LARPS website content

Community Tech Support | Meta
#1

Good websites are designed around their content.

What should the content of the LARPS website be? What are the most important things that a person visiting the site will want to see? What will keep people coming back to the site?

Here’s a starter on content:

What is LARPS?

  • Vision
  • Organisation
  • Committe/contacts

Membership

  • Benefits of membership
  • How to join (pref. submit details online)

Projects

  • How to start a project (pref. submit online)
  • List of current projects
  • List of completed projects
  • A page for each project (pref. editable by project owner)
#2
  • Form to sign up electronically
  • Browse the gear library
  • Diatribe CPS (Community Proliferation Symposium)

Better send that newsletter, brb.

#3
  • List of affiliates, plus links to their websites, and what benefits they give to members
  • List of active projects, maybe one page for each?
  • Downloadable documents page: constitution, project forms, affiliate application form, membership application form…
#4

This is gunna be quite big, huh!

  • Advertising
#5

=> Link to Diatribe
=> the monthly news letter.

We don’t need to do everything at once, I know Ryan is a keen precisionist,
But as long as it looks good and covers some of the above, the rest can be added as time allows.

#6

Content can be added later, but if you want a good structure to hang it from it’s best to know from the start what that later content will be.

#7

Okay, here is everything that’s been mentioned sorted into content areas.

The most-used and most-regularly-updated items will spring out onto the homepage (be partially shown and/or have an nice obvious link to the full content page). I’ve marked the ones I think are likely to make it to the homepage with an asterix.

News

  • Latest newsletter *
  • Past newsletters

What is LARPS?

  • Vision *
  • Organisation
  • Committee/contacts
  • Link to Diatribe, the forum of LARPS *

Membership

  • Benefits of membership *
  • How to join (pref. submit details online) *

Projects

  • How to start a project (pref. submit online) *
  • List of current projects
  • List of completed projects
  • A page for each project (pref. editable by project owner)

Equipment

  • Who can borrow equipment
  • How to borrow equipment
  • List of equipment available
  • Page for each item of LARPS equipment with photo

Advertising

  • Who can advertise via LARPS
  • How to apply for advertising

Affiliates

  • Benefits of being an affiliate
  • How to become an affiliate
  • List of Affiliates
  • A page for each affiliate (pref. editable by affiliate owner)

Downloads

  • Official documents such as consitution
  • Application forms

Craig, what is “Diatribe CPS (Community Proliferation Symposium)”?

#8

I just mean a link to the forum :wink:

That list looks pretty inclusive.

#9

Looks good to me.
Question: if we create a home page with the required links, but say the adversiting page has not been done yet, does the link not work?, go to an ‘under construction’ page, or does the link not show until the advertising page is ready?

#10

We’d only put in homepage (and navigation) links to pages that exist. You can add more links later, but it pays to know what they’ll be from the start so you can design for them.

It looks like too many areas, needs to be rationalised a little or people won’t be able to find what they’re looking for. More than 7 is getting too high. The downloads might belong under “What is LARPS?” (or split so that each one sits in its relevent area) given what they are. Or it may be possible to merge advertising information into another area, depending on what the content actually is.

In terms of voice, it’d be nice to give the content the same chatty style that the newsletters have had so far. Short and snappy, not masses of dry text. With simple step-by-step instructions for getting things done with the Society.

#11

Of all of the above topics, the one I’d most like to see is a gallery of photos of the gear owned by LARPS.

That would be peachy keen!

It doesn’t even really need to be sortable or searchable, as long as it’s online.

I’m particularly interested in Greek stuff at the moment…

#12

Yep, that’s a very-nice-to-have. We did photograph most of it, so it’s possible.

I’d say it falls under the “List of equipment available page”. Click an item to see the photo.

#13

Here’s what I see coming out to the homepage:

A brief introduction (couple of sentences) to LARPS: the vision and the organisation.

A roundup of key news from the latest newspaper with links, and a link to the whole latest newspaper.

A boxed set of links to How To guides. These link both to the pages on why you’d want to do the thing, and the How To page.

  • How to join
  • How to start a project
  • How to borrow equipment
  • How to apply for advertising
  • How to become an affiliate

Link to Diatribe, LARPS forum project

Maybe a feature box, featuring a random current LARPS project or piece of equipment. This could provide a “graphical interest” area.

Should there be a photo gallery? Maybe photos could be attached to each project? Then a photo from a project come out onto the homepage. People often visit LARP sites just to look at the photos.

#14
  • A page for each member that they can edit themselves (once logged in). Links from that page to pages of projects they are working on.
  • A list of member pages.
#15

How integrated will we want this with the forum?

eg user pages could be done by modding the user pages on here (not a good idea, just an example), and the Diatribe database could keep a track of paying members with an extra few collumns in the database.

Or, when you sign up for LARPS you can tick a box that says “I haven’t registered on the forum yet, register me!” and it would automatically register you and email you the confirmation link.

Personally I’ve been picturing them as quite separate in terms of back end structure, definately on separate databases. But what do you think? (anyone)

#16

I would be keen to run Google Analytics on the site.

#17

I see them as entirely separate.

It’s too much trouble to integrate with phpBB. I did it for Mordavia, and i find when you upgrade phpBB to a new version things tend to break.

Also, I think the purposes of the two sites will be different. One is specifically for LARPS members, the other is for everyone.

#18

We have secured the domain, and I’ve put a holding page up.

nzlarps.org/

Let me know if anything’s missing, was late at night…

#19

WOOT!! We’re on WIKIPEDIA!

You could put a link to the Og page that is already made.

#20

Nah, that means we’d have to go and change it later. That page is designed to hold up until we have a proper site to show off. If we try and maintain it at the moment we’ll just end up wasting time on it that should be spent making the real site!