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EDIT: Here's a link to a mock-up of the site, please bear in mind that this is a MOCK design, it is not final in any way, all images/content are placeholder and simply there to show off the look and feel that we are aiming for, so be nice!

None of the links work, as it is just a preview.

Here it is: http://www.loremaster.co.uk/test/index.html

Hi guys, as the title suggest I am starting a new tabletop news website that is more than just a rumours blog, my goal is for it to be a complete one-stop gaming hub. As a result, I would like YOU to tell me what you would want/expect from a site such as this.

As valued members of the hobby community all your advice is welcome! Firstly, some of the features you can already expect are:

- Gaming News (board games, tabletop wargames, role-playing games)
- Professionally edited video battle reports and product reviews.
- a Forum for users to discuss the Hobby, much like here on Dakka (I'm not trying to steal you away, I promise!)
- Painting and modelling tutorials, stored in a searchable and easily referenced database.
- 40k/Fantasy/Warmahordes/Infinity/Malifaux tactics and beginner guides
- A fully searchable user-generated gallery with voting/comments system.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

So, some important questions:

1) What would attract you, as a hobby enthusiast, to a new gaming website?

2) What would make you want to sign up to that site and start posting/commenting?

3) Can you give any examples of a "bad" hobby site? What made it bad in your experience? (You don't need to name and shame, just outline what made the site bad)

4) Are there any aspects of the hobby that you have a hard time finding information on?

5) Lastly, if a tabletop gaming website needed just one feature to keep you coming back, what would it be?

Thanks for your time guys, it's very much appreciated!

More and more people want to do this. Guess it's the new thing.

Are there really that many tabletop gaming websites? I can't think of anything. There's a few painting blogs, some forums...

Meh, somebody'll correct me.

Anyway, I think I have three criteria in order to become interested in a site;
It has to look good (I don't want poorly done HTML and a tile image for the background)
It has to work; constantly updated links, emails, etc. and reliability, so pretty much hosted on a separate server to an actual PC. I need to get to it 24/7, not just end when the PC goes off.
It has to actually have something that interests me. The unfortunate thing is, you've essentially proposed Dakka with a blog on the side instead of N&R.

News (N&R)? Check.
Videos? Check.
Forum? Check.
P&M tutorials (there's an entire subforum)? Check.
Tactics? Check.
Beginners' Guides? Check manufacturer's website.
Gallery? Check.

Anyway, to answer the questions:

1) A good community and people interested in the things I am.
2) Good looks, good community, good mods.
3) Not really, no.
4) Maybe people wanting to develop games? If you're on your own, it's not only quite difficult, it's also hard because your threads get swamped and nobody really cares.
5) Constant updating and checking to make sure everything is still correct with current conditions, i.e. emails, URLs...

Well I hate BoLS because it takes forever to load the front page, I just do not go to sites that are slow to load the main page.

BoLS articles are very weak, your biggest problem will be developing content that is worthwhile.

Good luck with your project!

JWhex wrote:
Well I hate BoLS because it takes forever to load the front page, I just do not go to sites that are slow to load the main page.

BoLS articles are very weak, your biggest problem will be developing content that is worthwhile.

Good luck with your project!

This is actually one of our main points of focus. Professional, informed and relevant articles are what we're aiming for. There's going to be a huge emphasis on quality.

Things I'd look for, personally, in such a site:

Professionalism
Pretty self explanatory, though there are bit sites out there that can get pretty juvenile in tone, particularly when discussing contentious issues. If there's a price hike, I need to know when, and how much. I don't need to hear that Mark Wells steals porridge from orphans to lubricate the slide into his moneypit. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are all must haves, but you covered that.

Video vs. Written Content
Pretty much as a rule, I don't watch videos. I'm just too strapped for time to watch a 5, 10, or 30 minute video to access content that could be distilled to a paragraph or a set of bullet points, particularly if the video is low quality or poorly edited. By the time I dig out my headphones and the video loads, I could have read the article and moved on to something else. I think the format you often see on news websites (video and transcript/article posted together) is the best of both worlds- people who like videos can watch the video, people who want to read the bullet points can read them and move on.

Choice of Advertisers
I surf the web on both my computer and my ipad, and I've found that some sites are extremely unwieldy on the ipad. Bell of Lost Souls had (has?) these ads, by a company called Vdopia, that pop up on my ipad. It is very difficult to close the ad without a stylus; clicking on the X is almost always treated as clicking on the ad, taking you to the website- which is often completely unrelated to the webpage's content, like UPS or hair care products. I think it's important to keep an eye on what your advertisers are actually pushing on your site, and how it affects the different platforms people will be using to access your site. Maybe it's sort of a pet peeve but after the 10th time I ended up on L'Oreal or some nonsense I basically stopped visiting BoLS.

Timely and Relevant Posts
The most important aspect, of course, is timely, comprehensive, and relevant posts. If you announce you're going to update daily, then update daily. If you plan to update M, W, and F, then keep that schedule. If people come to your site expecting new content and find nothing, they might not be back once they find a site that updates more often. However, people will see through useless articles pretty quickly, so it's important to maintain a balance of quality and quantity. And be comprehensive with what you do: if you cover 40k, then make sure you get all the 40k releases, otherwise people will find sites that get them all. Tabletop Gaming News is usually pretty good with getting everything; that might mean 10 blurbs a day. Are you willing to do that every day? If not, I think it's better to be comprehensive about the things you know then try, and fail, to cover all aspects of gaming.

Beginners Guides
Comprehensive beginners guides to your games of choice would be a great resource. Of course, they're going to be a timesink to write, and will need constant updating as games change editions and new supplements are released. But, honestly, a fluff primer, a playstyle primer, a quick painting/modelling primer, and a tactical overview for each faction of your games of choice would be an absolute godsent. I've played tabletop games for almost 20 years, but I have no idea what an eHaley* or pStryker or whatnot is. I suspect there are plenty of players out there who don't know what Tau JSJ* tactics are, what's the best color to paint their new 15mm British Sherman V in light of the fact that they only own Citadel paints, or what are the key differences between a Wizard and a Sorcerer. A beginners resource section would be a tremendous asset to a lot of people, but again, would require a lot of effort and curation to keep it complete and up to date.

Forum
Not tremendously important for me. If your site was dedicated to a specific game that didn't really have a forum, I suspect I'd use it if it had a community, but for general gaming, there are a lot of fish in that pond already, some quite large.

*Dakka's definition mouseovers to the rescue!

 lordofthegophers wrote:
5) Lastly, if a tabletop gaming website needed just one feature to keep you coming back, what would it be?

Unrestricted use of the "7 dirty words". Otherwise Dakka already fills all my needs.

 lordofthegophers wrote:
1) What would attract you, as a hobby enthusiast, to a new gaming website?

IT has to fill a niche that currently probably doesn't exist. I go to Dakka for forums/rumors, Faeit212 for random 40k rumors, and TTGN+TabletopFix for wargaming news. If your site can fill a niche that doesn't get filled by those sites yet is still relevant to the hobby, you'll have at least my audience. Occasionally, Beasts of War is nice for their quality videos that don't involve Darrell.
Bolter and Chainsword is a nice and niche site that would interest me if I played some color of Space Marines.

 lordofthegophers wrote:
2) What would make you want to sign up to that site and start posting/commenting?

If I frequent a site long enough as a lurker, I'll eventually register when I find the community likable. It's the other people's friendliness and honesty while the site remains interesting.

 lordofthegophers wrote:
3) Can you give any examples of a "bad" hobby site? What made it bad in your experience? (You don't need to name and shame, just outline what made the site bad)

BOLS is bad. It suffers from the "hero worship" of its contributors that talk about how great they are in games such as 40k. Even worse, whenever someone on their forums posts rumors or pictures, they present the rumors as if they originated from BOLS itself or the poster that made the post. This was especially bad during the Necrons release where they took the content from Beasts of War, photoshopped away all the BoW iconography, and presented it as their own.
They also advertise non-news and present it as news for their sponsors such as Spartan Games and Warmachine.

Warseer is also somewhat bad with their abnormally strict mods and intolerance towards anything Warhammer-relevant that is not made by Games Workshop.

Librarium had financial troubles, but their advertisements are obnoxious and I couldn't stand that site.

 lordofthegophers wrote:
4) Are there any aspects of the hobby that you have a hard time finding information on?

Painting and modelling tutorials for non-Space Marines.

 lordofthegophers wrote:
5) Lastly, if a tabletop gaming website needed just one feature to keep you coming back, what would it be?

Constant updates of painting/modelling tutorials.

This is all really good stuff, I really appreciate the input you've provided so far.

I've added a link to the original post, a sort of mock-up preview of what the site will look like so you guys can get an idea of the look and feel.

Please keep the ideas coming!

News about all sorts of different games, big and small. Not just GW/PP and a bit of Corvus/Wyrd/FFG as a token gesture.

edit: derped ignore me

 motyak wrote:
The link you gave is in...french? or spanish? something I don't understand and chrome isn't giving me it's 'I'll translate it for you' option for some reason...and half is english. I'm confused

edit: but if this is all just stuff copy pasted from other sites to give an idea of how it looks, then I kind of get it

Are you talking about this text:

Post preview dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

That's just placeholder text that typesetters use to orientate stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum

That's what I meant by stuff copy pasted to give us an idea what it would look like. Apologies. Looks alright, would like to see how the forum and what not is laid out, but I understand that you can't have everything rough drafted at once

I'd like a news site that didn't treat blog posts as news - the content of the blog post might be news, in which case repeat it and credit the source, but I'm not interested in reading 'news' that a particular blog has reviewed a new Codex, or another one has an unboxing review of Sedition Wars etc. TTGN has really started to slide recently on this. Also - don't post every single new stretch goal for a given KS project as news.

If these are taken out of a news feed you could also offer a 'blogwatch' - a rolling feed of blog updates, and a similar Kickstarter summary - a live showing of current major wargaming Kickstarters along with their current funding and stretch goals. As far as I know neither of these are offered anywhere else.

I must say the preview you have posted of the website is very nice, the format is crisp and clean and easy to follow which I think is so important for a website !

I think Dakka has me covered for almost everything but if your site can offer different news frequently I could be a regular visitor to the site.

Even having a KS tracker like Riquende suggested would probably get me signing up. Not that I need help parting with my money, but I do sometimes try and use kickstarter to find stuff and for some reason I struggle

1) Reviews, revisions of old materials, modelling/painting tutorials, events local to the site (in this case the UK I presume), brief kickstarter news, industry developments and events, battle reports with proper pictures and tactics discussion: not limited to any one game. Also, board game reviews.

2) Friendly, mature community, not over-moderated but not the wild west. I'm perfectly fine with swearing (being Glaswegian n' all).

3) None come to mind.

4) I'd say most gaming areas are covered, but they aren't all located in one place. I always like browsing other people's projects and ideas, couldn't ever be too many imo. A couple of in-house hobbyists doing their thing in a series of tutorials as they build up a force (alternating between different games) would keep me coming back for updates, for instance. Or a spotlight on a different game each month with someone going through them in depth (rules, comparisons to other systems, models, etc); something consistent in structure, but varied in material.

5) Reliable updates and articles, not 10 one week and none for the next fortnight.

Wow, I'm really impressed by that formatted test page you posted. Crisp, clean, easy to navigate. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on your progress!

6. have support for games which are OOP. some people still play them yet most have little to no resource, beside PDF's from an era long passed. i don't know maybe support for even those Niche hobbyist's not just those playing generic or dominant selling wargames or games (variety is the spice of life)