Carcassonne Central

Hi, may we can add the section "AVAILABLE SOON // NEWS" on the base web site to inform us about the future releases of Carcassonne, the approx. dates... all with RGG or HIG release lists?

Just changed the "Events" forum to "News & Events" in the forum.  We used to have news on the site home page, but to be honest it was a bit of a pain to have news in 2 places, so now it's only in the forums.

Thanks to Novelty & Deatheux for their suggestions regarding a separate news forum!

np! keep on the good work!

Hmm... without news on the home page, it's more static than dynamic. Search engines prefer sites that update more often. If possible, a good solution would be to have the home page pull news from the news and events forum in the database. I did something like this on some sites that I made a few years ago with much success. (I think I actually generated RSS feeds from the database and had the web site parse the feeds to display the news, but I'm not sure anymore.)

not a bad point there!!  i personnally found the web site via a sarch engine, not the Forum...

Entirely true.  However, IMHO, this isn't a race to get a billion members nor an attempt at global domination, so I'm quite happy to plod along as is. We had the back-end database connected between the web site and the forums originally, but every time one of them updated, something broke. The effort was never worth the result, and I didn't have the time to always be fiddling with stuff (the badges & rank system has been broken for quite a few months for example!) We already attract roughly 2 new members per day (which is far more than I ever thought), and has been relatively consistent when the front page had news vs it now being static.  The SEO community has done an excellent job selling the idea to people think they need to be #1 on google, but I don't buy it. Why is it important to be loved by google?

I don't want to seem closed-minded about it all, so if the community feels differently about this site then I'm completely open to hear a proposal. There is a balance between quantity (traffic) and quality (content), and I think that, given the consideration that this is a volunteer effort on all our parts, quality is more important than quantity.

Yes it is yes it is yes it is!

Sorry. I'll go to bed now, and let the grown-ups talk.

 {z1

I'm not saying we need to be #1, just on the first or second page. Sometimes when I'm searching for stuff, quality results are hard to find. Most people give up after the first 3-5 pages. Just needs to be good enough that legitimate people can find it.

Yeah, really. Gantry speaks entierly for himself!  {f

Well it seems I am outnumbered on this issue! Rally the troops!

Well, I just corrected the menu bar on the FAQ part of the site to match that of the front page, and added a proper set of keywords for search engines on each page. I noticed the other day that, although CC isn't on the front page of a google search, Carcassonne FAQ does lead here. So I'll make more effort to attract people via that route…

Carcassonne is primarily a city in France, but if you google "carcassonne" and "game" together, we're on the front page.

How dare they use the same name as our beloved game?  ;D

I think they were here first.  ;)