I remember Julio mentioning what a small percentage of people actually take part in the forums, despite the massive traffic this site gets.
This isn't a genius idea or anything new, but for some reason it never came to my mind until now....
Many sites have a section on the main page that links to the "newest topics" of the forum. That way, for example, the newest 5 topics would be listed in a menu on the front page with news etc...
I think that people who find these topics interesting would ultimately click on them and maybe even sign up. I know I've done that myself a few times, and it was all because the links were right there on the front page. Otherwise, I would have never expressed interest.
This should be fairly simple to implement with a little CGI since most forum softwares are actually designed to do this and have a special file that has the most recent topics listed inside. There might even be a hack for it, if this isn't an integral part of the software to begin with.
Just my 2¼ cents.
This isn't a genius idea or anything new, but for some reason it never came to my mind until now....
Many sites have a section on the main page that links to the "newest topics" of the forum. That way, for example, the newest 5 topics would be listed in a menu on the front page with news etc...
I think that people who find these topics interesting would ultimately click on them and maybe even sign up. I know I've done that myself a few times, and it was all because the links were right there on the front page. Otherwise, I would have never expressed interest.
This should be fairly simple to implement with a little CGI since most forum softwares are actually designed to do this and have a special file that has the most recent topics listed inside. There might even be a hack for it, if this isn't an integral part of the software to begin with.
Just my 2¼ cents.