Member to Guest rates

[GommeInc]

The welcome banner guests see isn't inviting... It seems more of a "This is what we are" rather than "See what you can be a part of".

Welcome to HabboxForum!
HabboxForum.com is part of Habbo's oldest fansite, Habbox.com. Here at HabboxForum we offer you a chance to meet fellow Habbos, discuss a wide range of topics and best of all participate in a range of events and competitions in which you could win rares and credits on Habbo.com.

Wherever in the world you are, you can take part in this fun by Registering at HabboxForum today! Click here to get involved now or click here for help.

I would like to see inviting sentences and words like "Do you like what you see?" or "You can be a part of this community by registering" etc. At the moment it isn't drawing people into registering, assuming there are a lot of people browsing the forums who are actually human beings rather than Bots set to appear as Guests.

Perhaps you could build on Chippiewill's idea and that is instead of "forcing" guests to sign up or log-in, perhaps a pop-up saying "Care to join us?" or something could appear that isn't too forceful? It's the sort of pop up you get all the time with websites wanting to compile a survey. Seems better than being forceful, which makes you seem far too desperate which is undesirable, as some users on here may agree with (or they do not like being redirected to a sign-up page, either way, not very nice )

[Chippiewill]

I wish vb removed bots from the guest count like phpbb does, we'd be able to see some more useful stats then. But even taking bots into account at a rough guess (50 tops, unless the google analytics, image, both web, shopping and all their other bots are looking at habbox 24/7) that's still a lot of people just reading.

As people have said they don't like the 'force-join' attitude, but no harm in inline stuff except a couple more kbs of bandwidth and also in improving the welcome banner as above..

Would be nice to see management opinion (Apart from Inseriousity's brief comment)? (Especially before it gets to long for Matt to bother reading it..)

I think the major issue for habbox going ahead is gaining new members, and more thought should be going towards it.

Edit: Formatting of registration page on IE needs fixing, the entry boxes are all over the place.

[Eoin247]

Just to add some input to the IE problem. I used to use IE before changing to chrome and while using it i constantly had problems using habbox forum on it. I reported this a few times but i'm not sure if the problems ever got fixed (seems they didn't?) .

Most casual pc users use IE as it's the default browser for most computers and most people don't bother changing it. It's just as important if not more to have habbox forum working well on IE as it is on other browsers.

[scottish]

Before attempting to get any guests to sign up, I think they need to sort the fact the forums down for like 2 hours a day, and when it's not it's lagging like hell

That's more likely to put every new member off, rather than attract new members.

[Catzsy]

Before attempting to get any guests to sign up, I think they need to sort the fact the forums down for like 2 hours a day, and when it's not it's lagging like hell

That's more likely to put every new member off, rather than attract new members.

The forum does seem a lot better now but I agree it puts both members and new members off than it has recently and I believe we do more than a lot of forums to try to get new members posting and active. As somebody said prior to this post most of the 'guests' are bots.


Edit: Message from xxxMATTGxx

I have seen the thread and I do have a reply ready to post but to an error on the forum I can't submit just yet.

[xxMATTGxx]

Thanks Rosie!

Right:

Before attempting to get any guests to sign up, I think they need to sort the fact the forums down for like 2 hours a day, and when it's not it's lagging like hell

That's more likely to put every new member off, rather than attract new members.

Jin is/has been speaking to the datacenter in terms of any recent major downtime and he has also looked into a problem that may be causing us the issues lately.


Hello Chippie, I'm posting in your thread on the 2nd page, are you happy?

- "Second Post in a Thread" join the forum advertising

Could you explain this? I'm not sure what this is or maybe I'm not thinking straight at the moment.


- Every ten/twenty pages redirect them to a page asking them if they'd want to join

Could do but then that's a bit like the force registration but maybe a pop up like others have suggested on the actual page they are viewing, seeing they want to join the forum or what not. So they are on HabboxForum and after X amount of minutes, a notification pops up asking if they would like to join the community and so on.

That way it doesn't redirect them off the forum completely and still see it. Hmmmm

- Rewrite the guest welcome banner so that it talks about stuff like competitions and prizes first.

That can be done and should be done to encourage members to join the forum. I'll tag [@]@Sct[/@] into the post so he can see the thread.

- Fix how the layout looks in IE, there are some minor bugs in places that may be off-putting to guests who are more likely to be using IE.

What can you say, It's HotelUser. He hates anything Microsoft! (I'm having a joke David, don't kill me!) - I don't use IE and I don't know which bugs you are fully talking about but feel free to post them in the bugs forum and we can make sure [@]@HotelUser[/@] gets round to fixing them if possible. Although sometimes it's due to the end user using an outdated version of IE, so Windows XP users need to upgrade to IE8 at least and Windows Vista or 7 should upgrade to IE9. They should do that regardless if they use it or not.

Just to add some input to the IE problem. I used to use IE before changing to chrome and while using it i constantly had problems using habbox forum on it. I reported this a few times but i'm not sure if the problems ever got fixed (seems they didn't?) .

Most casual pc users use IE as it's the default browser for most computers and most people don't bother changing it. It's just as important if not more to have habbox forum working well on IE as it is on other browsers.

Yes I agree but also depends which bugs these are, some are due to IE not being as good as other browsers in terms of showing the same result in Firefox and Chrome. If they are bugs that can be fixed then I do 100% agree with you.

[scottish]

- "Second Post in a Thread" join the forum advertising

Could you explain this? I'm not sure what this is or maybe I'm not thinking straight at the moment.


- Every ten/twenty pages redirect them to a page asking them if they'd want to join

Could do but then that's a bit like the force registration but maybe a pop up like others have suggested on the actual page they are viewing, seeing they want to join the forum or what not. So they are on HabboxForum and after X amount of minutes, a notification pops up asking if they would like to join the community and so on.

- "Second Post in a Thread" join the forum advertising

I'm sure hes talking about on some forums theres always an advert as the second post, something like http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=239981 but instead of having an advert to somewhere else, have advert to sign up to hxf.

- Every ten/twenty pages redirect them to a page asking them if they'd want to join

If you allow members to constantly view the forum then they'll probably not bother registering, imho something like this won't put someone off using it but will encourage them to sign up to avoid the redirect. Could also do when a guest first comes on habbox they are forced to view a thread, the thread could give benefits of signing up etc but they can alternatively just go back and skip it, so technically not forcing them to sign up

[Inseriousity.]

I've lurked on digitalspy for ages. It all depends on the content. I have been tempted to sign up if there was a good thread I'd like to post inbut there's never been enough incentive for me to take that extra leap. Instead of force-reading threads or whatever, it would be imo much more beneficial to focus on improving the incentives to ensure that as many people as possible take the leap from lurker to registered user and then from there, committed user.

[Blinger]

DOn't do force reading, they piss me off. If I see one I just leave

[-:Undertaker:-]

I joined this forum after reading the forum for months beforehand, usually reading the UK News and Rumours forum for 'juicy news' which I wouldn't get if I just stayed on the hotel. A view block would produce unintended consquences as 'good ideas' like this usually do if they aren't examined properly. The pop-up idea seems good though, make it very friendly 'simple sign up' and I think it might work.