Wednesday, Jun 18th 2008
A look to the future
 

As many of you know I am the owner of the Amateur and over at fanfilmsforum.com. I am always keen on making new things happen for people and have always wanted that community to do well. While I will admit my aspirations to make films has some what died down, I still very much enjoy talking about films and media in general and interacting with the folks on the .

Over the years I have started and stopped several projects for the . Most of them looked good on paper, or even half way through production but just didn’t pan out for one reason or another. The latest attempt was at making a film repository and voting system that was similar to IMDB but specifically for amateur/. As of right now that project is on hold - likely forever.

For many years the in and of itself has done very well with out much additions. But it’s not a blockbuster domain and traffic is moderate to be sure. At this point we only get about 45k hits a month which really isn’t very good, but just fine for a small community like ours.

I have been noticing a slight decline in the visitation of the site over the course of the last year. The odd thing is, my Unique hits per month is actually going up, a lot. That’s good. That means new folks are showing up, but the over all total is going down, which means a general lack of repeat visitors. It’s an odd situation to be honest.

What this implies to me is that it’s lacking in content or atleast a reason for people to come back more than a couple times a month. The issue is, I don’t have the time to create the kind of content required to keep folks rolling in and enlisting people on the to do that job for me, especially for free, doesn’t really seem a good idea because they have lives and don’t have the time to do it either.

I need a way to bring more traffic to the site, and do it in a “work free” way. I think I have an idea that solves that nicely.

First of all it’s coming up on time for a new theme for the board. It’s starting to look dated and needs a new look. With that new look I’m pondering giving users their own blogs.

What I’m thinking of doing is encorporating a MultiUser version of such that any user that wants it, can create his own blog about his film project and experiences. They’d have complete control over the blog, it’s content, what it looks like, how it behaves, the files associated with it, etc..

It would most likely live at http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/{users blog name}/ .. These would be free individual blogs — Since the traffic to the site is primarily associated with , most likely these blogs would be about peoples films. However I wouldn’t enforce that.. if you want it about something else that’s fine.

I would need to figure out a way to tie in the , some link that ties directly back to the or maybe my ads on the page or something.. Something minor and unobtrusive that doesn’t piss folks off..

This would give the site a new outlet for content that is user created. This means people like myself wouldn’t have to dig for new content on a daily basis and I wouldn’t have to beg my users to do it for me. Instead users who actually wanted to do this would do it of their own accord. Plus it’s a way to give back to the community and give those folks who want it a free outlet for their own creative juices.

This is still very much in the idea and planning phase. Thoughts and opinions are very much welcome.

Additional Information:

  • Main blog will be at http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/  Anyone with a account and of a certain rank will be allowed to post.
  • Anyone can have a blog and the address will be http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/{users blog name}
  • The main blog will pull blog entries from the user blogs
  • With this, redesign the to show a blog feed like a widget on a side bar or something

Hard parts:

The only thing that seems remotely challenging is making and IPB play nice with one another. I don’t think it will be hard, but it will be time consuming as I’m not 100% sure about some of IPB’s DB calls.

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10:06 pm -- Wednesday, Jun 18th 2008
Tauni

I actually think that is a really good idea to do a blog area!

I have a forum I go to that has a journaling and blog area that is accessed through the main page of the forum. Each person can set up their own blog or “journal” and put whatever they would like/want in it…as well as others being able to comment in it. More people use the journal area than the blog area. The difference in the two is the full blog you don’t have to be a member of the forum to write, read or comment. For the “journaling” area, you have to be a member to write, read or comment in that area.

If you didn’t want to do a blog, you could do an unmoderated journal area. Basically same thing as a blog but they have to use the forum to get to the journal area.

 
11:31 pm -- Wednesday, Jun 18th 2008
Clive

I think it would be really cool if more people in the fan film community blogged about their WIPs, but I wonder if it would really work out that well. I’ve looked for fan film blogs for ages, and most are abandoned efforts that detail the beginnings of equally abandoned fan productions. I really wanted a news source about all fan flicks, and that’s what led me to start my own fan film blog, fancinematoday.com. If you take this direction, I hope it gets a solid following ’cause I’d love to see some more fan film bloggers (fflogers?) out there besides myself.

 
11:42 pm -- Wednesday, Jun 18th 2008
Jason

Thanks Tuani that gives me something to think about..
And Welcome Clive.. You very much hit the nail on the head for my concerns with the project. I fear that there will be a myriad of unfinished/abandoned blogs. To that end I would likely put some sort of visitation counter on it so that if after a time (a year or something) if no one comes to it, just delete it.

I really like the idea of users having a place where they can talk about what they are doing in a blog sort of way.. And while some would be worthless, those few that aren’t would be great!

 
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