Memomo wrote:Late feedback but here's some ideas on how to increase your traffic and pageviews.
Put less navigation on the sidebar and more on the front page
All mobile users cannot see your sidebar navigation, any traffic that comes from a phone is most likely just going to click off the site right away because they can't figure out how to navigate.
Wikispaces had an update that broke the mobile side navigation, we are still trying to figure out how to fix it. There's a link to a custom navigation on the home page of the site that mobile users can use in the meantime. If you have any ideas as to what could have broken the mobile CSS, please let us know!
Memomo wrote:
Change your main page title to Dark Souls Wiki
Start practicing white hat SEO stuff so Google picks up more links for your wiki. Instead of having the main page be named home, name it Dark Souls Wiki. It will drive more searches to your wiki, especially anyone who uses Google (everyone)!
We can do this but we are already ranked first for any search on Dark Souls Wiki... not sure how this helps.
Memomo wrote:Fix your metadescription
Your wikis metadescription is used from the main page, it's time to fix the main page and instead of allowing it to say "Register here, etc.", change it to a description of your website. It will encourage more visitors to look when they are searching, and provide a friendly description of what the wiki is. Make the wiki modest, don't try exclaiming that you are the #1 resource for Dark Souls like other wikis, focus more on saying the wiki is community driven and completely volunteer. It makes you look less greedy and more like a volunteer platform for passionate gamers. People who play Dark Souls are usually passionate anyways, right?
Yep, forgot to do that xD
Memomo wrote:Make the wiki easier on the eyes
The content area clashes with the background, the templates are lacking any sort of style. There's nothing wrong with this, people love simple things, that's why Google works. The style itself clashes in a lot of areas though which can make the wiki unappealing for visual aesthetics. The eyes should be drawn more towards navigation, and your navigation is hidden on a sidebar. Focus on improving your search function if possible, although I'm not sure if WikiSpaces allows you to alter it.
I know of no way to improve the search function. We haven't had complaints about the design of the sidebar or the site in general, but if you have a design in mind maybe you could mock it up?
Memomo wrote:More more more HTML
You have the option to inject it, you could really spice up some pages if you worked on injecting more HTML in areas that don't need to be edited, such as the main page, navigation pages, list pages (after they are complete). It's also possible to add custom CSS, you can use this on your templates to stylize the tables, or even just change the internal CSS to do it.
I'm not sure if we can do this or how. We created the site and it grew organically into what it is now through the contributions of many people, and aesthetics weren't really our priority until Baal took charge of the technical side, and I like how it looks. If it can be improved, he is probably the person to talk to about ideas.
Memomo wrote:More information
It's time to sit down and dig into anything this game will say to you, start adding NPC dialogue, start adding drop rates in percentages. Add information that is interesting, especially if you can sit down and calculate it by hitting monsters and figuring out what their exact drop rate is. This wiki has a lot of editors and I'm sure most people would be willing to participate in figuring out drop rates.
More information is added daily but of course with a game of this depth there is still lots of missing data. The best way to gather it would be to post in the forums and organize a research session with other members, similar to what Blaine did for the weapon's missing info.
Memomo wrote:More pictures, clearer pictures
I don't have the PC version of this game sadly so it's hard to get clear pictures, but anyone who does can easily take screenshots and grab icons that can be cropped at added. Start adding all of the item images and things like that, people want to see that. Get them as clear as possible, in png format. Give them simple names that match with all other icons so they can be easily found and reuploaded if need. If you have the PC version, hit printscreen in game, paste it into a paint program, then save it as a png image instead of jpg to get rid of all that fuzziness (your computer will automatically save it as a jpg, but you can bypass that by pasting the image into a paint program and saving it).
All the images we have were submitted by members as the wiki grew so they are disparate and not always great. We are hoping that the PC users will be able to assist in increasing the quality
Memomo wrote:Did I say more navigation?
I'll say it again, this is what makes people browse your wiki, add in navigation templates to the bottom of pages, move more navigation into the content and off the side bar. When people are done looking at a page, they'll see the navigation template on the bottom and be encouraged to check out another related page. Fun, right?
We have something similar to this for the Places section, as the walkthrough progresses to different areas.
Memomo wrote:Get the client open
Anything is possible, including opening the Dark Souls client. If you are savvy enough, it's possible to get the png clear icon images out of the client, the most important thing is to dig out the images because it's almost impossible to get them just by taking screenshots, they will never be cleaner than the client images. Most likely, the publisher will not care about opening the client if you are only doing it to pull out image files. They only care about cheaters, they don't care about people looking for information. Believe it or not, this is how most gaming publishers get client information before others, they get one of their programmers to open the client and extract the data, then drop it onto their website via XML or whatever.
I'm not sure how this would be done, I have the PS3 version and have not looked into hacking its files, nor do I have plans to learn about it.
Memomo wrote:Get your host to improve your site
Most likely, you have one of the largest wikis on wikispaces, you are giving them tons of traffic. It's time for them to repay the favor, ask them to give your wiki extensions, like allowing HTML to be written in the page instead of injecting. Ask to write custom permissions, ask for more security. Get them to start doing work for you, you give them traffic, you deserve more features. Just keep bugging them until they do it. Tell them you want help increasing the traffic, ask for AbuseFilters so you can allow more anonymous editing, therefore getting more traffic in return. These people are functioning with the idea of money in mind, so always put things into terms of increased traffic and they will most likely be willing to do it.
Wikispaces has been pretty good in accommodating our crazy traffic, and they have upgrade options that grant specific permissions etc. We haven't needed them so far, but if someone who is knowledgeable wishes to discuss some perks with wikispaces we would all be happy
Memomo wrote:Buy a domain
Domains are pretty cheap and the shorter your domain, the more traffic you'll get. If it's an issue of money, I'd be more than willing to donate the $12 or so to buy a better domain. WikiSpaces gives you the option of using your own, so why not? Stick with .com or .org, .org implies that you are more focused towards volunteer editing and is used often for wikis, .com is just popular. Stick with a name that is easy to remember, possibly pick a name that is related to the entire series instead of just one game, this way you can keep expanding your wiki well past the life of Dark Souls and into the life of their newest games and their old ones too (Demon Souls)!
Wikispaces does indeed give domains but the pricetag on those options seemed excessive and thus not worth it. I absolutely agree that it would be great to tie the next game together, it is partly the reason why this is soulswiki and not darksoulswiki
Thank you very much for your feedback and I hope you can help us enact some of these ideas
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