Hiking Message Board Promotion

“Hi all - I've been lurking on this board for some time now. There's a lot of activity with some great content here. I administer a New England hiking-based Web site. I receive a fair amount of traffic, but my message boards are dead. Does anyone have any ideas to increase traffic to the board? What do you look for in a board? Feel free to explore it a bit here:

http://www.alpinezone.com/hiking/hikeforum.mv

Thanks for your suggestions!

Regards,

Greg Blasko
AlpineZone.com
http://www.alpinezone.com/”

“No disrespect intended, but the site does not allow for easily reading the posts that came before. Here, a simple scroll up or down gives you the full view of the conversation at a glance. my .02 cents.”

“ditto what Ruffian said.”

“One way to increase your traffic is to decrease the traffic on this board. I do like the format of this board, and agree with the above!”

“Nekkid pitchers always work for me!”

“Greg you need to hire a designer or two or three to come up with a better look for the site. What I saw was clean but very generic & not very pleasing to the eye. See how matt uses those earth tones & active structure lines, well this site is not a soil yourself eye candy, but it aint half bad. & The controls are easy to use & the site is simple to navigate. I am not flooded with redundant blue hyper links. (Now for a quick plug) If you are interested in my services you can contact me at orbitmanifesto@yahoo.com personally or you can contact one of my internet sales associates at 3dex.com (a company I direct but do not own) if you like to pay for full service. If you want to see some of our work go to Americanbusinesscard.com or 4smile.com or 4chiro.com or 4vet.com.”

“learn to make links when you promote your site (we're lazy. cut and paste does not cut it.)

and hire trolls. we'll sell you tarp rat. reeeeeaally cheap.”

“Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far.

Ruffian, twig, jara - Unfortunately, the message boards are all created using a MIVA script template from my ISP. I've been considering UBB (Matt - is that what's used here?), but it's a bit expensive and I'm trying to ramp up traffic a bit before investing a lot in new software.

kleetn - What's so intriguing about a container for holding and pouring liquids? :P

orbit - The main part of the site has a much better design that the message boards. I've tried to design the Hiking section to capture an outdoors look and feel:

http://www.alpinezone.com/hiking/

And the Skiing section takes on a "colder" look:

http://www.alpinezone.com/skiing/

As a matter of fact, suggestions for the other areas of the site are welcome too.

Matt - you have a great site. Keep up the good work!

Greg Blasko
AlpineZone.com
http://www.alpinezone.com/”

“radagast - can I create links on this board using HTML or UBB?”

“Sure you can. Just type in the correct HTML language code for a link. I've done it:

SGT R0ck's Hiking H.Q. ”

“yep, ROKKMASTAH has it!”

“Ruffian's right. Not being able to easily follow the conversation would make me move on to the next site. Even if the content were solid gold.”

“Not that kinda pitcher..... one like THAT, except nekkid!”

“I'm a thebackpacker.com ho. I'm stayin rite here.”

“Greg, I know your message board is for New England hiking, but I live in CA, so I probably wouldn't visit the site or post messages.”

“kleetn, why do you want to see Marge Simpson nekkid?

There are very few New Englanders on this site. I'm interested in a site that includes my neck of the woods (Maine), but like most other sites I've looked at, the message board is too difficult to navigate.”

“Thats not Marge, It is one of her slutty smoking sisters.”

“Does Microsoft tell Sun Microsystems.
Does Macy's tell Alexanders, and does Coke tell Pepsi....
GOOD LUCK!!!”

“Maybe you should have a general hiking forum as well. Then you could draw in more. But I also agree that the thread system is a little hard to follow. Have you checked out trailplace.com? They do something similar, but you can also have it where it only shows new threads. It took a little getting used to but it works.”

“Greg,
Trail Talk is just a bunch of custom programming using ASP. I am working on trying to put together a version of the software that other sites can use since many people ask what program I use.”

“Well, I will have to say that you are very couragous to ask for feedback from this group.

Overall the site looks good. I don't really like the text feel. Seems a bit sterile. A little more graphics would provide more of an emotional feel to the home page.

The type of message board format you are using is quite common, but all the same, I find it that it doesn't fit my browsing style. My attraction to this site is the ability to go into a thread and see all the messages at once.

Also, since I am on the Best, er I mean West coast, the content would not bring me back.

Good luck.”

“Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I'm not looking to siphon visitors from this site. I'm just looking for a bit of advice on what you guys like about this board and how I can improve mine. Everyone's suggestions so far helped a lot.

I improved the look and feel of the board by incorporating the borders from the rest of the site:

The New England Hiker's Forum

I think I will look into UBB or some other more flexible software to run the boards (Matt - I would be interested in your software if/when it becomes available). I will also try to jaz up the rest of the site with some more images as well. Again, suggestions are welcome. Thanks everyone!

Greg Blasko
AlpineZone.com”

“No doubt about it, the ability to scroll up and down through all of the posts is what separates this site from the rest of the message boards.

As far as colors or artwork though, even this site could use some work. I'd love to see a picture of the day or week come up when you first entered the site. The supplier (the site users) could give information about the photo location, camera used, film used, F-stop, shutter speed, etc. if it was available. This would be a great draw to all the camera bugs in here.”

“My daughter has done some great things with a free coolboard site.”

“Greg --

I hike New England/NY and have bookmarked your site. THanks.”

“MaryPhyl - Can you give an example of a coolboard site?

Lee - Glad you like the site. We're always looking for New England Trip Reports and images. Pass them on!

Thanks all!

Greg Blasko
AlpineZone.com Hiking”

“Looks nice, but too professional.
Reminds me of Backpacker Base Camo.
Course' their lines of conversation are also too hard to follow.
You need to be a little more laid back and casual.
Kleetn's squirrel is a good place to start.
Folks here are right about the New England thing though; not many people from here there.
Look how hard it is for me to lure people out to my neck of the woods, and I'm in friggin' California.
Nothing but a n'er do well.”

“Hi again everyone - I came up with a new format for the forums using Everyone.net. They now take on a UBB look and feel. Please check them out and let me know if this approach is better than the original forums:

AlpineZone.com Message Forums

Let me know what you all think!

Thanks,

Greg Blasko
AlpineZone.com”

“it looks neat, but there are no messages, so it's hard to tell how it would read. i'm not trying to rag you or anything. well, not too much, anyways.”

“Rad, post a second message will ya? I posted first, lets see how this format will read, just fer funnsies...

No registration currently required, just post your user name and skip the password,”

“Ha ha radagast...I know there are no messages. I just set the thing up and want to get some opinions before going live with it.

Feel free to register and start some posts. That way you'll get a feel for using the board. Thanks all! :)”

“ST is right. I'm allowing guest posting to get some feedback. I'll probably require registration if/when I go live with it. Looking forward to feedback...

GB”

“ok, it still looks to damned busy. too much junk between posts. see how this one flows, on one page. eeaaaasy readin'.

BUT, what i REALLY like is that you see who the post is from before you have to read the drivel that follows. on this site, you start reading and realize that the post is crap, and then you see who it is from and you say "damn, well, if i'd have known THAT, i wouldn't have read it."

keep the names at the top of the post, but clean up the frames and maybe get rid of the "RE:" line (you know that you are responding to a particular post, it's kind of redundant. i know, this site has it, too. but it's not as intrusive.)”

“Why do I have to include a topic when I post a reply?”

“yeah, see, even twiggy don't like it.

sorry, i was really trying to be constructive here.”

“plus, after you post, it gives you this outline format of the posts. just make it take you back to the main directory.”

“The alternating white/gray backgrounds are a help in keeping the posts separate from one another.

Becareful how the response frame is setup, or folks will post pics and eat up your storage space...

By the way, a link to a picture site for your folks would be cool, that's one of Mattand Phil's features here and it really adds to the site!”

“I like the format, just not having to put a topic in for each reply, but that's no biggie. Being able to enter a URL without using html is a good thing.

Unlike rad, I get a kick out of guessing who started a thread before I open it and figuring out who wrote the post before I get to the name. Having been fooled by trolls in the past, this makes me feel pretty smart. I know, I'm easily amused.”

“You guys are being very helpful!

If you register as a user, there is a Preferences setting in your "Profile". You can set it to "Auto Fill Subject". If set to "On", the subject field for replies to posts will be pre-populated with the original subject as "Re: subject". The default is "Off".

I agree the format can be a bit busy. Unfortunately there is not a lot of customization allowed with it. For instance, the posting time is in GMT. Since the board is aimed at New Englanders, I'd like to have it set to ED/ST. But hey it's free, right?”

“GMT! LOL!!!! i didnt notice that at first! how bizarre!”

“The second format is much better...”

“Everyone.net does have some good features and they're only supposed to get better. I think the big down-fall with E1 is they do to many upgrades and some times you lose a feature you really liked. But I have stuck with them.”

“IF you are able, you should kill the topic line, it's not so bad here 'cause it adds so little distraction from the formatting. And after you post a message, whut's with the topics headings instead of the comments???? Even if everyone had "AUTO FILL SUBJECT" in the ON setting of their PROFILE page, heyall after you posted, all the dang headings would be the same when the page opens back up for you ..... so INSTEAD of seeing any comments all you'd see is a column of the Thread Name being repeated over and over. If you're this limited on whut you can do, I'd not visit the site very often. But now of course, I don't live in the Norheast either. G'luck.”

“you have a nice site, larock!”

“alpinezone,

That kind of setup works. That's what they have at the Red Wing site I visit. I don't spend much time there because I don't like having to go through all the different "screens". Too cumbersome in my opinion. If I were real interested, I'd visit anyway, but I'm not from the East so it doesn't really pertain to me. Looks like you've gotten quite the traffic regardless. Best of luck to you. :o)”

“Well thank you Radagast!”

“well, the subject matter was boring (i live in the southeast), but i love the setup. it was indeed much more vibrant and alive. it has a slick feel to it. it's good to see one in the beginning stages, and then see a developed one.

keep trying greg. you'll do fine.”

“What do the posters who are already using your message board think?”

“larock - yes you have a great site. Thank you also for pointing me to the Template page. I was able to add an AlpineZone.com header to the boards which helps it integrate into the rest of the site a bit.

Any other thoughts?”

“It does look better with your header. I have been procrastinating with creating a new header for mine, I would like to integrate the advertisement into it. Ya just gotta keep playing with it til it looks right.”