Creating a site? (Your process)

So I find myself in the fortunate predicament of making a site with a new co-admin and I thought about how I make a site from start to finish and was curious how others did it.

1. I start by getting my site idea.
2. Come up with a site theme (preferably not the standard cliche)
3. Start the skin.
4. Work on content
5. Finish skin
6. Work on the small things including buttons, advertisements tweaking fixing.
7. Open site.

So how do you do it?

 

Ooh it's been ages! But I've been toying around starting up a small one.

1. I like doing all the writing and organizing and documentation first.
2. When all that's done, then create and configure a forum.
3. It's something to try - I see people building hype before it opens with coming soon forum sings.

 

When @Gina, another individual, and myself opened Risk, it was a unique situation because we were creating a 3rd/4th iteration of a concept we created a few years back. With a bit of trial and error we'd figured out what was working and what wasn't so this time around it was starting from scratch with a pre-existing idea and a better sense of how to accomplish it.

Our workflow went a little like this:

1. Define Goals
Before plots and before skins and hosting and all the little details, we sat down and had a very high level discussion about what we wanted our site to accomplish. It looked a little something like this:

• Create a system that requires as little staff involvement as possible.
• Avoid "Limited" or "All-Powerful" Species
• Allow all characters the same opportunities, but don't require them
• Be mindful of real life obligations

A snippet, but you get the idea.

2. Pick a Genre. Establish Your World
With the goals in mind, decide your genre. Create your storyline and as new details begin to reveal themselves, start outlining your guidebook. Have conversations about species, settings, time periods.

When you're ready, start talking out of character too. What kind of community to do you want to have? What rules does your forum need?

Take notes, start writing, but don't set everything in stone. At this point you're still creating a framework.

3. Divide and Conquer.
Figure out who's good at what. As there were 3 of us involved in this process we were able to break it up based on our strengths and pass things around for review when necessary.

• Hosting
• Forum Plugins and Modifications
• *Forum Design and Graphic Standards
• *Forum Coding
• *Content Creation
• *PR/Recruitment

* While some of these steps are required to come before others, I starred a few things that happened simultaneously or throughout the entire process.

I'm sure there's more that can be thrown into this list, but the important thing is to share the responsibility. Gina did the initial heavy lifting with the coding and I picked it up later so she could be more involved in generating interest for the site. Our third did a majority of content creation and that was a large enough task she stayed with it the entire time.

In doing this, I highly recommend jumping in Skype and hopping in a call with your staff team. Sharing thoughts, ideas, and staying in constant communication with each other is the best way of staying on the same page.

Also, keep checking back to your goals. If there's ever a question about whether or not your game should offer something, your goals will help keep you on track.

4. Beta Test
I never thought to do this, but now that we've done it, I really wouldn't have it any other way.

Have a soft release. Open your forum up to a few friends and let them play around with your game. Let them ask the questions you haven't thought about or test a rewards system to make sure it makes sense. Refine your guidebook as needed.

If people are allowed to be a part of the process, they have a greater investment in it and tend to stay.

With Risk, we introduced a leveling system based on "How Long Have you been Registered on the Site" and "Post Count." We had no idea if it would work or make sense. So we gave our "Beta Testers" the option of joining with a character at any level any species, just to try it out. We got a lot of really good feedback.

Few things to keep in mind here:

• Make sure your Beta Testers know the site is not officially open and things are subject to change
• Ask them not to advertise the site until its ready
• Encourage questions and suggestions
• Keep them informed of any changes made to the content on the site

Feel free to read our Beta Announcement for additional ideas.

Remember! If your Beta Users roll over into the Alpha (Official Opening) of the site, be sure to reward them in kind. At Risk, allowing Beta Testers to join with characters at any level created a "loop hole" for players to bring back old characters that wouldn't make sense after Risk officially opened and now restricts joining to Level 1-4.

5. Advertise & Open
At this point your game should be pretty solid. Any feedback you've received should be considered and implemented accordingly. Make an announcement to your Beta testers to prepare them for an open date and ask them to make any final revisions to their characters before "Go-Live".

If all goes well, your Beta Testers will stick around and become a solid member base. When people look at your site, they'll see activity.

 

That depends on what kind of site I am working on. I don't make a lot of rp sites to begin with, so I don't think i have a process for that. For my current site it was wonky anyway.

1. Oww, new software! Must install and try out!
2. Ahhh, this is awesome, must use for, for ... something!
3. uhoh, I have 4 ideas for a setting, now what?
4. Ah well, I just use ALL OF THEM!
5. Oh, need new layout.
6. Must make first post!
7. Wonder if anyone will join?
8. WTF? We have 6 members in the first week? Now what do we do?
9. Should I even advertise?
(Said site is now 2 years old.)

For other sites, the idea and need comes first. Then I pick a design and load the content. Sometimes I have content before I design. There are no rules, really.

 

I'm probably an anomaly, because I tend to mull it over for months or years, formulating ideas. I spent the downtime of my last job scribbling notes in my notepad for the RPG I'm now running. I had the forum up and running in a basic, ugly form for about a year before it was even launched, so I could draft out the rule pages and such and do things gradually over time like getting mods that I needed working and installed. Then when I got back after five months of working in Japan (during which I would dream and draft on slow days), I finally had enough free time to finish up all the stuff I'd been putting off. But honestly, there's large parts of my site that I'm still working on even half a year after launch. Rewriting stuff to make it clearer, tidying up content, adding new functionality etc ...

Obviously this is probably pretty extreme as far as RPGs go. Most folks just spend a few days on a caffeine binge writing up content. :P But after watching my previous site die after several painstaking iterations, I wanted to make sure this one was fully ready when I pressed the 'Go' button.

 

Helixagon, if only more people took the time and care you took... (Maybe not took the same length of time exactly, but at least longer than like you put it "2 days on a caffeine binge") more sites would succeed and last longer than 2 months.

Personally, I haven't opened a site in over 4 years now... I've been with the same one the whole time so I'm pretty rusty here.

My process would likely be something like:
- Pick and set up forum software (set it offline).
- Create staff section (make it invisible)
- Create rules forum.
- Write all the basic rules down.
- Create application section.
- Create basic application sheet.
- Create starting forums (no more than 8).
- Start thinking of FAQs that people may need to ask and write all the answers down.
- Refine rules based on FAQs and later thought processes.
- Refine character sheet based on FAQ and rules.
- Create/install a theme.
- Customize the theme (add a sidebar, populate it with links, add chatbox, etc...)
- Create my character.
- Open the game.
- Start posting.
- Hit up directories.
- Post more.
- Advertise more.
- Repeat from 2 steps back to (and including) this one.

 

My process was (for the site I created from scratch)

1. Mull on an idea for months (if not more than one year)
2. Find somebody to skin a forum for me.
3. Write documentation (rules, application, plot, setting, historical context, any other helping documentation about the historical era, writing documentation, etc)
4. Create a few characters
5. Convince someone to draw me a map of the place, the graphics for the advertisement and the affiliation button.
6. Find a few friends to invite to the site
7. Open a few threads
8. Approve their characters
9. After a few weeks with ironing little problems, having the official opening and putting the site into directories, plugboards, etc.
10. Launching a massive advertising spree

 

1. Hankering for fandom A, genre B
2. Formulate idea.
3. Write plot, lore and docs.
4. Make site.
5. Publish and advertise.
6. RP the crap out of it and have a truckload of fun. ^^

 

Hm... I guess my process is pretty similar to most.

1. Think about the idea I want to RP.
2. Think about it even more.
3. Find at least one person who's on board with it, too. (Even if they're not staff, I will not open a board if it's just me interested in playing on it.)
4. Make the forum if I'm going to go with it.
5. Start creating documents and put them into pages and links.
6. Make a couple of starting characters.
7. Make the actual forum sections so I can start posting announcements, intros, and other starting threads.
8. Test out theme ideas, pick one and stick with it, fix all the little bugs.
9. Start RP posts with whoever else is opening the board with me.
10. Open to public and start advertising.

 

I think that most people really have a similar process, and this thread certainly proves that.

The way that I usually go about things starts with a formulated idea for a site. I talk it out with people who I know would be interested, scribble all my info and ideas on some paper (this could be a long process or a short process depending on the intensity of the site) and then begin on the forum. I like to skin it all first and get the look that I want before I move ahead.

Then, I add in my content such as game info, rules and all that. Next comes the extra coding and decoration. Once all that is done, then I advertise and start the site off with an event.

Opening events give a good way to get players integrated and interacting. I have been on a few sites where there were cliques and groups that never interacted. It lead to a pretty boring experience. Sure, you aren't going to get along with everyone, but if you use events and things like that to get people together, your site is generally less 'divided'.

 

My method of design isn't so different from the OP's, but the biggest issue I run into is wondering if my concept is even going to get off the ground. Getting over that hump of the first 5-10 members can take a while, and it makes me consider the quality of my idea, whether the structure is appealing, the colors, etc. until, sometimes, I get so discouraged I drop it altogether. I need people to beta test my sites haha

 

1. Have RP fever
2. Can't find a setting/system I like
3. Let the RP hype build for months.
4. Finally break down to go make my own.
5. Find a few close friends that have done online/forum RP before
6. Start crafting a setting
7. Start talking systems
8. Try systems
9. Scrap System and retry
10. Repeat step 9 2x-4x
11. Make the forum and make it purdy
12. Technical stuff
13. ADVERTISE!

 

I tend to:
1. Come up with ideas
2. Use twitter bootstrap to develop a theme
3. Work on developing the feature or content etc.
4. Test the implemented features
5. Release it