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Just Under the Flippin’ Wire

by Garwulf on May 21, 2009 · 9 comments

I almost slipped up and missed my goal of posting each and every day for the next 31 days. However, I managed to get my latest talent overview posted by 11:54pm PST. BAM! I’m keepin’ my word by gum.

I would have knocked the post out sooner, but I was a little preoccupied today. Wednesdays mean daddy duty. Aside from being Mr. Mom today and spending time with my delightful soon-to-be 2 year old son, I had a vision…

My vision was of a place where Hunters could come together and share thoughts, ideas and advice pertaining to my beloved class. An online community if you will, where players of the Hunter class could comment, commune and commiserate.

What..?! Another Hunter Forum..?!

Indeed. Although the internet is rife with forums of all sorts pertaining to World of Warcraft and the Hunter class, I decided that one more couldn’t hurt. ;) In fact, I had this idea months ago, but never made the time to get the ball rolling.

Actually, it’s probably better timing now anyways. HuntsmansLodge.com has been steadily gaining momentum over the past few months. With nearly 15,000 visitors weekly, I’m hopeful that there will be some contributors amongst ya.

I’ll slowly be kick starting the various forums over the next several days, but in the meantime, if you have a topic or question for discussion, by all means throw it out there. I would be pleased as punch if some of my beloved visitors were to get this party started. I’m looking at you Dalaila. ;)

I try my best to reply to each and every comment that gets posted, but at times it can be a bit overwhelming. The goal with the forum is to have a more active, timely and visitor friendly means of communication, without having to solely rely upon me (and my overseas editor-in-chief) to reply to all of the questions and comments. Forums are often the best place to seek advice anyway, because as the old saying goes… two heads are better than one. That’s also why I PvP with a Chimaera. Har Har *dorky Hunter humor*

Also, contrary to popular belief, there are Hunters out there who know even more about the class than I do. *gasp* I keed, of course there are. I’m just some noob who has a passion for the class and has been playing it for so long I better freaking know a thing or two!

So, without further ado… I present to you the HuntsmansLodge.com Forums.

Ta Da!

Oh, and by the way… the forums here are a troll-free zone. Of course, they probably won’t stray over here anyway because they get fed so well at the Official WoW Hunter Forums.

Forum Trolls Not Allowed

Tagged as: forum

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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Dalaila ShadowosngEU May 21, 2009 at 4:57 am

Heya Gar, today it’s my Mommy day too lol, my wife is out for business until 20:00 so I’ll be with my cute already-2-years-old after the work :)

Back on topic. The forum idea. I’ll be honest, really. You want honest non-troll subscribers here, right? Ok I’ll be 100% honest then :)

I (honestly) think that you should focus on the blog only, leaving the forum stuff to other websites.

I’ll try to explain why:

You’re a blogger. Blogs are nice because they’re like a book: you start reading 1-2 or even 3 pages and immediately start “feeling” something: it’s good! or It’s bad!. Good? Cool, here’s a bookmark. Bad? No problem, there’re others to look at.

Forums are a place where you run as Admin and have to manage 2 things: people and people’s content. That said, it will cross-over with your blog, where in my opinion a comment system is more than enough (it would be nice having a better text format such as html comments, reply to author and so on but they work anyway). Keep a blog with NO comments + forum or keep a blog + comments with NO forum. I think both are too much and dispersive :)

Forums take away a lot of your RL time. I wont act as a teacher here but I’ve been admin of huge forums in my past (business/gaming related) and that was fine until I was a student with no “lifetime” girlfriend and a lot of free time. As soon as I dinged girlfriend + marriage + “adult life” (+ son) the forums were just impossible to manage. And when you have little time to give to a forum it turns in a trash can. Focus on your blog + comments, I think it will be much better for your life :)

Forums are nice but dispersive. More forums means looking for the same info all over the web. Right now in my opinion 3 are the “real” forums for Wow players: Official, WowHead and ElitistJerks. You will find thousands of posts, infos, guides and so on. A blog-related forum is just something that smells hybrid and -again- dispersive :)

If this was my blog I would considering spending some time improving the platform. I personally miss the “subscribe” option with a personal profile, avatars and user-to-user messaging system. WordPress offers tons of plugins/mods for that.

Focusing on a big upgrade of your already great blog would make it even more special. Take Wowinsider for exaple: it’s one of the most visited wow-related sites and it’s more or less blog with a (poor and badly implemenmted) comment system.

Please take my words as a friendly suggestion, I mean it’s just my pov of course :) . But I’ve been in your situation in the past and I felt it was worth spending some words.

Of course if the forums does not grow a lot it will be easily manageable. But.. is a low-populated forum worth the time? In my opinion no, considering there are so many ll around the web :)

Just my 20394830457 cents ;)

Reply

2 Dalaila ShadowosngEU May 21, 2009 at 5:07 am

I forgot to add this to my comment, please be patient with me ;)

I consider your blog a little treasure. I came here from BigRedKitty shortly after he closed his famous blog. I immediately felt at home. Later I discovered you’re a grown one with a wife and a child. I think that makes a difference. BigRedKitty had a similar situation too and he had to stop because his wife told him he was too wow-blog addicted. And he was.

This blog (huntsmanslodge) is a quiet and mature place to talk about huntery. I like it. No need to yell and make noise (official forums, big-famous sites, …) to sit, relax and learn something. Grabbing a LOTR quote, “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”.

Thx for reading, now take a deep breath ;)

Reply

3 Garwulf May 21, 2009 at 7:50 am

Garwulf suffers 22.5k damage (crushing blow) from Dalaila’s Wall of Text.

Excellent comments Dalaila. I appreciate your concerns and value your insight on this matter.

I’m gonna hang it out there for a month or two and see what happens. If it begins to cultivate interest, then great. If it just sits there and withers on the vine, then I’ll pull the plug.

It seemed like an intriguing option for me, so I decided to exercise it. I’m a constant tinkerer who just won’t leave things well enough alone. ;) I’m always looking for ways to improve upon things, and often times that requires trial and error.

The forum requires registration to post, so I had to activate the subscriber functionality in order to implement it. If I yank the forum, I’ll leave the subscribe option. I just need to find out how to add it to the sidebar.

This is my first blog, so bear with me.

As for the forum being a huge time-sink… I don’t know where you get that. That’s where you come in mr. moderator. ;)

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4 Garwulf May 21, 2009 at 8:02 am

Ok, I just added a register link right above my RSS info in the sidebar. Have at it.

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5 Dalaila May 21, 2009 at 8:15 am

Oki just registered and I appear logged on comments too, finally!

Moderation? I remember the old days of admin and mod on some forums… now I’m clean! ;)

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6 Trackerbr - Warsong May 21, 2009 at 11:10 am

Well. I’m a Brazilian playing at Warsong and about the Forum x Blog I think there is a possible option. There is a Brazilian Blog madded by 5 girls called http://girlsofwar.wordpress.com/ This blog is about Console and PC Games. Some of this girls are professional writers at some Magazines and game enthusiasts. Maybe, i said MAYBE, you are searching or needing some think lihe this, “Maybe” some others enthusiasts to post, research and give opinion on the same place… huntsmanslodge.com. Think about.

P.S. The 5 girls are:

* Carlinha Rodrigues
* Bruna Torres
* Clarice dos Santos
* Vivi Werneck
* Rebeca

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7 Dalaila ShadowsongEU May 21, 2009 at 11:47 am

My wife is Brasilian… Minera from BH :)

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8 Trackerbr - Warsong May 21, 2009 at 12:06 pm

And you????? Where you from???

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9 Dalaila ShadowsongEU May 21, 2009 at 2:20 pm

Italy, just 12K miles away lol

Reply

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