Building an Online Community Part One: So You Wanna Build a Website?

In this series of posts I’ll be discussing the building and creation of online communities, based on the experiences I’ve had running NJPineBarrens.com for the last five or so years.

I don’t advertise myself to be an expert at web design (I’m not), nor do I pretend that I have all of the answers or a magic formula for creating an online community. What I do have is a very active community based around several websites sharing a common theme — the history of the Pine Barrens region of New Jersey. NJPineBarrens.com is the largest - but not the oldest - site devoted to the Pine Barrens on the internet. We average about 20,000 unique visitors and 6GB of traffic each month. Out of those 20k users, slightly over 12% stay on the site for more than five minutes - an eternity in web time. Our discussion forums have over 500 registered members, and if I did not purge inactive accounts every now and then, that number would probably be doubled. Compared to other communities on the internet it’s quite small, but for what it is - a niche site about an area of land that takes up about one million acres of land in South Jersey - it’s pretty big.

There are three important rules when considering building a website:

1. It’s hard to make a good website. Don’t let anybody fool you, the average person can’t sit down and come out with a nicely designed website. There’s too much technical knowledge needed. There’s too much required in the way of design skills required. There’s too much experience needed. There’s too much talent needed.
2. It’s really hard to make a good website that people want to come back to. You may make a great website that gets a lot of buzz, but once people experience what you have to offer, what else makes them want to come back? Perhaps that’s not what you’re after. The Ted The Caver site(s) are a great example of this. A really compelling story, but nothing to draw the reader to come back. A good example of a site that draws people to return would be Amazon, Woot, or a news site like CNN.com.
3. It’s really, really hard to make a good website that people want to come back to and contribute to. Web surfers are lazy. They want information in small burts, and presented in easy to read chunks. It’s rare for a web surfer to use the keyboard, except to directly type a URL or enter a search term. Engaging your users, having them want to come back, and having them want to add content to your site (and at the end of the day, things like discussion forums, blog comments, etc. are just user generated content — no different than Flikr or Digg) is a challenge - and what this series of articles are all about.

SO YOU WANNA TO BUILD A WEBSITE?

Great. Start by being a member of another community website. It doesn’t matter if it has anything to do with the community site you want to build. You need to spend a lot of time in a community to understand how it works.

Before I started my website, I was a voracious consumer of the website SomethingAwful. I read all of the articles penned by the webmaster Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka. I spent hours on their discussion forums posting in various threads. I watched the site grow, contract and grow some more. From here I learned how important it is to keep a steady - but firm - handle on your website. I also learned how important it is for a website owner to participate in their own community.

I was also a member in two other Pine Barrens related sites. One had a lot of good information, presented well, but wasn’t updated often. The message boards got 1-5 posts a week, and most of them were trolls or flames. Another site had a more lively discussion, but was only discussion - no content to back it up. In addition, every third click or so you’d be presented with a full page ad for something. Every message posted had an ad tacked on the bottom. It quickly became unusable.

So, I figured there was a need for a new community website with a lot of content (articles, downloads, etc.) and active discussion forums that were free from trolls and overboard advertising.

Now is the time to point out some other gotchas for building a community. Aim small, and find a niche. It’s highly unlikely that your idea for a new Star Wars Fan Club will get more than a smattering of visitors, unless it offers something really better than the handful of big sites, and thousand of other small sites offer. With the NJPB site, I knew that I was going to be serving a limited audience and was only “competing” with two or three other sites. My challenge would be to build something better, and attract visitors.

I’ll be talking more about web design, software, and the steps to building a community in the next article.