So it's no secret that this place has been dying of posting activity. The staff is working on more impressive reviews for 1Emulation, but we need more. What would make you post more on 1Emulation and get more members joining this prestigious place? We've had about a thousand threads like this in the past, but this time I want you think.

Right now --- some insider information to 1Emulation ...

Now in 2007, we are hitting in the double digits (99 and below) in posts per day (everyday).

Back in 2006, we were hitting the triple digits (100+) almost every other day.

Back in 2005, we were hitting triple digits (100+) everyday.

Back in 2004, we were hitting 250-400 posts per day.

Back in 2003, we were hitting the double digits (99 and below) in posts per day.

Back in 2002, we were hitting the double digits (99 and below) in posts per day.

At the rate we're going, it won't be pretty. Got any ideas to offer to us? If it's too good to be in this thread, PM it to me. Otherwise, this place is not going to get any better.

Don't get me wrong, we still get a lot of visiters. We've already had over 2 million hits this month (entire 1emulation.com domain -- including subdomains). However, we need more, and a lot more.

No longer will I tell you a shutdown or death to 1Emulation is on its way. BUT, if it seems like ants are crawling this place and nothing is going on, don't be surprised.

Anyway, I just wanted you all to see what I see for a change.

Please post some "constructive" replies that can actually help us in some way or another.

Warning: I don't want to see posts that say "emulation activity is just dying" ... this place can cover anything gaming!

maybe its time to drop some cash on advertising, uhh my dad does alot of PR work and stuff he could probably help. You have to realize its impossible to do this kind of thing and see any results without spending some money though (The advertising i mean)

Well, I plan on writing quite a few tutorials (For NDS, mainly), which I hope will bring some new faces to this site. Considering the amount of requests for help I've received all over the net, more than a few people should show up. The only problem then is to figure out how to convince them to join...

You'd have to remember back in the days, we still had new neogeo games coming out, and people were really interested in finding out how to play them, hence the extra posts. So when it passed by, we can't really be surprised that the post rate goes down either.

Otherwise, just have to be active and such with topics. I'm not sure how we're going advertising wise but meh.

That would go under the "emulation is no longer active" category. Like I said, we can cover anything gaming, not just neogeo. Sure, that had a big part in the post count decrease, but we should be able to find other interest creating categories of gaming. That's what we need ideas for, a site that covers all gaming, which should be 1Emulation.

Really I would like to help out, years ago I have started to get out of the gaming habits. I got out of that habit since I have been working hard at College. However I do have a couple of ideas, that could help bring in more visitors.

1. If you use e-mail so often, promote 1emu using the signature.
2. If you're good with graphics and words, makes some flyers, go to a rental store and put the flyers in each DVD case that is mark with Xbox, PS2, Wii, etc… etc…
3. Word of mouth, practically talking to someone about this site.

These are just few ideas, but I think number 2 is just crazy.

I vote for option number 2, it should definitely get more people watching this site.

I think it would help it we had content to offer. This of course means people work to come up with content. Reviews for products is definately a start. I'd like to see some sort of emulation machinima.

I think I'll just watch things fly by, I honestly don't think I can do anything to help but be what I have always been, an active member >.>.

Posting up articles that cover gaming in general would be a good idea, you'll get other sites that link to you as source and not to mention it helps your site get more results in Google.

Gaming music and music in general. We should have a forum just for gaming music and too talk about it and music in general. Music is the and has always been a big topic on the internet. Maybe even have music reviews for gaming and in general. I would be more then ok to give some reviews.

Well if you're not willing to pay for advertisement. I also vote for making/posting flyers.

maybe its time to rename from 1emulation to 1gaming, or 1entertainment

(No seriously those are horrible names, don't do that, but you know what i mean)

How about a "Put this code on your myspace" type thing with a link to the page. Alot of companies are joining with myspace and it seems to be working wonders. I could work on some graphics if you want. My myspace has had a link to 1emu ever since i joined.

You can open up a Graphics thread and people could post your graphics dedicated to 1emu, with consoles, sprites. You can sticky it.

the thing with emulation is, alot of people just dont know about it. You tell them that they can play mario on thier computer and they go crazy. Ive had to show at least 6 people in the past week how to burn and play dreamcast games, and they are extremely happy with the results.

EDIT: how about 1Emulation just having its own myspace page and adding everyone we know.

sry if the ideas are lame, im jus tryin to help

no actually thats a good idea, It doesnt really matter if myspace is stupid or not, Alot of people go there so its a good place to get exposure.

my 2 cents:

I rather have 99 articles worth reading than 99 articles worth reading plus 300 stupid posts

get rid of the board as the main thing on the site.
You should install a content management system and add articles in categories and not post them in some of the 33 forums here.
That will change the sites image from a usual forum-portal site to a website.

Clean the forum up a bit, like the Dreamcast/Saturn thingy: Unpin some topics and/or merge em with others.
Merge the Sega forums to one, there is too few activity in there.
Same goes for Playstation. Could alter posting form to add a little identifier to the new topcs like [PSP] etc.

If you just add more and more areas to the site and press them all into the forums, people will get lost here

Here's my opinion.
1) Try making the review section more attractive.
2) We can make a tutorial section that teaches noobs how to get some harder emus to work. Take me as an example. When I first tried Chankast, I can't get it work until Agozer helped me. So, maybe we can have our members writing guides to attract pros and noobs. I believe PS, PS2, DC, DS emus are not that easy to noobs, especially when you need to burn, rip, mount CDs.

I like Madman's idea. Of course one can configure the forums they want to see with the + and minus things. I certainly feel, as Madman mentioned, that the site is to much of a portal with forum to prop it up. The forum as it is now can't do that.

Call me a fool, but I believe a lot of the reason for the higher post rates a few years back was due to the whole DC (Direct Connect) thing. A lot of people migrated from the 1emu hubs to the forums to post queries, as I did, and some stuck around, even after the plug was pulled on the whole thing. Maybe I'm over-estimating it, but the DC link did provide a pretty big source of new members, and when changes were made it pissed a lot of people off who then left, and also cut off that source of newbies.

Sorry, that wasn't particularly helpful but I thought I'd share it all the same. I have noticed a few forums recently lose a lot of posts/members. One thing they all changed which had a positive effect, was to condense sub-forums which has been suggested. Trying to cover too many bases was forcing people to search out more specific sites such as xbox-scene etc

Maybe have contests of some sort , Maybe with online games for Xbox, PC or something like that .

Like Madman Said, this place is really Just One big Forum, there could be parts of the site where there are tutorials, Guides ect without looking in the forum. And some people might just need the extra help and join in on the forums.

More affiliations is good.

A Personal Profile wouldnt be bad either, with the HTML activated we can get creative and pics ect

A download space where are the newest version of all the emulators we can find (or at least the better ones) would work, it should give easy access to all of them and people wouldn't get lost searching in the news forum for the ones they want.

We've been throwing around that particular idea for quite a while now, since we used that service in the past.

Gordone: If you are talking about enabling HTML in posts, it's not going to happen.

nah i meant for the profile idea.

Oh wee i'm glad my suggestion found some positive feedback.

But i sense some differences here:
On the one hand, you want an active forum.
On the other hand, you want to stand out from the rest.

I think thats the main problem of the site:
There are like thousands of sites like 1emu around:
A Portal thingy, plugged ontop of a forum software.
Dont get me wrong, my romuniverse wasnt much different, but it didnt work out in the long term.
I learned something from my half a dozend websites i did over the years.

The reason is simple:
The web is a place of people taking stuff and not giving anything in return.
I noted that on romuniverse and i especially see it daily since my sidtool is out.
With almost 1000 unique visitors within 2 months and over 200 downloads of 1.0 RC1 alone within like one week, what ammount of feedback would you expect ? I can tell you, its nothing, nada, Z-I-P.
When romuniverse was up, within its 2-3 years of existance it had like 30 people posting on the forums regulary.

So get rid of the idea that people will participate on your site for the sites being. The web is full of leechers. Its that way, you cant do anything against it. Example: When i came to the forums a few mins ago, there were 9 members online, and 139 guests. Get the idea ?

Now there is some more i want to bring in:
You have a lot of consoles here that are covered in the forums. From oldschool (S)NES to PS3 and XBoX 360. Divide that up. To make it simple: You may have like 13 people here for each console supported. Thats not enough to get activity here, considered the leecher mentality on the web.
If only 1/10th of people register here, cause they find the site interesting, you end up in 1/100th,
cause the site covers too much.

I dont know, how to explain this exactly.

Look at some popular sites on the web.
When you load them up in your browser, you dont get 20 news each day.
Lets take the old lemon64.com for example. You load it up, and you get LOADs of content. And the forum isnt the thing that jumps at you. Yet its very active. Why ? Cause people get there, get hooked to the site and then sign up the forums. At least thats what i think.

Also, 1emu is called an "Emulation" site. Then i ask myself, what got Xbox, PS2, PS3, Nintendo DS and all the other stuff to do here ? They are not being emulated any well since today.

So what is the focus of 1emu ?
Is it emulation ? Then focus on emulation and dont compete with all these rich game sites, cause you cant win.
Is it nextgen consoles ? Then screw the oldskool crap, and get ready for teens flooding your site with ISO requests.

And there is another thingi tell you: In the end you will be more successfull when focussing on oldskool stuff. The nextgen consoles have teens glued to them, while the oldskool stuff has mature people interested in them. Thats why 25 years after C64 was released there are still people holding demo compos in 2007 and code stuff like sidtool. On SNES there are many hacksites, people hack roms to translate Japanese games to English and german, people mod the roms. People code stuff like Jumpman under Construction or look at Arno who released its 20th Boulder Dash game in 2006. Or look at me. I come here since 4 years now.
Anything like that for any PSX related site ? Any PSX hacks out there ?

You cant have both. 1emu misses a focus, and only sites with a clear focus attract people.
What the focus will be, is determined by the people that have supported 1emu over the years.
Noone of that guys into oldskool ? Then compete with ngemu.


OK, thats it for today. Beer is empty Forgive me if i pissed you off with anything, but its how i see things.

The myspace thing and the HTML edit option in profiles seems interesting and would attract new members. Also the idea of changing the main page around with downloaded hardware to make it look more like a website then just a forum would work too. Also there are waaaaaaaay to many sub forums or whatever you call it, gets confusing to n00bs and annoying to sort through when you are searching for something or just have a simple question.

Upgrade the attack system and allow users to opt-out, browsing the board without being a victim and that would be nice for some.

Oh yeah tutorials are a big thing, We need lots of tutorials, Theres a lot of websites i visit all the time now simply because i used some of their tutorials and then found they had other cool stuff on them.

What i said.

yeah and maybe a movies forum?

I agreed with James, although my idea is a little different.

Make a contest, but something related to forum activities. OFFER a REAL PRIZE like a handheld; DS Lite or PSP as the winning trophy. THe only problem is where to get the fund. Suggestion is for old timers to cough up some money to help out if they are willing Therefore, I pledge USD50 to 1emu if you all decided to go with this. Contact me if needed.

I can ask my mom for $20, and she'll give it to me, problem is getting it on a credit card through paypal (ever since I started getting micro points without her permission (I PAYED HER BACK WTF), she's been hiding it from me so).

I agree with some of the suggestions already made.

The name implies it's an emulation site but if you want to expand to more gaming aspects then maybe a name change will help catch some people's attention.

General overall interest in emulation is also on a downward trend and has been for the past few years. Every once in awhile you might have a project that will peak some interest but its just basically a flash in a pan when it comes to return visitors.

Generating interest in your sites is not an easy thing and their is many things to take into consideration. I agree with the suggestion of moving away from a forum portal style site and into something more professional. Along with a more professional design then the current one could help as well. Some site branding might help especially if you decide to advertise. You want something that catches people's attention and something people won't forget. Being forgettable is one of the biggest reasons people never return or take their visit to the next level and join the community.

That takes me to my next suggestion. Maybe if you had some more site interaction with your visitors besides your forums. When people feel they are a part of the site and part of the sites success they care more. Giving them a reason to come back on a daily basis to interact more will help a ton.

Sites like myspace, youtube, digg are the current trend. Old news portals are seeing a downard trend in visitors and interaction as more and more people are going to these other types sites because they can participate and be a part of the sites overall success.

If you are serious about taking the site to a new level then a lot of work will need to be done and a lot changes. This may or may not be what the current community wants or is ready for. Just some things you will need to weigh.

If you wish to remain on the same course but try to gain more popularity it's going to be a hard task because emulation as a whole only generates so much attention and so many visitors. It's hard to make your site stick out more then other emulation sites on the net.

So my overall suggestion would be to keep the general focus on emulation and gaming but to expand on the interaction side of things and allow your community to be a bigger part of the overall site.

I say we allow hardcore pornography.






















lol

lol yeah

Gamecop do we have about 600MB of storage to host Swap.avi?

Damn fine post, chief.
I'd still like to see a site with reviews of all (!) the games of an emulated system.
But to achieve such thing you need a strong community.
Depending on the webspace, people could upload vids of their game successes or something.

The myspace thingy is nothing i would take into consideration, at least not let them 'try' to build a 'website' here.
And yes, the site needs a redesign with something different than black. I use the default template all the time as the black one is hard to read. But thats just me

Gamecop, so what do you think about all these ideas??

I'll go with upgrade the attack system.

I would screw the entire attack system, its boring for the oldbies, no way for newbies to get started with it, and it blews the room needed for a friggin' one liner to fill my entire browserscreen on 1280x1024.
Seriously, if noone had invented the scrollwheel by now...
But i think i mentioned that 2 years ago

Edit: Just had an idea, if you people love to fight, set up some kaillera server and have some league

We DO have a kaillera server, but unfortunately it is almost never up. Give Sturmy a shout and he'll put it up for ya... and don't even ASK about the location of the server.

i start to think this discussion leads to nuttin

The kaillera server has usually been up everday since I started hosting it. I usually put it up when i get home (4 or 5pm), although since then, there has been little action aside from, Mooney, Diso, megaman zer0 and I.

Timing is different

I say, GameCop appoints me as the go-to guy about any problem or concern IN LIFE!
ANywho i suggest the officals create a, "ASk ShOma" section!
Whether the pioneers would take it seroiusly or not, is out of my hand.
Despite my jestering dispotion, i am well aware of the countless tribulations that plague our mind, body and hearts. I believe that such a task is well adept for me and would not argue to a--how do you say, "side-kick" to accomidate me on such an worthy cause for 1EMU...........YOSHA!!!

Also sugeest debate subjects in the emu or online world. (leechers, anime, new consoles, and rumors, etc.)
Two sides who MUST have a plausible point in thier opionon and not just, "um...i think so too".

A debate section would be cool, since we get a lot of new members after posting controversial reviews and such (GP2x and GameTap), but most of all I find myself agreeing to the fact that we need to make 1emulation a website, not just a forum. Downloads, tutorials, reviews, etc. would make this place so much more active. I would be more than happy to waste a few days of my life to upload exactly one shitload of PSP and NDS games/apps/emus, as well as write some tutorials for the PSP and the NDS.

Well, did Sire Gamecop say anything about this thread yet ?

MOst likely he's getting all the required settings needed to start my "Ask Shoma" idea. I'm sure of it!
I also suggest tourney awards. Or awards for anything, greedy whores loves awards!

Good question, now where the heck is he I wonder?

I doubt it.

Yeah a debate section where we can all fight amongst ourselves. A place where we can feel free to post whatever #%@*(%#*!(%* and #%*(@#% or %@*(%#*!%#! we #%*!(@#%in want.