Eliminate Forums, Please!

With the new website the forums have been made un-usable. How about just eliminating them to stop the confusion?

This is a conversation I'd really like to have. "Eliminating them" was/is a real option. Our thinking was that many modern websites get their interaction through comments sections that tend to stay on point, but also allow discussion, and that's the way we wanted to go. We also want to shift trip reports to their own specific area in the blog called Vegas With An Edge. Message boards get in the way of those goals. Plus, there's a lot of unruliness on MBs, which is something I grew very tired of dealing with. But at the last minute we decided that eliminating them completely was like opening a casino without a sports book or a poker room -- not complete. I know that the current set-up is far from optimal, but I disagree that it's unusable. Several good conversations have already taken place here. Remember that these boards are located in the store because that was the only way we could open with them. If they are retained, we can leave them here or spend the time and effort to move them onto the main website and build them out as they were before (without the problems of the slow speed and other issues on the old site). But we won't just throw them up and let the crazies take over again. We're also getting so much flack for being too commercial and that makes no sense. We can't provide the things you want if we don't make money to pay for our staff, research, and tech costs. And of all the things that are difficult to monetize, MBs are at the top of the list. I'm not being flippant or cocky, but new customers will continue to come here for the quality of things like Question of the Day, our buffet listings, the Gambling With An Edge blog that's about to be incorporated, and many other very good features that we're building out right now. They won't miss the message boards because they'll have never had them here. So this conversation is about trying to intelligently preserve this component for the current users. I'd welcome comments on this, but I hope the goals just mentioned are kept in mind in the responses. Help us come up with a good and equitable solution and we'll follow it.

I just don't see what the big deal was about the forum in its previous incarnation. It was always voluntary to the user. One could either view it, or not. After watching the site since 2002, I personally enjoyed most of the forum, until several of the tabs became obsolete via inaction. It appealed to me for its entertainment value, among other things. On the member's side, I always got great information from users about various good deals, restaurant updates, casino/hotel updates, and other off-the-wall goings-on. It was not an uncommon event that I would get more reliable info about establishments in the forum that I could get on the main site. I admit, sometimes the FFA posts were a bit crusty (and sometimes I added some crust). Never-the-less, I thought it was worthwhile. The poker and BJ tabs were dinosaurs, along with a couple of the membership side tabs. Still, I would rather see reviews and commentary from various site patrons. It adds to the value of the site, IMHO. Just providing my feedback about the site. I'll patronize the site in the future, as the coupon book more that pays for itself.

I'm all for evolution, but I have to admit I enjoyed the previous forum layout due to it's organization. I was able to target a specific audience when I had questions. For example, redeeming a MyVegas coupon or a specific mLife question. Sure, some of the categories sat unused for a weeks, but then a surge would occur with useful (or not useful) information that I enjoyed reading. The blog method is OK, but limits the topics to that blog entry. We already have plenty of websites for that type of interaction (VegasBright, All Things Vegas, etc). The forums was what brought me here on a regular basis. I only visited the other sections when I was about the travel to Vegas to see what was new, which is 3-4 times a year. That being said, I'm not going to stop subscribing if they don't return. The coupon book alone is worth the cost of membership. Like an old slot machine that can't be found anymore, they'll just be missed.

I’ll offer you my honest opinion as someone that has developed websites since the late 1990s. General Comments: The front end of your site: That top menu isn’t mobile friendly. Your logo, there is no nice way to say it, looks unprofessional. Go to Fiverr.com and pick one of the higher rated logo gigs to get yourself a new professional logo created for $5. It is so cheap you should have a few of them made and use the one you like best. The low-rent pop under that shows fake windows updates, surveys and such isn’t something you find on a professional mainstream website. You should get rid of it. Your overall design doesn't provide a means to monetize your content in the way modern websites do. Namely, through related content ads ( Such as Taboola, Outbrain, Rev Content and so on). These ads typically appear under the post and in the sidebar. This is where most of your income comes from running a website these days. You don’t have any of these and your site doesn't seem to be designed to take advantage of these types of ads. Here is how it is done. Say you have an article listing the top 10 buffets in Vegas. The way you have your site-set-up now, that would be one page. The correct way to do it is to turn that one page view into ten. Using a design that incorporates, slideshows, and related content, you would have a picture of each buffet and paragraph describing what makes it great. That would get you ten page views instead of one using roughly the same amount of content. Experimental math: Say your Google ads and these related content ads make you $2 per-thousand page views, you have just made 10x the money doing it this way instead of how you do it now. Also, it improves your website metrics as you bounce rate is lower and your engagement goes up. The Forum:

True, but not the way you are doing it. Most modern websites of any size embed Facebook comments or use another outside commenting system (like Discuss) to make it user-friendly. Relying on the native Word Press comment system will turn people off, and it will be a nightmare to manage simply because of all the bots that will submit spam comments. Facebook works great and it is easy to embed into Word Press. If you visitor is already logged into Facebook on their computer when they come to LVA, they will be ready to comment with no additional registration required. It also makes it more likely people will share your content on Facebook. A new forum is almost impossible to start these days because it is difficult to attract users(You are competing with existing Social Media). It seems somewhat bizarre you want to throw yours away because you don’t like what people chose to talk about in it. The forum is an asset to the site in that it boosts metrics (engagement & bounce rate). As far as the crazies (myself included) go, your competition is FaceBook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and so on. Do you think people go to those places for mature intelligent discussion or drama/crazy talk? As someone else already put it, a forum is for entertainment. The general tone of your comments seems to suggest you are trying to get new (younger blood) here. People in their 20s and 30s that are used to having freewheeling open-ended discussions talking about whatever pops into their heads on those social media platforms aren’t going to want to come here and participate in a very controlled conversation. The problem with off topic discussion in the forums IMO is that there was never a place provided for it. Most forums of any size have one or more off-topic forums where people can talk about whatever they want. The Word Press Forum you chose to implement seems to be a strange choice for a forum that already has members and is somewhat busy. I have never seen one used for anything other than a customer support board. It doesn't have robust features. It is kind of a stripped down bare bones sort of thing. I think you are making it overly complicated as a robust forum is easy to set-up on a MySQL/PHP platform.(phpBB, simple machines, vbulletin and vanilla forums). Three of those are free and all have large user bases. The way you have this one set-up causes privacy issues. Even if the user changes their username, their profile URL still displays their email address. Bots will pick those email addresses up and spam them. As far as moderation hassles go, If you set the forum up so there is someplace for everyone, the posts get sent to right places to start with and are only seen by people that want to see them. In other words, someone that wants to post about current events could be sent to a current events forum and that way the person looking for buffet advice wouldn’t be exposed to the “crazy talk.” Both users end up happy and you end up happy because you get the page views for both. I’d would also recruit volunteer mods from you long term users and allow them to police the forum. That would save you and your staff the time and the hassle. If it were up to me: I’d go to theme forest and pick out a WordPress magazine/news theme that was designed with related content in mind, is mobile compatible, and has built in features like slide-shows that would allow me to get more out of my existing content. I’d add a $5 logo from Fiverr and have something very polished and professional in a short amount of time for less than $100 total. Plus, I’d I have the designer to fall back on for support and bug fixing. As to the forum, I would choose one of those I mentioned and not worry about integrating it with your membership database. Think of it as developing another mailing list.

Appreciate these attempts to help, which is what I was asking for. It's so much more constructive than just anger/negativity. We're listening and will take it all into consideration. Lots of things beneath the surface, though, that render things that seem obvious not so.

Miss the old forums site. Have to agree it much easier to find answers to certain questions by going to a certain topic on the old forum site. A major reason I kept on going to the website was because of the forums page. I really loved reading the trip reports.

I am a senior and a long time LVA subscriber. I find the forum approach confusing and difficult to use. It also doesn't provide the specific information I seek, i.e., transportation comments and deals, casino experiences with promotions, etc. Please find a way to make this easier for those with less technical knowledge. I understood messages but I do not get blogs.

Mark seems to far and away know the best direction for this new site, definitely sounds more on top than whoever created this current site. The MB's are definitely way more valuable than what they're being valued at currently (which seems close to zero). Geez, this site had a pretty good sized base to START with and it's being tossed aside . The "crazies" are probably what drove most of the traffic , maybe I should say all the repeat traffic. Day in and day out'ers who populated the site. I remember what happened when all open talk was clamped down on, this place became a ghost town. Mark was right about having the OT section, there will always be those who bitch about it but the people who contribute to it are what has to drive the most traffic, far and away. It's like a bad car wreck, people bitch about the rubber neckers but guess what? You gotta see what's going on. I am sorry to be one of the nellie nay sayers but this site lacks just about everything other current slick Vegas sites do. I feel if you kill the base, the rest will topple.

Thanks, jatki I really do think the problems here are solvable for less than $100, and I think WordPress is the right CMS for the front-end of the site. There are 1000s of professional designs at Theme Forest for Wordpress. A lot of them include designs for the store component that is being used here too. https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress?utf8=%E2%9C%93&referrer=worksmarter&view=grid&sort=sales (Search for the news or magazine themes) A lot of those designs also have built-in review components which would allow you to do hotel, restaurant and so on reviews. I have been thinking about the revenue situation too. You need to be on YouTube AC. You are good in front of the camera, and you are already on location in Las Vegas. You could produce a ton of content cheaply. For example, if you were to start doing one or two 5-10 minute videos once a week, in a year your YouTube Channel would be producing significant revenue all by itself. Make little segments like you used to do for the Travel Channel or just do video walkthroughs of each property saying what you like about it. You could hire an attractive twentysomething to do a segment on the best pools in vegas. People would eat that up. This is where the value is in the LVA, and this what sets you apart from you competitors. You’re an expert on the subject and people want and value your expert opinion. Video production is so easy to learn and so inexpensive to get into these days. Windows Movie Maker on a Windows Machine or if you want something even better iMovie on a Mac is great. (Both are included free with the operating system). You just need a camera and a tripod. The only pop-up you should use is one that invites first-time visitors to sign-up for a free Gold Membership. The form goes right in the pop-up. Then use a chain of timed autoresponder emails to upsell that list into paying members. There are WordPress plugins that do this in conjunction with MailChimp and a few others. Anyway, I see a ton of opportunity at the LVA. Just do things the simple right way instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with a one-off design. What makes WordPress great is that there are tons of existing designs/components that you just plug-in and you are ready to go.