Fansite Guide - Staff

[Pegle]

A guide to managing the staff in your site successfully!

Introduction:

So, you've got your fansite, got your radio, got your layout and you've got your forum. Now all you need is a strong team of staff. Well this is harder than it sounds, so here's a few well explained tips to managing your staff well.

Advertising:

No one's going to know about your amazing site unless you advertise, hey? Here are a few key points to advertising:

• Create a well formatted forum post for the initial attraction (after they click on the link of course).
• Give a few examples of why staff are better off at your site.
• Start off with only a few jobs (News, Radio, Events).

Now that you have your staff, how are you going to organise them?

Organisation:

Start off with a very basic rank structure:

• Administrators (1/2 Owner(s), a Site Manager and a General Manager).
• Management (A Manager for each of the three departments, keep it basic).
• Radio (Manager manages all DJ's).
• News (Manager manages all reporters. I have a very basic approval system available for radiPanel).
• Events (Manager manages all Events Hosts).
• Forum (Manager manages all Moderators).

Other departments you can add later on include;

• Graphics
• Competitions/Campaigns
• Site Design/Development

As time goes on you can add Senior positions for managing teams. You want to have at least two teams worth before you add these Senior positions in and each have a differentiating amount for teams.

• Radio - One Senior DJ to regular DJ's while trying to keep them in timezones, (US, UK and AU/NZ).
• News - One Editor to 6-8 reporters.
• Events - One Senior Events Host to 4 or 5 Events Hosts.
• Forum - The Manager manages all the Moderators as it is a rather small department.

At this stage DO NOT have any other ranks/positions. If you want to expand you can start adding departments BUT start with the basic structure of Manager manages all of the staff in the department. Don't try and start with Assistant Managers and Head DJ's along with Chief Editors, etc because this will make your staff list look bare and then who's doing the actual work? Everyone would just be managing invisible staff members.

To create a bit of variety when you have enough staff in each department, you could have an Assistant Events Manager, Head DJ and an Editor-in-Chief. If you are successful enough to expand even further you can even have an Assistant Manager for each and every department.

Discipline:

Just because you have someone working for you and you are low on staff, does not mean you can ignore every one of their poor actions. This will deter other users from becoming staff and even users as a whole. Which would send your fansite RIGHT down the drain.

If they are a DJ and swear on air, give them a warning. If they make racial remarks on air and insult other staff members, maybe firing them would be a good idea.

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Well hopefully with these tips you can go on to manage your staff like a professional. (Wasn't quite sure which was the best forum. So move it if you feel it needs to be moved)

Written by Pegle of Habbo.com.

[Lee]

Great guide, and I can't agree more about keeping the staff list small at first because to me when 90% of the users on your forum have the staff user colour it just looks poor from a guests point of view! +rep.

[Samantha]

Your guides ok and I like how it's flexible and open to all alternatives. This wont suit those fansites who ate looking for a unique structure but I'm.sure it will get them on their way. You only speak briefly on advertising and staff though when they're not the only things that create a fansite but ok guide all the same.

[Milarz]

Good guide. Two things though, i'd always have two "seniors" than just 1, in a complete different timezone & wouldn't really call it "fire somebody", as it is a Habbo fansite, with "Volunteers", which in that case, you would say, "Release" somebody.

[Pegle]

Your guides ok and I like how it's flexible and open to all alternatives. This wont suit those fansites who ate looking for a unique structure but I'm.sure it will get them on their way. You only speak briefly on advertising and staff though when they're not the only things that create a fansite but ok guide all the same.

It's a guide for managing your staff. I could do more about other aspects but this is about staff. And yes I couldn't think of much for advertising and may improve it when I have time.

Good guide. Two things though, i'd always have two "seniors" than just 1, in a complete different timezone & wouldn't really call it "fire somebody", as it is a Habbo fansite, with "Volunteers", which in that case, you would say, "Release" somebody.

Thank you for your feedback. But it depends on whether you have people in completely different timezones (e.g. US and AU/NZ) you may need a "Senior" for each of the two timezones.

Great guide, and I can't agree more about keeping the staff list small at first because to me when 90% of the users on your forum have the staff user colour it just looks poor from a guests point of view! +rep.

Thank you!

[Milarz]

Thank you for your feedback. But it depends on whether you have people in completely different timezones (e.g. US and AU/NZ) you may need a "Senior" for each of the two timezones.

That's what i said? lol

[Pegle]

Yes, I was saying it depends. So you don't need two if you have people from US and UK when you are starting out with Senior's in your departments.

[Samantha]

Yeah I realised after haha good though it's a nice idea.

[Milarz]

US & UK are not too big on time difference. I'm talking about one of them & something else on the otherside of the world, such as NZ, Australia, Russia & so on. Otherwise if you just have US/UK, theres 12 hours of a dead forum. Which is what happens all the time when a fansite is based on just one area of the world.

[Pegle]

I don't want to get into an argument here, but did you not read what I said?

So you DON'T need two if you have people from US and UK

As in if you had 5 people from the US/UK people and 5 people from Russia, Japan and Australia then you would need two seperate Seniors.