Forum promotion

[Lee Marchant]

Forum promotion

ok guys,

I've been quite pleased with the way the forum has started in its first few weeks, but the new membership take up has dropped off over the last week or so.

I'm sure that over time, the forum will develop into a busy and quite large site, and I am doing a few things to help encourage that.

but I'm also asking for the help of you guys who pop in for a read every day as well.

If you have any other websites or forums that you visit regularly, could you please contact the webmaster or admin and ask for a link exchange (that is we put a link to their site on here, and they do the same for us.)

Also if you have anyone on your email list who is interested in Amateur rugby league who hasn't joined up could you send them an email with a link to the forum on it, with a little description of the site.

I'm sure you'll agree we have a great layout which is feature rich, but we need a few more members to get the content moving a little more regularly.

This forum is for all you guys, so please help me in this matter.

many thanks Lee

[Big Bad Bri]

will do

love the layout you've made.

prob best set up forum i've seen.


about time some of the guests joined and said hello!

[mick doyle]

The problem Lee ,is to many you seem to side with the Barla board on nearly every issue.
And the lack of meaningful response on several key issues from the Board leaves a lot to be desired.

[Lee Marchant]

The problem Lee ,is to many you seem to side with the Barla board on nearly every issue.
And the lack of meaningful response on several key issues from the Board leaves a lot to be desired.

Mick,

I've hardly commented at all on any issue in the last couple of weeks and when I do it is usually to relay a comment from Barla rather than my own opinion, and since we now have Paul and Sam who are equally administrators, I think thats a pretty balanced admin team, don't you?

maybe it would help if I changed my user name from Admin, to my real name, so it doesn't look like there is a hierachy? thoughts on that would be appreciated


Most questions posed have been answered, granted that it may not always be the answer you wanted, but I can't help that.

The bigger goal here is to create a community of club members/officials which will provide beneficial dialogue to all, not just a Q&A with the board of management.

That is what I'm trying to promote, and I would like to think that someone with your obvious passion for the game would share my sentiments on what we are trying to achieve here.

[mick doyle]

The problem Lee ,is to many you seem to side with the Barla board on nearly every issue.
And the lack of meaningful response on several key issues from the Board leaves a lot to be desired.

Mick,

I've hardly commented at all on any issue in the last couple of weeks and when I do it is usually to relay a comment from Barla rather than my own opinion, and since we now have Paul and Sam who are equally administrators, I think thats a pretty balanced admin team, don't you?

maybe it would help if I changed my user name from Admin, to my real name, so it doesn't look like there is a hierachy? thoughts on that would be appreciated


Most questions posed have been answered, granted that it may not always be the answer you wanted, but I can't help that.

The bigger goal here is to create a community of club members/officials which will provide beneficial dialogue to all, not just a Q&A with the board of management.

That is what I'm trying to promote, and I would like to think that someone with your obvious passion for the game would share my sentiments on what we are trying to achieve here.

Lee,
I do, most people in Barla know me and im not a dummy spitter.
If I get answers i dont like i do try and see things from both sides and at times we have to agree to disagree.
I would like to think that in my role as CHAIR of my little mob (49 clubs and 178 teams ) I try to answer all questions directed towards our association in a open and transparent way,I always give answers to all questions posed in different ways ,can our present Board members say the same ?

If you go back to the initial postings and spin of this forum ,what where its aims and objectives ?And in all honesty have they been acheived ?

There are many positives .For me ,it has given us the opportunity to state our case and give the wider RL community an insight as to the internal problems within Barla and indeed our relationship with the RFL.

[Lee Marchant]

Lee,
I do, most people in Barla know me and im not a dummy spitter.
If I get answers i dont like i do try and see things from both sides and at times we have to agree to disagree.
I would like to think that in my role as CHAIR of my little mob (49 clubs and 178 teams ) I try to answer all questions directed towards our association in a open and transparent way,I always give answers to all questions posed in different ways ,can our present Board members say the same ?

If you go back to the initial postings and spin of this forum ,what where its aims and objectives ?And in all honesty have they been acheived ?

There are many positives .For me ,it has given us the opportunity to state our case and give the wider RL community an insight as to the internal problems within Barla and indeed our relationship with the RFL.

Thanks for the honest response Mick,

I was trying to find my way in the first few days (and still am to a certain extent!) I couldn't let the forum turn into a BARLA bashing area anymore than I wanted it to become a love in.

The goals we have set for the forum are long term and it was never going to be a five minute project.

To be honest , an uptake of over 150 members in a few weeks is not bad at all for a new forum, and the site stats show that it is starting to slowly pick a bit of momentum up in terms of return visitors. I'm a little disappointed that we have a lot of onlookers who haven't as yet got involved in any dialogue or debate, but other than that it's been ok, and I think that the threads that are active make pretty interesting reading.

I would like to get the forum more known at the club/player level and see if we can develop the site into an area which is comfortable to discuss simple things such as referee decisions and incidents which may have happened during the games as well as the broader political side.

I could send an email shot to all of the clubs and see if that breaks through a few barriers, but word of mouth is probably better.

As I said, I'm looking to where the forum will be in 12 months, 3 yrs and 5 yrs, not where it will be next week.

But anything any of you guys can do or suggest to prod it along would be greatly appreciated.

I've become fond of all of our regular posters, and hope we can develop it further.

(even you and Peter! )

[peter moran]

Just how much prodding is needed Lee?

We all understand the ethos behind this forum, but it is you that asked for the sharper edge when you billed the sub forums.
You have consistently been getting serious responses from heavy players for a while now ( they head major Leagues after all) . It is not ' Barla bashing' , that's too easy a cop out. In fact you are probably getting a feed from ' Real Barla ', as it used to be, not the people currently allegedly in charge. The guys and gals doing the job on the ground day in day out.

Maybe one day, as you hope , you'll get to discussions about whether the ref got it right on the day ,or if it was a forward pass, or who serves the best pies, but for the moment this site will stand or fall on whether you can get the people at the top to communicate with the workers . I cannot for one moment think that you expected any of this, and life must be really tough for you. Have you thought of transferring the whole lot elsewhere?

Seriously. Absolute, total silence from the powers that be. From Chair to telephonist (I am told it is answered(?) even if the number got pinched). From everyone ,on absolutely everything ,that has been raised throughout this site. Get them (any of them) to input regularly , or at least declare that they won't.

By the way, though these posts may be far from it, I'm never against your suggestion of it being a love in. I can't wait for Mick, guitar in hand, Joni Mitchell style, singing ' Both sides now '.....

[Sam Armstrong]

I would like to get the forum more known at the club/player level and see if we can develop the site into an area which is comfortable to discuss simple things such as referee decisions and incidents which may have happened during the games as well as the broader political side.

I could send an email shot to all of the clubs and see if that breaks through a few barriers, but word of mouth is probably better.

Lee

As discussed at the onset, and one of my main concerns, many of us already have thriving forums and approaching clubs direct to ask them to use this instead of other Leagues'/Club's own will immediately put the two sites in conflict as it may be perceived as trying to poach users from those sites.

We do, however, appreciate that many Leagues'/Club's don't have anywhere to chat but I'm sure most of those will, in time, eventually find their own way here. Going direct dangerously undermines the work the more pro-active Leagues/Clubs have done (usually at some expense) and would be, in my opinion, the wrong route to take.

Many of our 740+ members on the NW Counties 13-15's site do visit here to view what is going on but may not wish to register until they have something to add to a particular debate ... it's just a waiting game!! We regularly on our own forum can have 20+ "guests" and only 2 or 3 registered users at times but this is not a concern as, the fact that they are visiting, means that the messages are being seen by a wider audience than our membership implies.

After a relatively slow start we have now had over 15000 posts (6000+ were deleted due to a misunderstanding hence why the counter currently shows 9000) since the 6th Feb 2008 and I should no doubt imagine several hundred thousand additional "hits" by those just wishing to keep up to speed with events and debates.

Let's stop trying to run before the thing can walk properly but instead try and get those that are meant to be the Leagues', Club's and Player's representatives on the Board to take a more active involvement if it is hoped to be a two-way communication medium as their lack of response is clearly one of the Forum's users biggest gripes.

Just another aside ... and I know it was discussed earlier, one of the reasons you may appear to have so many guests is that many of us still get booted even after logging in and the "log me in automatically" function does not appear to work. I know that you mentioned earlier to me that I may need to use to another platform but I am not that computer literate and whilst I may be able to do my home computer I think work may be a bit tetchy about me changing theirs.

IE is a very very popular platform and if there is a conflict which is not allowing users to stay online then it needs to be looked into. We too use PhP boards for our own forum and do not have this issue. By the way, this is an addition to my original post raised because as I pressed send, even though logged in, I was asked to log in again.

Had I not copied my original text I would have lost ten minutes typing ... very very infuriating!!!

[mick doyle]

Just how much prodding is needed Lee?

We all understand the ethos behind this forum, but it is you that asked for the sharper edge when you billed the sub forums.
You have consistently been getting serious responses from heavy players for a while now ( they head major Leagues after all) . It is not ' Barla bashing' , that's too easy a cop out. In fact you are probably getting a feed from ' Real Barla ', as it used to be, not the people currently allegedly in charge. The guys and gals doing the job on the ground day in day out.

Maybe one day, as you hope , you'll get to discussions about whether the ref got it right on the day ,or if it was a forward pass, or who serves the best pies, but for the moment this site will stand or fall on whether you can get the people at the top to communicate with the workers . I cannot for one moment think that you expected any of this, and life must be really tough for you. Have you thought of transferring the whole lot elsewhere?

Seriously. Absolute, total silence from the powers that be. From Chair to telephonist (I am told it is answered(?) even if the number got pinched). From everyone ,on absolutely everything ,that has been raised throughout this site. Get them (any of them) to input regularly , or at least declare that they won't.

By the way, though these posts may be far from it, I'm never against your suggestion of it being a love in. I can't wait for Mick, guitar in hand, Joni Mitchell style, singing ' Both sides now '.....

Peter,
I think Another brick in the wall by Pink Floyd is more apt

[Lee Marchant]

Thanks for all your thoughts guys,


Peter, I take onboard what you have said about lack of key members participating and hopefully some can be encouraged to come out of the woodwork a little more!
and don't worry about me, I'm quite thick skinned, if not comfortably numb

Sam, as I've said before, nobody is trying to take anyone away from any forum, just to give them another place to visit. I am more than happy for every club/league website/forum to be listed on here with regular links to guide people into them. I've used the expression "Hub" before, and its apt.

I agree with you on contacting the clubs directly, as I am an opponent of heavy handed spamming, it was just thinking out loud.

We handed out some flyers last night promoting the forum at the Yorkshire meeting, so I'm prepared to go in with the foot soldiers! we met quite a few people for the first time which was nice!

But link exchanging is certainly not spamming, and I've had great success with this with my previous forum, and I know damned well it also beneffited all the other websites and forums that linked from ours!

It took over 5 years to develop the previous forum I was with before, so I do know a bit about the long haul, however there are things you can do to help it along, and one of them is simply asking your current members to pass the word on, it's a simple as that!

As far as the logging out issue goes, It doesn't effect everyone who uses IE, in fact very few. It is something that should be resolved in the next software update which should be availalbe next month.

I don't really want to move back to phpbb3 (non invision) as all the little extra bits I have done would need coding from scratch.

As I said the problem doesn't exist with firefox which in my opinion is better than ie anyway.

[Big Bad Bri]

Lee,

I can't see any reason you couldn't email the clubs and invite them to join the forum so they can add their club pages.

It's an official site, so can't see how thats spamming

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