updates on the site right now? Fnord was doing it before, as far as I know he hasn't been replaced yet...

I'm in complete agreement with the topic BTW. On the topic of springinfo, I'd also like a link from the frontpage to it, the frontpage is the frontpage, it's job is to sell the project (figuratively speaking), where springinfo has the ability to be a comprehensive news source. It's a good place to lead people looking for in depth news. Spring development and moderation don't have time to play reporter.

[MidKnight]

Idea has been uberseconded by me

[zwzsg]

Spring development and moderation don't have time to play reporter.

Then appoint some dedicated newsposters!

[Forboding Angel]

Register with springinfo and you automagically have newsposting rights.

[imbaczek]

having posting rights != being delegated to post news

what's needed is volunteers who will care enough to post news by themselves, without mod/map/engine developer intervention. see a new release? post news!

[Forboding Angel]

Oh so you mean, people like me?

The interesting thing is, the amount of people who have pledged their children to me that they will make newsposts. None of them have done jack yet. Tbh it doesn't surprise me.

The funny thing is, to make a newspost, you can quite litterally copy and paste a forum post complete with images etc and the formatting is preserved, so you pretty much don't really have to do hardly anything. Besides, if you just registered and posted a news item, it comes to me first for approval at which point I take care of anything that was missed (thumbnail, bad formatting, grammar/misspelling). Even the people that don't have to have their stuff approved still ends up getting their stuff tidied up by me (most noteable, missing thumbnails and oshitmisspells).

I thought I was making it easy, maybe it's still too tough for some of the people here.

[imbaczek]

Oh so you mean, people like me?

yes, exactly. more of you would be perfect

I thought I was making it easy, maybe it's still too tough for some of the people here.

human laziness knows no limits.

[Argh]

Meh, I'm just too lazy atm, and I got over 2000 views from that last post on ModDB / website / other crap / youTube

Personally, Forb, I would be very happy, if somebody actually took an interest in keeping the ModDB stuff about the engine, and goings on... something like weekly updates of the highlights, something to show the world what an amazing amount of stuff is going on here.

The total traffic you can get there is lightyears past what's available in our little fishbowl, and better yet... the people there are frequently "new eyes", who aren't utterly familiar with Spring already, and think they know what's going on.

If there's anywhere where we should be posting more news about ongoing stuff with Spring, that's the place, imo. Circular posts within the fishbowl are only semi-useful.

Now... talking to the Lobby crowd- that's useful. And will remain useful, until we train the little urchins to... actually come here once in awhile. Because it's quite obvious that they don't. And I can't blame them- it's TL:DNR stuff by nerds, for other nerds, or long drama-filled crap that they don't care about. No fun stuff about new games, unless they're willing to wade through huge threads. Booooooring.

They're amazingly ignorant of what's going on out here, and not because they don't want to know about it. Trust me, every time I'm testing WB or P.U.R.E., somebody bugs me, "wuts that?" and I point them at videos, etc., and they're all surprised and stuff

So, you can bet yer boots, when I get un-lazy (i.e., next video presentation, later this week hopefully) I'll want to see about that whole Lobby-news stuff.

Talking to ModDB and other game-aggregation 'sites, though... that's ... very useful. Just IMO of course, but we need to get new players, and we need to communicate about what the engine can do, and doing it by word of mouth isn't working terribly well. It's just how it goes.

Spring's more than "mature" enough. Don't let the same old guys wave that same old stick around, if they say that... they're full of it. If it's not ready now, it ain't ready. Say the truth- it's ready, it just ain't perfect yet. And that's all right.

[zwzsg]

While your efforts are great, it's on spring.clan-sy.com frontpage, not springinfo, that we want more news. Because we feel that place still is the main hub, while yours isn't yet as big.

[Argh]

Hey... before saying that, could we maybe get some numbers from Fnordia, about how much traffic that page sees every day?

I mean... I get around 300 hits a day from ModDB and various other crap now, more if I actually post anything new. Forb gets 200 unique visitors, let's say that probably >50% are Spring players already, probably more like 80%-90%.

Is the traffic to the front page, other than days when releases occur, broad enough to make it a focal point? Or would time spent on these issues be better allocated elsewhere?

Let's not have this conversation based on "what I like", but "what is provably working". Numbers, people. This is marketing. We need some numbers.

[smoth]

I thought I was making it easy, maybe it's still too tough for some of the people here.

-_-

[Tobi]

Frontpage gets about 70-80k views per month.

EDIT: assuming site wide ratio of unique visitors to views is identical for just the frontpage, the frontpage gets 37-43k unique visitors per month.