The site

[hallsofvallhalla]

I want ideas on how to make the site better. How to make the forums better, everything!!

Like making a tutorial group that are tut writes, or making news feeds and reviews on the website, whatever just let me know.

[jpoisson]

Why not let the forum turn into a mini game? where the board is the actual forum and the game is developed by everyone but the actual features are implemented by you? So a community built game.

[Jackolantern]

Why not let the forum turn into a mini game? where the board is the actual forum and the game is developed by everyone but the actual features are implemented by you? So a community built game.

We tried something like that on MMORPGMaker.com, but I don't believe it got too much interest

EDIT: How about getting some interviews with indie and AAA developers to add to the front page? As long as you are not grilling your interviewee, or making their product look negative, you would likely be amazed at who you can talk to when you are the admin of a heavily-visited community like this. It is basically free advertising for their product. You could ask them the development of their games, and also throw in some player-perspective stuff as well (that will make them more interested in doing it, since they want to get info about the gameplay out).

[hallsofvallhalla]

excellent idea...
anyone interested in becoming the official interviewer for Indie-Resource?

You must send writing examples.

[alexrules01]

Im not trying to be picky or anything, but on the site where you have the latest news sections, there seems to be lots of mistakes. I dunno, people might be turned off by that?

[hallsofvallhalla]

hmm i will check that. thanks

I am not trying to lure more people in, just trying to make it better for the community.

[Jackolantern]

I would volunteer to do some interviews myself, but I have done them in the past and I know it can be somewhat time-consuming to get in touch with these people. Sometimes you have to be very quick with responses when they are ready to do it, or you may have to play email tag for a number of days. The last thing I would want to do is sign up for it, and then it gets lost in all the other things I am getting swamped down with these days (in the next few weeks, another important priority is going to be sucking up almost the rest of my free time )

[Xen]

Not sure if you have had them in the past, but how about a chat room or rooms?
Would make a good point of contact and may draw people in as I don't know of any other resource site like this that has a chat room.
I installed flashchat http://www.tufat.com/script2.htm on my phpbb3 forum, it's a breeze to set up and intergrates really nicely with the existing database. You could create different programming language rooms, have weekly ask the expert sessions, brainstorming sessions or just a casual lounge place where people can go to chillax from the stress and strains of programming.
I know it would mean extra modding of the chat rooms, but you could open up positions for purely chat mods for existing forum members who have proved themselves to be reliable.
There are pros and cons to this, like anything, but hey you don't know until you try and I personally think it would make a nice addition to this already awesome site
Of course, not everyone likes or wants to chat, but if that's the case, then don't go near the chat room - shimmmples!

[Jackolantern]

I actually don't like integrating chat with forum communities like these. It becomes easier for people to just hang out in the chat room and talk there, and all of the conversations just scroll away and are lost. People will often get help on questions as well, and the answers they receive will not be archived, or searchable through the forum. It also tends to lower post count and new threads. MMORPGMaker.com added an AJAX chat box, and I still don't like it for the above reasons. But now most of the community have gotten used to it and would be unhappy if it was taken off.

[hallsofvallhalla]

agreed...