Re: Warriors forum {4,000 members} open to affiliates
Our Staff category is mostly viewable boards; only the Staff board at the very bottom is supposed to be Top Secret
🙂 The rest of that section is for members to communicate with staff about issues pertaining to rules, needing help, etc.
Can you see into this board?:
http://warriorcatsarpg.proboards.com/in ... oard=admin
Our affiliate table is, well, down at bottom where it's always been. True, it's not the most visible spot, however, the topmost 30 buttons ARE visible at a glance. Those are our special spots. They are for long term or large affiliates who also have us in a static or immediately visible position on their sites. Any marquees, click-to-views, or scrollables-below-the-visible portion go into the area below the surface. Over time they may rise up. I generally clear out about 30 dead ones every couple of months.
I like the appeal of random-displays for the buttons but it comes at the cost of not being able to promise any one person that they'll be displayed "static."
For very large forums that display us in an equally visible place, I would reserve a spot up in the top 30.
Click-to-view affiliates are IMO not really any different from a scrolling table of affilites. You still have to click and make an effort to see them rather than them catching your eye without your doing anything, which gets you a lot more hits.
Marquees, they can be okay, but usually worse than scrollables. If they only have a few buttons they're okay, and if they're decently wide, but I see some sites with marquees on the sidebar with a million and one buttons. We don't usually even accept these at all, because who's even going to see it, much less catch it before it's off the window for another 20 minutes XD
We will never use a sidebar on our site...I just feel they clutter up things and detract from the simple layout.