Ben Ruset Sysadmin, etc.

Building an Online Community Part Two: If You Build It, They Might Come

Now that you've decided to jump in and build a community site, you need to figure out exactly how you're going to do it.

Back in the early days of the web, people wrote plain HTML files and uploaded them to their web servers. Doing that has the benefit of the site being really fast - the web server doesn't need to do any processing or database lookups, it just hands the browser the file. The problem is of scale. The very first versions of the site that would eventually evolve to NJPineBarrens.com were coded like this, way back in 1998 or so. Even then, without a lot of content, it became difficult to maintain an ever growing number of static HTML pages. Quite often you'd get into a situation where a minor change to a menu, for example, would require the same change be made to several dozen files. Without good QA, it's easy to miss files, and eventually you're looking at having a site that has a number of bad links, typos, or has an inconsistent look and feel.

Enter the database driven web site. These types of sites often have a smaller number of static HTML pages, and all (or most) content is stored in a database. Generally these types of software have templates that you edit to establish your look and feel, which means that if you want to change colors, or add a menu option, you only do it in one place. Most larger websites now run using software that fetches content out of a database. The really good thing is that a lot of this software is free, open source software that is relatively easy to use. In fact, many webhosting accounts offer "one click installs" of some of the most popular software.

When designing NJPineBarrens.com, I followed the formula created by SomethingAwful. SA has a "front page" of articles, and a separate message forum. I also knew that I wanted to offer free image hosting for my members, so I needed some sort of software that would facilitate members uploading their own pictures to their own separate areas. Unlike SomethingAwful, I wanted to integrate the forum and the front page to more closely tie them together. (I would eventually stop trying to do this.) I needed a content management system for the articles, a forum software for the message forums, and a gallery software for the uploaded images. I ended up choosing Postnuke for the CMS,  pnPHPBB (a modified version of phpBB specifically for Postnuke powered sites) and Menalto Gallery (since it also integrates in with Postnuke) for the image gallery.

I don't want to give the impression that this is the only way to go. You can build a community website without forums, although it's much harder. You can build a community website without a front page, although I wasn't interested in just running discussion forums. Blogging software such as WordPress is one of the newest vehicles for community building, offering you the webmaster a vehicle for rapidly posting new content, and users the ability to leave feedback as comments on articles. I'm a huge fan of WordPress now, since it can be molded into doing anything from a blog software to a content management system by a relatively decent sysadmin.

Over the course of several days in September of 2002 I set up my site, integrated the three pieces of software together, and designed the look & feel for the site. In part one of this series I said that I am not a web designer, and I stand by that statement. I'm fortunate to have a good eye for design, and unfortunate to be very OCD about the look of my websites. I wasn't happy until the site looked professional enough -- this is one of the aspects of the site that I believed help draw people in the early days. I was competing against a very well designed and beautiful website, so mine had to look equally as good. (It didn't, but it was close.) I wanted a site that didn't look like someone in their early twenties made it, yet was fresh, vibrant, and easy to use. I have been designing websites since 1994 or so, so I have enough background in design to understand what works and what doesn't work, and more importantly, how to make it work. In all honesty, if you're unfamiliar with HTML, PHP, CSS, or any of the other numerous web languages, you're better off hiring someone to do the design work. You'll spend far less of your own time and the results will be well worth it -- providing you hire a good designer.

The next aspect of building your community is getting the word out. On all of the forums I was a member on, I added a link to the site in my signature file. That meant that every post I made had a somewhat small, inconspicuous link back to my site. I got the bulk of my early visitors from that method, although I felt really bad about using someone else's site as a vehicle to promote mine. I eventually stopped posting in the two other Pine Barrens community websites and devoted myself exclusively to my own. In the long run this worked out, and I believe was the "best" thing to do -- I know I'd be upset if someone came on my website and started posting links to their own new Pine Barrens website. Eventually, having enough content and enough people linking back to various articles on my site brought the site's ranking high enough in Google to put me within the top four entries for most Pine Barrens searches in Google.

It took several years for NJPineBarrens.com to get this big, and there were a number of times that I was extremely discouraged by the lack of progress that it had made. Just because you built it, doesn't mean that they will come. There's any number of reasons why people may not be attracted to your site - anything from it being an ugly design to the personality you convey online. Quite often, it just takes time. During this time, you should focus on adding as much content to your site as possible.

Over the years I have changed the software that has run the site (Postnuke to Mambo to Joomla to WordPress, PNphpBB to phpBB to vBulletin, Menalto Gallery to Coppermine Gallery to PHP PhotoPost Pro) several times. This was mostly to add various features or address security concerns. I've also changed the overall design a number of times, which is probably one of the worst things you can do, and is my biggest fault as a webmaster.

First, by changing things around too much, you risk breaking the URL's that Google knows about, so if a visitor comes along and tries to access an article they found on your site though Google, they could get a 404 (internet speak for page not found) error. Not only that, but if you change too much stuff around, you can make it hard for people to find and re-read articles they have run before. Finally, as the site grows and you get a number of people who have been with you a long time, you'll find that there are people who don't take to change well, and will complain when you make too many changes. In a lot of ways, they're right -- you have a good design, why change it? It's hard to argue with that logic.

In my next article, I'll be going into running the actual community, and showing you how to walk the tightrope of making people happy.