Is V7N the next Sitepoint/Digitalpoint/etc? - Page 2

Mong · 04-13-2006, 06:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnScott

That would be so cool if you were willing to put money on that. We have already beat several other forums, many of them older than v7n.

Why not v7n is great community but i wrote in context with dp and sp.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnScott

So would I.

And I think we will. I don't say that lightly either. We have stuff in the works to make it happen.

Convert guests -> members then v7n will be really #1 community.
And it can really boost way up if human dependancies are minimal in the long run.

**James Trotta** · 04-13-2006, 06:27 AM

IMO, he only reason that we haven't become as big as DP and SP are the markletplaces. In terms of post count, it may be that DP has their free tools and SP has their blogs and ebooks and things.

**G10** · 04-13-2006, 06:35 AM

Personally, I don't think v7n is going to become the Sitepoint/Digitalpoint or the like as it is it's own thing.

I have been a member at some other places and never really felt that they were that warm and ended up drifting off after a while.

It seems a little different here and there seems to be more of a caring community thing going on which is what keeps me.

That, and the fact that John threatened to send someone round to slash my tyres on the 3'rd day of every month if I left

Each community has it's own slant and I have found this one to be the warmest and friendliest.

BTW - If you disagree with that, you're banned

John Scott · 04-13-2006, 06:48 AM

G10, I don't know that warmth and frindliness is entirely not scalable. If we can indeed scale the warmth, we will get there, I think.

In the end, people want community plus.

Community plus coding information.
Community plus SEO facts.
Community plus marketplace.
Community plus entertainment.
Community plus learning...

We have community. We have community plus SEO learning, marketing, etc. We do not have a whole lot going in the coding dept. ...

I want to get more people bringing new fresh ideas to the table. I think the blog.v7n thing will bring some freshness and newness to v7n.

Then we got to get graphics built up, and coding built up, and other areas, but it all is going to happen one step at a time.

Mong · 04-13-2006, 06:51 AM

imo v7n has enough potential to boost way up from other neighbour forums if only few new things are done.

digitalpoint · 04-14-2006, 05:06 PM

Someone ought to just start an entire forum with topics of Digital Point vs. SitePoint vs. WebMasterWorld, vs. SEO Chat vs. V7N.

You could probably find 1000 threads across different forums with those topics. heh

No one is really competing against any of the others, so it's kind if a silly topic... but it *is* funny.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnScott

That would be so cool if you were willing to put money on that. We have already beat several other forums, many of them older than v7n.

Wait... since when are you the underdog here? I'm the underdog. My forum is the youngest.

**G10** · 04-14-2006, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

No one is really competing against any of the others, so it's kind if a silly topic... but it *is* funny.

Agreed

Good to see you hear dude.

Game on

DarrenC · 04-14-2006, 05:26 PM

Well I can't comment on Sitepoint but I'm liking V7n over DP at the moment.

... too many categories IMO.

digitalpoint · 04-14-2006, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarrenC

Well I can't comment on Sitepoint but I'm liking V7n over DP at the moment.

... too many categories IMO.

Yeah... it's one of the necessary evils as a forum grows. I used to think Sitepoint had too many categories, but now Digital Point is to the point that it becomes a necessity to start breaking categories down into sub-categories. It's just because of the sheer number of topics/posts. If you don't start breaking them down further, you end up with a clusterf*ck of topics in a single forum, and a page of "new threads" only spans 5 minutes before they are rolled off to page 2.

Bjorn Solstad · 04-14-2006, 06:50 PM

What I have most problems with at DP is the fact that it has become a "we cover everything" forum. For me, that quickly gets to time consuming, and the really good threads gets burried so fast that I never catch them anymore.

V7N seems going in a slower pace - at least still, and that is something that suits MY personality. I always liked the slower places with fewer people more than the crowded places.

digitalpoint · 04-14-2006, 06:55 PM

I'm in complete agreement. It certainly has lost some of it's "tight knit" group feel it once had. As a forum gets big there's really no choice but to trade some of that off. The only other option would be to just close new user registrations. At one point I knew 90% of the people in the forum, now with 100 new user registrations per day, and 3,500+ posts per day, I don't know everyone and I certainly don't have time to read everything. The lame part (for me) is that my job ends up being more of a "how to keep the spammers out" type of deal (1,000 or so banned users in the forum already.. hehe)

As you can see here, the forum started with just a few categories...

http://web.archive.org/web/200403251...italpoint.com/

My general rule is once a forum has over 1,000 threads (without any sub-forums), it's time to look into the possibly of splitting out some sub-forums.

As you can see here, the addition of sub-forums has been a slow progression (only as absolutely needed) over time:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...gitalpoint.com

John Scott · 04-14-2006, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

No one is really competing against any of the others, so it's kind if a silly topic... but it *is* funny.

I will admit that I got a competitive spirit these days, and want V7N to be a top ranked forum. Right now DP, WMW and SP are the "top level" and V7N is "second tier" traffic-wise, and I definitely look to join that top rank.

Of course, competing doesn't mean pitting one forum against another.

Quote:

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

Wait... since when are you the underdog here? I'm the underdog. My forum is the youngest.

LOL. How much traffic you getting these days?

digitalpoint · 04-14-2006, 07:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnScott

LOL. How much traffic you getting these days?

Stats that just include registered users can be found here (the last point on the charts usually looks weird unless it's the last day of the week or month, so you can flip it to daily if you want):

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/faq.p...faq_statistics

Raw unique visitors is in the 30,000-40,000 range these days (including non-registered guests coming in from a Google search or something) for a total of around 500,000 page views/day.

John Scott · 04-14-2006, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

Raw unique visitors is in the 30,000-40,000 range these days (including non-registered guests coming in from a Google search or something).

Pretty damn impressive.

digitalpoint · 04-14-2006, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnScott

Pretty damn impressive.

The craziest part (to me anyway) about the traffic is that roughly 65% of all the forum traffic is generated from someone doing a search in Google. This includes all other search engines, registered users coming in from a bookmark or typing the URL, tool users clicking a link from digitalpoint.com (or anywhere else), etc.

That's definitely the most surprising traffic stat I've ever come across myself.

This attachment is from Google Analytics for the last 30 days.

John Scott · 04-14-2006, 07:14 PM

That is definitely a high amount of SE referrals. What happens to that stat if you remove keywords like "digitalpoint"?