chaos' guide to making a successful site v1

[AgentChronon]

I got my first affiliate today... and my site already has 3000 hits.

(hello, you've found your niche which is the "theme" of this topic)

I thought the theme was discussing what you had posted and agreeing and dissagreeing with it. Oh and I 100% agree with the niche thing (although it's a bad metaphor...). I spend most of my time trying to think of a "niche."

Although the theme seems to be now Faltzer and I arguing...

 

[Faltzer]

AC,stop lying about you recieving that much hits,it's impossible to recieve 3000 unique hits unless you actually have something unique.

 

[AgentChronon]

They weren't unique hits... they were hits. I'm not lying dude go to my site and scroll all the way down.

Also please don't say I jacked up the number because I started at zero and when the site was on hiatus for three days and I didn't have the counter up I added 35 to the counter which means I estimated about 11 hits per day and I am almost positive it was more.

 

[Faltzer]

1. This is the absolute most important thing. Nobody cares about your ridiculous PHP script that lets you specify which 'style' you want a layout to be. It's cool for proof of concept to help you learn, but it has no point on a real site. Nobody cares about your 30 affiliates each getting 30 page views a day. This isn't going to attract you attention. Neither is your 600 page links on the site that lead to your default 404 page of 'I HAVENT MADE THIS YET/COMING SOON WITH ::MyGenericPokemonSite v4// SEE YOU ALL NEXT NOV!'

None of that is going to get you traffic. You know what gets you traffic? A _niche_. Find a niche for your site- something to hype it, something that nobody else has. Give your users a reason to come to your site; anyone can go to Serebii and see the latest headlines for anime. Don't be just another pebble in the gravel road. Instead, be some sort of brick! A car going down a gravel road isn't going to be stopped by your pebble. It's going to keep trekking on to its destination, the sites everyone else go to. So be a brick and stop the car dead in its tracks. Get them to look at your site first before they go to Serebii or such.

Yeah, that was a bad analogy. I was totally feelin' it though. The point is, you need something to make your site unique. My site's niche is competitive strategy to Pokemon. My users love my site because they know they can't go anywhere else for competitive strategy. It targets them. There is no other site on the internet that can MORE than fill a 128 man tournament in less than 24 hours.

I always hate to see PHP scripts relating to switching a layout to what you want. And when you look at the script,you'll see they didn't write the script. They found it on a google search.

I despise websites with 404 pages as well,and even if they have content,it's just all generic copied right from Serebii. You'll have to live with seeing it,because people now a days don't like to write content.

2. DON'T LET YOUR FORUMS BE YOUR MAIN ATTRACTION. The forums are there to unite and give your users a sense of community. If you don't have a niche yet, you aren't going to have users. "My invisionfree.com board" is not a niche for attracting views. I could go to any site for a forum system. You didn't make it. It's not unique to your site. Why should I visit YOUR board and not anyone elses? I don't even like your site, it has no content, focus, vision. Just a forum system that you didn't make.

If you do have a forum, don't make this fatal mistake: making more forums than you have users. I see this all the time- 10 registered users, 100 forums of bullshnitey. Good job, you managed to make a section for every possible topic anyone could ever think of. Too bad you only have 10 members and with so many forums, they are going to have no clue where to post in. Keep it simple. When I started Smogon in May 2004, I had -2- forums. A general chat forum with a witty title, and a General Pokemon forum. I also got 1500 registered users in half a year. Even after purging inactive users, we at this time are 4 members away from 2000, with around 50-80 people viewing the forums at the same time (70 at this time of writing).

This ticks me off. Why did you have to post this piece of paragraph when you post a link to your forum in every main page of your categories. Example:

Just my two cents.

 

[Trainer Rachel]

This ticks me off. Why did you have to post this piece of paragraph when you post a link to your forum in every main page of your categories. Example:

Just my two cents.

Haha And some people like forums to be their main attraction. You should accept that too, Chaos, cause at least that way they aren't totally copying Serebii or all your other main sites. It all depends on preference, and what their "niche" is.

 

[AgentChronon]

Yeah like theninfort.funpic.org is a great forum site and all, but the main attraction is the forum.

 

[zuloon]

Smashboards.com has it's forum as its main attraction. It's doing fine.

 

[tylerH]

As for me, I run one of the biggest Pokemon websites on the internet, the only forums bigger than mine that deal with only Pokemon are Serebii and PokeCommunity, I run a NetBattle server that gets over 100 people on concurrently and I have a willing and active community of people to help me out. I've been doing HTML, CSS, PHP, and even though unrelated to web design, C++ for around 7 years now. My site gets 2,200 unique, 35,000-40,000 page views, and 250,000-350,000 hits a day. I know exactly what I'm talking about.

My site can do strategy better than yours. Its what we are known for. Just accept it :/

You brag WAY to much.

 

[wiiman]

That's because he has the best Pokémon strategy site in the world...

I'm trying to make my site a complete nex gen pokémon resource. If I only focus on D/P and PBR I think I have a chance, as that's pretty limited. Sure, it'll decrease my hits and such, but I'll be able to manage it.

 

[Dragonfree]

I always hate to see PHP scripts relating to switching a layout to what you want. And when you look at the script,you'll see they didn't write the script. They found it on a google search.

Uh, when you look at the script? You can't look at PHP scripts. I think you're confusing it with Javascript.

 

[Magma Leader Maxie]

I always hate to see PHP scripts relating to switching a layout to what you want. And when you look at the script,you'll see they didn't write the script. They found it on a google search.

Which, in essence, is the kind of style-switcher you have. (and yes, Javascript, not PHP)

People who don't know Javascript use google searches to get their scripts. There's nothing bad about that, in my opinion. But going overboard with "dynamicdrive syndrome" is a completely different matter. ("oh...ok, let's take... pikachu cursor, falling snow, no-right click, popup menus, date and time, fireworks, curtain effect, DHTML splash screen, ...")

 

[Faltzer]

Uh, when you look at the script? You can't look at PHP scripts. I think you're confusing it with Javascript.

Oops, I meant view source. Most source codes put the PHP code in a PHP file. Thanks for the correction. (No sarcasm detected)

 

[Dragonfree]

...

It is not possible to view anybody's PHP code. If you can view the source and see whether somebody got a script on Google or not, it's Javascript, not PHP. I don't even know what the heck you're talking about by "Most source codes put the PHP code in a PHP file."

I thought I managed to tell you that a while ago, but apparently not. v.v

 

[Faltzer]

Please, I don't really want to pick off before from PC.

 

[nabt]

I agree with your tutorial completely. You made a good point on the visual aspects of a site such as the affliate section being the area that most ignore. I also admire the fact that you mentioned the annoyances of javascript. The second I see snowflakes or hear background-music (save for sites that are directed to music), I immediately leave the site. Also, you've made wonderful points on how to create a sucessful community, which is something I don't see very often. People go about it the entirely wrong way, with flashy colors and dancing bananas to attract visitors. It's nice to see someone with experience helping out the community. Hopefully others learn from this and the on-going rampage of badly done sites might end.

Even though I'm a very busy person, I like helping people out. Sorry if the advice here seemed harsh. It's sometimes hard for me to explain concepts without being a jerk about it.

Sometimes the only way to get your point across is to wake people up by being harsh.

 

[Faltzer]

Don't use index.php?id= urls. It's bad form. Use mod_rewrite, google it if you have no clue. It also gives you bad ratings on Google. Even worse is site.com/?id=3 :/

I just really have to agree with this. I don't get why people don't care about SEO. If you don't care about seo, then you don't care about your sites future. I recieve 80% of my hits from search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

 

[togepip]

This is a really good guide and I think it will help me ^^.
BTW: Faltzer it is Togepi from MMC

 

[pokemonelite4leader]

There is a wat to evade the no right-click thing anyway, what you must do is right click and hold it down, then when the thing comes up saying dont copyor somethng press ok while right is still held down, put the mouse over what you want to copy, and release so the no right click stuff is a waste anyway, if you make all those special effects it bugs people that wantto concentrate on teh actual site good tip.

TO CONTENT | CENTER - CONTENT | RIGHT - LINKS TO THINGS NOBODY CARES ABOUT

lol

GOLDYOSHI:

The thing is, it isn't for chatting, it's for drawing. And you could just as well hang out in fan art on the forums if you wanted to critisize pictures!

There is no real community in Oekakis, just people who draw and comment. It can't keep a site together, at least, I think. :O

And yes, finding your niche is important. I always hated it when Ifo und a site that had news and info that I could just as well get somewhere else. If they had other stuff, well, OK, but it should be unique. No 'Raise a Pikachu' game, or 'Catch a Pidgey', you didn't make it.

For example, on my site, Ihave POkemon theories, explaining thigns like why Feebas only live in 6 tiles and why Electrode explodes at the slightest shock. I have fun things there. Personality. And that's rare nowadays.

I liked this guide so much, I posted a link to it at another forums, with credit, of course. hopefully, more people will read ut. <_<;

what if it was a site about art? maybe pokemon art!

The first idea is good, but putting them in a footer won't generate nearly as many clicks as on the side.

you wont generate may 'clicks' anyway dude

 

[Squall]

Disregarding the bloated ego, this is a great guide in my opinion. Most advice are common sense for the at least slightly experienced webmaster but for most starting ones it isn't and it's always good to point those things out. With the growth of Pokémon websites overcoming the growth of Pokémon itself it's getting harder and harder to come up with original ideas so just saying 'be original' isn't much of a help really. Also, the guide is kind of old and still v1 so I guess you could revamp it some time soon. As nabt said: "It's nice to see someone with experience helping out the community". Kudos for the guide

 

[Magma Leader Maxie]

I just really have to agree with this. I don't get why people don't care about SEO. If you don't care about seo, then you don't care about your sites future. I recieve 80% of my hits from search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

SEO is a good thing, but using mod_rewrite to implement some uber-complex querystring rewriting (though the querystring is still the same stupid page=somestatictext) isn't necessarily the proper thing to do. If you're rewriting the URLs of an application like a blog, a forum or a CMS, then it's all right (getting rid of Joomla's index.php?com_option=blahblahblah&id=6 and transforming it into something more logical) but when you have complete control over how your URLs are going to look, for me it's just a hassle - purposefully damaging your own URLs, and then attempting to "fix" them with a 79-line .htaccess involving regular expressions a mile long.

And generally, not looking from the point of view of the visitor, using one script to serve all content (index/default) isn't a good idea since it gets messy. I don't know what's so good about it.

I don't even use .htaccess, I wrote an email to my server administrators and they tweaked the server configuration globally in a way so that it doesn't matter whether you put the file extension into the URL or not. This way everyone got the same benefit and I didn't have to write any .htaccess files. All my files are still .php, but if I ever wanted to change the technology used (to Perl, Python or anything else) I could do so, and no one would notice.

Some of you people sound like you work for Microsoft: first let's release a badly planned version - it doesn't matter if it makes future maintenance difficult - and then we can issue patches later.

*EDIT* :

This ticks me off. Why did you have to post this piece of paragraph when you post a link to your forum in every main page of your categories. Example:

Just my two cents.

Whaa...? What are you smoking, Faltzer? Probably because the Smogon Forums aren't the site's main attraction? It's not like chaos has got 3 useless things on his site and a font-size 40px link to the forums, he's just trying to promote a sense of community by encouraging visitors to register and get more personalized info on the matter from "the experts". Seriously, before the move to the new server (when the site became pretty chaotic) I used to visit Smogon pretty frequently whenever I was looking for a good NetBattle moveset for an obscure pokemon, and I have never been a member of the forums.

Smashboards.com has it's forum as its main attraction. It's doing fine.

... Jesus H. Christ. Now I know why chaos doesn't post in this thread any more. Being a webmaster isn't rocket science, but still some people don't see such obvious things.