Star Wars - Rebel's Lair

I started this Star Wars discussion forum in late August. I now have 24 members and growing. Which is really not too bad considering how many star wars message boards there are. Also a lot of those 17 members are pretty active. The designs of this board are pretty simple. I like the way I have my layout because it is clean and neat. Make sure to check out the Expanded Universe board (where you can learn and discuss) and the Star Wars Vault board (where you get your SW entertainment fix with Fan Films, Music videos, and pictures). You must join to see those boards. I thought making this forum would be a lot of fun and it sure has been. What do you think?

http://rebelslair.proboards83.com/index.cgi

 

What can you tell us about your site other than "join my site"? What type of boards does it have? What type of members does it have? Why have you created this site? What are your goals for this site?

I, personally, would need to know a lot more before taking a look.

 

Okay. Sorry it took a while but I just now changed the first post. Is that good enough?

 

No comments or suggestions?

 

I certainly applaud that you are making a star wars website and trying to get more viewers, but the reason you arent getting much activity in this thread is two-fold.

1.) you are advertising for forums on the biggest star wars forums out there already. What do your forums offer that the TFN forums dont? What reason does someone have to go to your forums instead of just continue to post here? If you can answer those questions in a way other than saying "they are awesome" then you might be on to something. Unfortumately, the TFN forums are pretty vast with niches for almost everyone already.

2.) in the grand tapestry that is the star wars online fan and official website community, you are a redundency. Between the official site, TFN and the galactic senate, there are enough forum sites to support the community alone. However, then you have hundreds of other small forum sites like yours in addition. While I am sure you put quite a bit of hard work into your site, and the layout is quite nice, you simply arent offering anyone anything new or different from all the forums already out there.

Now, that is not to say forums in general are horrible. My fan site has a forum. However, my fansite ISNT a forum. My fan site creates star wars fan comics, fan fiction and fan D20 material. We have a forum to SUPPORT the comics, fiction and D20 material. It would be awesome if you could take the energy you are putting into this forum project, and instead do something new for star wars fandom. Become the foremost expert on some small corner of the star wars universe, and build a site around that. Then have a forum that supports THAT. Pick a character, Greedo maybe? Do a Greedo tribute website. Make a timeline of Greedo's life, write your own fan fics about greedo, collect greedo fan art from across the internet, etc. Pick a species, or a planet, or a starship. An Imperial Star Destroyer website would be AWESOME. A list of every named ISD ever and their captains, a deckplan, list of appearances, etc etc etc. These would be amazing sites that contribute something new to the star wars fan community. If you did one of those, and did it even only moderately well, because you would have no competition online, your site would almost immediately become at least semi-popular.

I hope you take this in the way it was intended, as constructive criticism. If you leaf through this forum, you will notice hundreds of posts of new star wars forums being started. I can understand why. Forums are very easy to create, it doesn't require TOO much work on the part of the website maintainer. Doing something new requires a lot more effort.

Best of luck!

Keith "Nar" Kappel
http://www.fandomcomics.com

 

Thanks for the comments and suggestions Nar. I agree with what you have to say. I agree that creating a site with something "special" would be better for activity. But having a forum is more enjoyable in my opinion. I love having discussions about SW. And the fact that I am doing this mainly for fun (and it sure has been). I have actually done pretty good for having "a billion of the same message board sites" type board. I've seen the same types of boards have around 3-6 members and stopped, then sometimes shutdown. I have 24 members and the activity has been great for that amount. I have some good loyal active members. I have a couple boards that many of those "single digit member SW boards" doesn't and it really helps.

 

any more?