Rebuilding The New Website

[Wessex_Electric_Nutter]

My suggestion on searching was for the purpose of anyone attemping to start their own website . How many have attempted to do so , the difficulties , and the failures . It is not as easy as some believe ! I was not very clear in posting my thoughts .

I disagree, creating a site with a WISIWYG editor and templates is easy as hell. Even a 2 year old can do it. Creating a bespoke site with a WYSIWYG editor is hard and it gets harder when you try to maintain it. Yes, we have these sites, but few continually update them.

 

[deeelare]

Johnk ,
My suggestion on searching THE FORUM was for the purpose of anyone attemping to start their own SUCCESSFUL website . How many TRAINZERS have attempted to do so , the difficulties , and HOW MANY FAILED . It is not as easy as SOME believe ! I was not very clear in posting my thoughts .
And I agree , Trainz Resources Directory is an excellent access to exsisting Trainz sites .
--- ,DLR

My last attempt at trying to clarify my thoughts :wave: --- ,DLR

 

[Johnk]

Thanks deeelare, you worried me there for a bit.

Wessex_Electric_Nutter You're right again. It's quite easy to slap together a copy-cat template driven web site, but when it comes to producing editorial and interesting content, that's a different story.

My advice to everyone is loud and clear - Don't start a web site unless you have a specific reason. Then try to figure out how many people will actually visit it. Why write a book if nobody want's to read it?

Many of the Trainz web sites listed my my Directory would be lucky to attract 10 visitors a year. I spent months looking for them and I'm still finding one or two that haven't been updated for years. Very few get a mention on these forums and even less are indexed by the search engines.

 

[NIARTcar]

John has got a point, if you are creating content that applies to the subject which other more expanded and established sites have claimed to be their specialty, you may think about joining said site instead of making your own, it's just good business.

small site + your content = minimal hits; big site + your content = mass distribution

 

[American_Connections]

Stats

Reading all this about site views, I just looked through a search engine for my site and found many links, even to my persona! I also found stats in Trainz Resources Directory that I did not even know was there! Guess it states that I have made a useful site! And I have to add that the directory seems very useful for a common assembly point also!

 

[Johnk]

American_Connections, do you mean The WebRing which supplies stats for each site visited? Although the Directory has a good reporting system, I think I'm the only one who can see it. Even then, the way I upload changes to the directory, cancels out all the earlier stats. I was only thinking about this last night and may implement more accurate reporting system.

From the information I do have, your site gets plenty of hits from the directory as well as the webring. It's not the unique hits that count, it's all those repeat visitors you get. Some sites like yours attract repeat visitors, some repell them.

If I can install an accurate stats system, I'll try to make it public.

 

[American_Connections]

Orca Script

American_Connections, do you mean The WebRing which supplies stats for each site visited? ...quote]I guess it is through the web ring (http://trainzresources.com/_ringmaker.php?Stats&id=12) It is listed as a submenu to trainzresources.

 

[trainzamtrakfan]

Thank you all for your help,

I understand much more about website design and i will show off my "Design"

in the following weeks , due to much studying and my work take most of my life


special thanks to:

Niartcar
JohnK
Wessex_Electric_Nutter


Other Thanks to everyone!


Cheers,
Andre

 

[Johnk]

American_Connections, Yes that's just the webring which is still in its infancy. The directory has almost reached 100,000 page views since late March, but my Stats program doesn't give details for individual listings. I'm trying to correct that now.

Update. I've reset all the counters and promised myself I won't over-ride them again. I'll try to supply monthly stats for say the top 100 visited listings.

 

[Wessex_Electric_Nutter]

small site + your content = minimal hits; big site + your content = mass distribution

Not necessarily, I found a good way to bring traffic to your site (interestingly, I never thought of it at the time) is to create your own 3D models and content. As soon as you announce what you are making, you produce a teaser shot or WIP shot.

Say you want to give people a 'sneek peak' at the item you are working on, but can't finish it? Websites are a good way as I regard the DLS as more for complete objects, thats why most of my stuff is on my website rather than the DLS.

This is why its a good reason to start content creation. But if you are going to do that, don't bother if you aren't any good at it. Quality content really does help distribution and keeps everyone happy. Crap content and people will still use it for free, but a few will moan.


I actually have a WIP server for the purpose of distributing my content, which is a home server. I found that cutting out the "upload process" speeds things up drastically. You can also upload things "live" rather than going through the upload process. Ok, ok, my server suffers down time from power cuts, upgrades, downgrades, etc, but most traffic for me is not mid day, but morning and afternoons. I know that as many from posts in another forum, use the site in the afternoons.
It is also has this ability to loose the wireless network (the router is crap!), dropping off the internet, because the router dropped out, crashing and me knocking it over. Oh, the upload speed is limited, I've got only 1mb upload!

But, its an interesting idea. By the way, it runs Server 2008 (Original) and is a Dell Optiplex GX270, it uses the following hardware:

Pentium 4 2.4ghz processor
512mb RAM (going to 4GB when I can afford it!)
Intel 845G chipset I think
250GB SATA Hard drive
DVD ROM drive (It no longer writes)
Wireless KB and Mouse
Hacked CPU cooling fan (I had a 4 wire CPU fan and a 5 wire plug that needed to go into a 3 wire socket, without the fan trying to take off! My dad helped me on this and ground the blue wire, not been a problem since.)
Belkin Wireless card
TI firewire card
No AGP card yet.


And it looks like this:

101 things to do with an old computer. I actually fleaBayed this PC for £11, I was going to use for my mini-ITX mobo, but I found it wasn't practical on a number of levels, so I kept it and notice it would work, if I changed 5 capacitors (yep, one of those), I recently did and it worked, its been on for about 7 days non stop and not given me any problems. Putting on caps is easy, taking them off is the hard part. (Its far easier to use a rework station, trust me on that, if you got a solder sucker and a very narrow soldering iron, its very easy.) Other than that, it was made of "recycled parts". These days, I mix new with old, the only new PC I built, is my ITX desktop. However, the case was salvaged and my dad got the old dual core AMD internals, that may change in the future, as I plan to hang it off the back of the monitor.

The Dell was made from a processor of my dads old computer (scrapped - mobo USB failure), the caps came from the same mobo, the processor and ram came from the same mobo, the old hard drive was my old SATA before I went 1TB only, the DVD Drive I found floating around, the same with the floppy, while the heatsink, fan, rails and PSU were all eBayed.
Now, theres an idea, host your own website. IF you would like to see the one the server is hosting, its http://81.6.245.27/ and the files? http://81.6.245.27/files . (And my IP is static, so you don't need to change your bookmarks.)

 

[Johnk]

I can agree with both arguments here. Nick (Niartcar) has a niche site dealing exclusively with Disney Monorails. Many of the model builders in his little croup may only build one or two models in their entire Trainz career. Hardly enough to create your own web site for. Those modellers would be better off joining up with Nick and promoting their products via a single site.

If you can build a new model every week or month, then running your own site could make sense. People will quickly realise that around once a month you'll list something new and they'll drop by to take a peek.

In the case of my site, I try to add around twenty new items a month. Because the site is so large (750 listings as I speak), those twenty items get lost in the crowd so repeat visitors may think nothing new has eventuated. It's essential to keep your visitors informed, but I've reached the point where it's becoming a task. Although my script displays new items for "this month", it can also list stuff that that's up to a year old. Maybe a newsletter would be the answer?

Wessex_Electric_Nutter is right in suggesting you use teasers. Most successful Internet marketing sites offer something for nothing, but a few photographic teasers in the forums should also do the trick. The most important thing is to continuously add new material to your site. The search engines closely monitor this and it's the answer to SEO (search engine opimisation).

My site is already ranked by Alexia as number 1,386,000 out of the 600 million plus sites out there. I'm pretty proud to think that my crumby old Trainz web site gets more visitors that 4.5 million other sites covering a multitude of subjects.

Not everyone will rank so well because not everyone can spare the time to produce new content on such a regular basis. That's where combining resources as Nick suggests can come in handy. If you do it alone as I have done, then you have to be prepared to create all the new content yourself.

 

[Wessex_Electric_Nutter]

I can agree with both arguments here. Nick (Niartcar) has a niche site dealing exclusively with Disney Monorails. Many of the model builders in his little croup may only build one or two models in their entire Trainz career. Hardly enough to create your own web site for. Those modellers would be better off joining up with Nick and promoting their products via a single site.

If you can build a new model every week or month, then running your own site could make sense. People will quickly realise that around once a month you'll list something new and they'll drop by to take a peek.

The problem we now have, is if you build models, you then get obessive by detail, I produce now about a model every 2 months, but because my catelouge is soo great, I think I require a site for it. Don't forget, I've been producing models for about 6/7 years. And this community, 9 years! Now, I wouldn't say every month, but if you have major model releases every 2 months and minor (say a reskin) every week, 2 weeks, who will attract the visitors?

 

[trainzamtrakfan]

guys,

my trainz game does not work , so i need someone to help me finish this site,

if you want to help, please reply if not , just leave me a reply :wave: