(Kinda hard to read what you read without the paragraph breaks, but I think I'll manage, hehe)
Most of what you said is already in the works... but I'm just one person. We have people who are doing an excellent job in answering tech support problems (goranpaa comes to mind, he rocks, and a few others), but in order to make content, someone has to write them. Open Tech Support is just one of the sites I maintain, and I'm already putting in a significant amount of time into it in the last month or so (partly to make up for neglecting it for so long).
For content, we need contributors. I have already set up the infrastructure for the Reviews, Guides, Downloads and Links section. I am even finishing up on a Marketplace section to make it easier for visitors and members to go to the best places to buy or browse for what they need (and help out the site by virtue of referral commission, of course). But I can't do it all, even though I'm trying my darndest best
A few years ago this site had a healthy load of contributors. Almost all of them have either left or moved on, and a couple staffers literally passed on to the afterlife (laborat and t'kron, and I miss em terribly). Even Ion Silverbolt, who was doing a great job keeping the news section alive during my hiatus, has apparently moved on as well (or maybe too busy, I'm not sure). All that's left are me and a couple moderators to tend the site.
I was gonna issue a notice in site updates asking for content contributors for the site - after I am sure I finished and/or updated all the sections of the site after the big site update a couple weeks ago. I have also bookmarked several sites containing some important content that I can include in the site, but again since it's only me doing it, it's gonna take some time...
So all in all, great suggestions. Most of it I'm already aware of, just not sure how to kick it off. Again, what the site needs is, ironically, support
Also note that keeping this site up is not cheap. We get hammered with 10,000 to 20,000 hits
a day, with more than 200,000 pageviews a week (we get 400-500 unique visitors at any given moment, less than half of em spiders/bots, and most of them don't show up in who's online cause they're accessing the site archives, which is where most of the traffic is). With that amount of traffic, I cannot move it back to the cheaper shared hosting plans (the ones that go for $10-$20 a month), because it'll get kicked out of that host for hogging the server resources too much. It needs a dedicated server, which is not cheap (try $275 a month currently), and the google ad revenue are not cutting it anymore. So really, keeping this site up is more because I actually like this site rather than because it's actually earning me money
So right now, I'm just on cleanup phase before I officially ask for content contributors. Since this is a non-profit site, there is less incentive for people to help out because we're all not getting paid to write what we write on the site. That isn't what the site was created for, anyway. Which is why it's more difficult to ask for help
So in a nutshell, I'm still trying to inject stimulus into the site after being gone for so long. It's just a pity that almost all our staffers have moved on. But if anyone wants to help out, just shoot me a PM and I'll let you know exactly what we need
- CL
