Web promotion

[Emmett]

*sigh* I wish there was a good way to get an RPG known. I know that I usually don't have time to play any of the other titles out there because I spend my free time working on my game. If only the Forge was around when I was in high school and had time to burn . . . (that was 12 years ago yikes!)

You know what? That's not a bad idea! I think I'll do it. RPG game portal, here I we come. I wouldn't want to do anything fancy and complicated like the forge, Just a place you can post a website that you can get to your game and probably a rating system for players to rank the game. No memberships, no preferential treatment. Sort by category, sort by age of posting, sort by rank etc.

hey, rpgportal.com isn't taken, that's easy.

If anyone is interested in working on a website that would benefit the RPG community like that, let me know, I can set the site up and get it started, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Ron Edwards]

The above was split from Web promotion, a thread from 2001.

Emmett, don't post to older threads. Review the site rules in the Site Discussion forum, about various things like that.

We can discuss the new topic right here, though; that's perfectly OK.

Best,
Ron

[Emmett]

Sorry, actually I think I've done this before, so I really should have known better. My brain keeps dumping data it hasn't used in a month.

Okay, so now you know I'm an idiot, you can see why I need help.

This is the plan. . .

1. set up the website
2. set up a forum as a temporary solution
3. look for existing solutions and test
4. If 3 fails, build a custom solution.

I hope it doesn't come down to 4, that will take longer than I want to take.

[Emmett]

hey, rpgportal.com isn't taken, that's easy.

Well it wasn't yesterday, maybe I spelled it wrong yesterday, because its been registered since 2004.

Now that I look, a lot is taken of course, so to keep with the interests of the Forge, and promote indiependant RPGs I chose indie-portal.com I wasn't trying to riff off of the Forge, but theres a lot of domain squatters out there that took everything else I could think of.

[Anders Larsen]

This sound like an interesting idea. Could you explain some more about what you want with it?

I recently came across an open source cms called bitweaver  http://www.bitweaver.org/ which seems like a great tool to building a community around a project. It is a combination of a wiki and a cms, and it has a build in forum. It may be something you can use to your portal.

 - Anders

[Emmett]

Well that was easier than I expected. It's not pretty yet, but it's functional. www.indie-portal.com I'm really just roughing it in right now but if anyone wants to register and stick their link on the page, go ahead.

Basically the purpose is to get word out about your website/project. It's a place to generate a little buzz about your game. I want to have a little bit of community so that the average Joe will have some interest in poking around and maybe look into a category that they wouldn't have. I'm open for suggestions.

BTW I figured more traffic might generate more cross traffic, so instead of just RPGs I expanded it to several different kinds of independent developers but that's a little beside the point.

[Anders Larsen]

What about an art category?

 - Anders

[Emmett]

That might be a little off topic for the Forge, if you want, register and post non-rpg suggestions there.

(I already got yelled at by Ron this thread, I need to keep my nose clean).

Any RPG Category's you would like to see added?

[Anders Larsen]

That might be a little off topic for the Forge

You are properly right, though I see art as being an integrated part of many rpgs.

One thing that may be a problem with the rpg categories, is, if I want to search for a rpg, I would look for types like: Fantasy, SF, superhero, mysteries, horror etc.

For example I would not know where to find a occult mystery game in the categories you have chosen.

 - Anders

[Emmett]

Good point. I'll use those. The one problem is that you can only select one category If you have a diceless mystery system then which one do you choose? I guess that's up to the poster.

[JakeVanDam]

Mybe you could allow cross-posting into mulitple categories? That might get messy, though, and might provide an excuse for less honest users to spam.
Maybe you could split the RPG heading into a "By Genre" (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adevnture) and a "By Style/Mechanic" (Live-Action, Diceless, D20)?
Whatever you decide to do about that, an "Other" category would help designers working in less popular genres.

[Emmett]

There are two problems with posting a link to multiple categories. One as you said, spamming the other is that the solution I used to set the site up doesn't allow it. So, without re-coding the site, it may not be an option.

I guess I would say, put your game in the category that you want to advertise. If you want to be known as a mystery game, then put it there, if you want to be known as a D20 system, put it there. I'll try and work out a better compromise as I go. Actually the best option may be to see who bites and what they want to post as then trim off the excess categories.

But yeah, I suppose "Other" would be needed given that you have a whole community trying to make a game that nobody else has before.

[Julian]

I think you want tagging by arbitrary keywords rather than a bunch of defined categories and "other". Forcing things into predefined buckets leads to awkward fits, and 'other' is the bucket that nobody really wants to be filed in.

Would _The Doom that Came to Metropolis_  (the nonexistent game of Lovecraftean horror in a supers universe) get filed under supers or horror? Either way, part of its potential audience isn't going to see it. With keyword tagging, it'd come up under 'supers', 'horror', 'cthulhu', or 'lovecraft'.

You also get natural emergence of new categories.

Spamming can be restricted by limiting how many keywords can be given.

If the tools you're using won't let you do things like this, I suggest seriously looking at using new tools, before you've invested too much effort into doing things in the current ones. If you're already running into the tools' limitations, odds are pretty good you're in for more problems later.

[Emmett]

Are you aware of a solution that allows keywords? I'm not really invested in anything right now, but theres no way that any one solution would satisfy everyone. I'm ready to be open minded, but I prefer action to inaction because I'm looking for the perfect fit. I already rejected four different "portal" systems because they did not have (or i could not determine that they had) useful link management. If you know of one you like, let me know.

[Selene Tan]

The tagging makes me think of building a simple front-end to del.icio.us. Make up a user for the portal, and use the del.icio.us RSS feeds, tag rolls, what not to display links. Then set up a simple forwarding thing so that submitting a link to the portal posts it on del.icio.us as that user.