R.I.D BASE OF OPERATIONS

Hey Guys,

Currently I am the administrator for www.gamerhabitat.com and I am thinking of completely revamping it to www.swgspace.com. Right now it is an online social networking site for all gamers but I think it would be great for SWG. I could customize it up and down for SWG and probably make some partnerships with some of the big SWG websites. My question to you my fellow RID members is, what do you think? Is an online social networking site for SWG a good idea? Do you think people would join and contribute? Would you help me make it better with your suggestions and ideas? Another question is should I make it SWG only or should I make it SWTOR also? It is so hard to figure out, I could really use your ideas. Please post any that you have! I really just want to create something that people can use, and not just another useless website. It does have guild hosting too btw.

I've been a bit busy lately, so haven't been able to work on the RID entry there, but I hope to get to work on that soon

That didn't answer my questions! lol

Well of course I think it's a good idea

As for the SWOTR, I don't think it'd hurt to add it in.

And the link for SWGSpace doesn't seem to work.

so are u thinking a mix of the two together?

To be honest, given where SWG is at in its lifespan I'm not sure how much success you would have making it a dedicated site to just SWG. With that said, I guess its a question of where do you stop? Supporting all games is a stretch, especially if you are the sole webmaster for the site. Even supporting just popular MMOs can be an uphill battle. The key to expanding any web site is to expand the base you're providing content to. The more games, popular ones especially, that your website could cover, then the more traffic you will get to your site. The other kicker is that the more customizable you can make web site for your users, the more enticed people will be to participate in your site.

Social networking sites are not only fun, but also a practical means of communications for many people. Of course, everybody has a MySpace or Facebook account. So if you're going to make a social networking site it has to be unique and offer something special. I think you've already found your special niche, now you just have to get it out there and find a way to be different from the other "game" oriented social networking site.

So what do I think? Well, one must always start small. One way would be to focus strictly on SWG and expand from there or even support the top 5 MMOs out there and work up. But like I said, given SWG's age I think it would be a mistake to base a site strictly on it. Most stronger SWG guilds already have web sites or message boards. Trying to break those guilds away from what they already have would be tougher than it looks in my opinion. Meanwhile, you could cater to a variety of games that have a lot of life in them and pull in new users who aren't tied to any specifc site yet.

This is all my opinion. I'm not really sure what your overall intentions are with your web site, so take my opinions as just that... opinions. No matter what, I wish you luck in building a successful website (trust me, it ain't easy, but the satisfaction from doing so is quite enjoyable).

Thanks for all the insight, I will take all of it into consideration.

After contemplating everything you said Kurke, I think I will keep it the way it is. My original idea was to create special features inside the site for particular games and groups. I have done this for the Gaming Radio Network and I think I should concentrate on doing that for other things as well. I do not want to re-invent the wheel so to speak, and offer stuff that other sites already have. I do think though that one great feature for guilds is that they can upload videos and pictures specifically to their guild page for everyone to see. Would be great for our recruitment video(s). I'll take any ideas you have to offer tho

Agreed, no need to reinvent the wheel. That doesn't mean you can't throw some slick rims on it!!!

To be fair, I haven't really dived too deep into your site, so if some of the things I suggest already exist, please let me know.

Just tossing out suggestions, is there any way for guilds to customize their pages, a la MySpace? One thing I noticed was that all of the guild pages tend to have the same look (they all keep the same white background with green header). Is there a way to customize this or are they stuck into this scheme?

Another thing that might be helpful to a user would be on the Browse Guilds page the ability to use a drop-down box to filter the game they want. For instance, you could load the page in a "view all" mode with a drop-down at the top that lists the games and when you select one game, all other results are filtered out so that just that game's servers show in the list. Alternately, a tree menu might work well for this as well where at the parent level you have all of the gamess with a little + sign beside the game. When you press the + sign or click the game name, it expands to show all of the servers registered to it. Click the + sign beside the server name and you get a list of guilds registered to the server.

I'll keep looking at the site to see if there is anything else I think could be added. Overall, the site is a great concept and has what appears to be a well-laid infrastructure behind it.

Actually guilds can customize their layout and look just like one can their profile space. The one you are seeing is probably the default one that they didn't change. You can actually click on Browse Guilds and it shows the number of guilds per game and per server. If you click on the game or server it shows only the guilds for that category. I'm working on a toon creation platform right now that can be associated with particular guilds. So far it is coming along nicely but I am having some problems calling the guild name instead of the guild ID # from the mysql database. I havn't been working on it much lately but I need to get back into it. There are quite a few things you will not see if you don't join though. Thanks for the feedback