Should we make more visible to guests ?

[TwiMamas#2]

http://www.twimamas.freeforums.org


We have been doing a lot of promoting lately and in the last few days we have had at least 50 guest visits per day. That may not seem like a lot to some but to us it is especially since we are a new board (only been up 1 week) and we are there for a specific topic.

Out of those 100+ guest visits though we have only had about 4 new members in the last 2 days.

We have the majority of the forums blocked mainly for the safety of our families, namely our children. But we have opened up certain forums to guests to view so that they can get a feel of what we talk about on there.

Would it help any if we opened up maybe the main forums but leave the sub forums closed ?
Do we maybe need more on our Portal ?

Thanks,
Lindsey

 

[Kevin X Dragon]

I think if you open up more forum you may more people to join. Also don't add any more thing in the Portal. I think you should remove somethings from the Portal instead of adding.

 

[Antarctic]

Just show everything to guests. IMO, if i didn't see the whole board, i wouldn't join.

 

[Pixel Pirate]

Just show everything to guests. IMO, if i didn't see the whole board, i wouldn't join.

Same here. Unless its a site thats not meant for guest view(Adult sites like birdy has).

 

[Nuke]

Maybe they think it's Christmas and then they go "O, it's Twilight, those books are ****."

I know that's what I would do, no offense.

 

[birdy]

I think you should open up the general sections for the guests - I have 2 Sections that are not available to guests - obviously the VIP Adult area and also the Members Section where members post their photos and have their own rooms - thats also only available if you join. BUT you can see the forums are there you just cannot view the threads.

 

[TwiMamas#2]

Just show everything to guests. IMO, if i didn't see the whole board, i wouldn't join.

The reason that we have it closed right now is because of our kids. We have pictures and names on there.

 

[TwiMamas#2]

I think you should open up the general sections for the guests - I have 2 Sections that are not available to guests - obviously the VIP Adult area and also the Members Section where members post their photos and have their own rooms - thats also only available if you join. BUT you can see the forums are there you just cannot view the threads.

Thanks. We may have to do some re-arranging and set different things up !

 

[RMRM]

Just show everything to guests. IMO, if i didn't see the whole board, i wouldn't join.

What about forums that have peoples age etc in? I have the new members forum that has everything like that in and I wouldn't like guests seeing my info so it's closed of to guests.

 

[TwiMamas#2]

Just show everything to guests. IMO, if i didn't see the whole board, i wouldn't join.

What about forums that have peoples age etc in? I have the new members forum that has everything like that in and I wouldn't like guests seeing my info so it's closed of to guests.

This is one of our concerns as well. We have our ages and kids names in our Intro section and a few other places.
The only thing that we can do is re work the board and move things around to hide it.

 

[TwiMamas#2]

Ok. We have reworked it and moved and added a few things and made the majority of it open to guests other than a few select places that we made Members only.

Thank you for all the help and suggestions.

 

[Lord of Games]

Members want to see what it is exactly that they're joining befor they actually join. I do the same thing, and get irritated when a certain subforum is blocked and I want to see it in case I feel like registering. Try making each of your subforums viewable by guests, but 'postable' by members only.

 

[Cosmic]

Your board's theme turns me off, a lot. All of the forum icons are huge, making it look unprofessional and styles with borders separating each forum's line in the table. Also I don't care for twilight so I wouldn't join anyway. But yes, you do need to allow guests to see and read all the forums registered users can.

 

[TwiMamas#2]

Your board's theme turns me off, a lot. All of the forum icons are huge, making it look unprofessional and styles with borders separating each forum's line in the table. Also I don't care for twilight so I wouldn't join anyway. But yes, you do need to allow guests to see and read all the forums registered users can.

I completely understand the style. We are having problems with changing the styles and we ended up having to uninstall almost everything that we had. We have a hard time changing it for some reason.

 

[Cosmic]

Your board's theme turns me off, a lot. All of the forum icons are huge, making it look unprofessional and styles with borders separating each forum's line in the table. Also I don't care for twilight so I wouldn't join anyway. But yes, you do need to allow guests to see and read all the forums registered users can.

I completely understand the style. We are having problems with changing the styles and we ended up having to uninstall almost everything that we had. We have a hard time changing it for some reason.

Also I don't like freeforums.org myself. It's basically the same as a free-web host with phpbb3 on it except it's a tad easier to set up, give NO customization unless you pay them, and they offer mods similar/worse to free ones which could easily be gotten off off google for a fee.