Just a few suggestions I want to throw out there. I hope you guys at least find it constructive!

[big]Homepage UI[/big] I feel the homepage could have a little more diversity in content rather than just a list of new runs and a twitter feed. Featured blog posts, featured runs, shortcuts to featured/popular games, perhaps a slider for big events or new records, links to speedrun.com's other networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

[big]Expand your social reach[/big] Build your network across every social medium you can think of, even those that might have little to do with gaming or speedrunning. You'd be surprised how much traffic you can get through the smallest subreddits on reddit, or the most obscure places like StumbleUpon.

[big]Share Buttons[/big] Adding share buttons to user's speed runs would be great. Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit would be the essential ones to add. It's easy to implement, and super handy for less tech savvy users.

[big]Blog[/big] Add a blog, and set up a schedule to have at least three posts a weeks (preferably one everyday if possible). With hundreds and moderators around, and a decent amount of admins and full mods - I'm sure you'll have no problem coming up with ideas and contributors. 400-500 words per post, at least one image/video, proper writing and styling, and appropriate use of SEO would increase the site's traffic exponentially.

[big]Forums and Games List[/big] You should really find a way to condense these lists. No one should have to scroll for more than a second or two to find what they're looking for.

And those were my two pennies worth. The site's looking good so far. Keep it up!

[quote]Homepage UI[/quote] I guess a slider for big events is a good one, but the rest is pretty useless. That's what the about and games pages are for.

[quote]Expand your social reach[/quote] I don't see the point in promoting the website under people who are not interested in speedrunning. Right now the site has a Twitter, is being linked to by r/speedrun and is featured in many people's Twitch bio. It even has a darned Facebook page. Doing more would achieve nothing but to waste time.

[quote]Share buttons[/quote] If you're tech savvy enough to be doing or watching speedruns, copy pasting a URL to your twitter should be of no problem to you. This is useless.

[quote]Blog[/quote] This has got to be the dumbest idea I have ever heard in my entire life. This is only going to be some useless posts a la SDA with next to no content people care about. It would be a waste of time and effort. People just want to see leaderboards/resources, not read some shitty blog.

[quote]Forums and Games List[/quote] Yah I agree

I really don't understand the desire to increase traffic to the website. It's a friggin leaderboards/resource hub. Nobody does or should care about this website if they're not interested in speedruns. Don't attract those people.

[quote]I don't see the point in promoting the website under people who are not interested in speedrunning.[/quote] I wasn't interested in speedrunning much before this site was up. This is a community for speedrunners - a community that's growing bigger and bigger every day. The last thing any community should do is shut out potential new users and contributors. Trust me, social networking helps a lot. And for a site like this catering to gamers all over the world, it's a huge opportunity.

[quote]I really don't understand the desire to increase traffic to the website.[/quote] Traffic is a good thing. There's no point in maintaining a website if you intend to close your doors to newcomers and cater only for the site's veteran members.

[quote][quote]Blog[/quote]This has got to be the dumbest idea I have ever heard in my entire life. This is only going to be some useless posts a la SDA with next to no content people care about. It would be a waste of time and effort. People just want to see leaderboards/resources, not read some shitty blog.[/quote] Relax, it's just an idea. Blogs are incredibly useful from a back-end and SEO perspective. It would be really helpful in increasing the site's ranking online.

But anyway, I can't imagine any of these suggestions being a priority for the site right now. Just a few ideas I found helped a lot in one of my own projects. Hope it helps.

[quote]I wasn't interested in speedrunning much before this site was up. This is a community for speedrunners - a community that's growing bigger and bigger every day. The last thing any community should do is shut out potential new users and contributors. [/quote]

Good point. Although IMO making the site welcoming to newcomers is something different than putting 0 content blogs and unnecessarily spamming social media with it if it's not relevant. (If Pac is up for doing a blog though, by all means do it, as long as its going to have content and not end up abandoned after 2 weeks). It is a resource/leaderboards hub so it should also promote itself as such.

I fully agree regarding the frontpage. It's pretty barren now atm. Consider adding stuff like the latest posts in the forum, speedrunning news, etc.

This post is my personal opinions and may deviate slightly from site plans/visions. I did not consult with other staff on this topic.

In my opinion the site's primary goal is vaguely to connect users with runs, runners, and guides.

The goal is not to get the most users to click on the site. Otherwise we'd be posting articles like "17 Reasons you should start speedrunning, #5 will make you go fast." This is a bit of an exaggeration obviously, but more isn't always better. If users perceive content as trash, it will reflect poorly on the leaderboards. "An article a day" is probably not a good recipe for success for this site.

Homepage UI

I agree the homepage UI could use more content in some form.

Featured runs: This requires someone to manage what the featured runs are and tools to submit and add runs as featured. It is subjective, but could be beneficial if managed appropriately.

Expand your social reach

Again this requires people to manage the social media more heavily. I don't think we're looking for any organized promotion. We get the word out reasonably well by word of mouth and links to runs and Twitch bios, etc. An active Twitter or Facebook certainly isn't a bad thing, but I don't see it as a priority right now. It requires people and time to manage

Share Buttons

This is an okay idea. I'd probably personally want it limited to a "Share" button that opened to display the icons to not add distraction to all of the pages. Having a button to 1: save users keystrokes and 2: help prod the less tech savvy who were thinking about sharing into actually sharing is probably a good thing.

** Blog **

If ever done they would have to be done carefully and managed appropriately. If blogs are seeded with self-promotion, the community is not going to respond well. People are going to argue about what types of things should and shouldn't be on the blog. It would have to be quite neutral and factual to fit in well with the rest of the site. Again, requires subjectivity, people and time.

Forums and Games List

Forums listing definitely does not scale well at the moment. That's a known issue. Do you have any particular suggestions to improve the games list? I kinda feel that "By platform" should maybe only show games once a platform is selected. Organizing the consoles might be useful as well. Maybe it should be a two step process to get to the game (since it already basically is anyway.)

** Conclusion **

Many of these highly subjective things require highly subjective management. The focus of the site is largely objective data and independence, and moving into subjective data territory could interfere with that focus if done incorrectly.

As a huge generalization, limiting subjective bias will inherently make the leaderboards more credible I feel.

Other

S, I think there is a medium between maximizing growth and ignoring growth entirely. I also personally don't really see the use in blatantly insulting ideas rather than offering explanations of your differing opinion. I disagree with the notion of purely maximizing the site visitors, but I don't think it's "the dumbest idea", I (probably similar to you) just think it easily conflicts with what we're trying to do, which may not be evident to a newer user at all.

I fear most would hear the term "blog" and think of buzzfeed, tumblr, and all of that crap. What I suggest would be more like a notice board with relevant useful information about the site and it's community (e.g New world record, or a major change to the site's fuctionality). I'm coming across links to speedrun.com more frequently on other sites (i.e. Kotaku) which might show off a new world record on a specific game. I would never have found that run on speedrun.com alone if it weren't for Kotaku highlighting it.

[quote]Do you have any particular suggestions to improve the games list?[/quote] Condensing a library of thousands of games is no easy task, and how they're organised can be tricky. I imagine the entire list is queried from the site's database. A simple solution might involve replacing the entire list with a small number of input fields allowing the user to search for what they want, and thus only displaying relevant information to the user. A general 'search' field with some basic sorting filters (by platform, Alphabetically, etc...). But this is entirely subjective - perhaps most users won't care, and that's alright.

Forums on the other hand, I feel should be a large collective and shouldn't need to be queried/searched by the user. The best thing I can think of is condensing the game's forum list into categories based on platform. But I can already think of problems with that idea from the start. Maybe it's best to rally the community here together for a brainstorm and see what ideas they can bring to the table.

Also, your answer was great! Well thought out and constructive. :) It's given me a better idea on your goals here, thanks a lot.

I saw that we have a spammer on the site and I doubt he will be the last. Should we think about implementing a report button for this kind of scenario?

Sorry I think I put this in the wrong place. It's late and I've had a beer. That's my excuse.