Hi all,

Ok, I got my site up and running.. now I'd like to hear some tips from others... how do you attract new users to sign up if your site is basically new and without users? I might make a few "fake" accounts but I'm not sure about it. The other thing would be to ask some of my friends to register.... What else is there ?

My site is about one specific genre of music.... so my target is people who like that specific genre of music.

My user section is basically like myspace... Users can create profiles, fill in fields like "about me", "favorite stuff", manage buddylist, create photo gallery, etc....

There's another section, the "content" section, where I plan to put different articles about that kind of music.... info about artists, etc.... That content will eventually bring people from search engines to my site.

btw my site is http://tranceplanet.org and sample "user page" is http://tranceplanet.org/zoki

it's really basic site, matter of fact, nothing fancy yet... Focusing on putting more content in the begining.

Thanks in advance for any tips

k.

Comments

davidrf’s picture

You need to promote your site in as many ways and in as many places as possible. Are there other message boards, groups or bloggers that focus on this kind of music? Drop them a cordial line and link swap. When you comment on those pages, be sure to promote your site in your sig (with an active link, btw). All of this will positively affect your PageRank.

Make sure your site is pinging technorati and other aggregators so that your content gets indexed every time you post.

Yes, do tell your friends. Beg, bribe and threaten them to help get the site off the ground. Good content begets new users. Just because you build it does not mean anyone cares or will find you. You need a regular diet of interesting posts to attract new eyes a little at a time.

No, don't set up fake accounts. That's bogus. Better that your site starts off simply as just a blog of your own postings. If the posts are good, people will come. Don't forget: content is king.

And, finally, don't get discouraged. It takes time to build up a loyal following.

Good luck!

G.L’s picture

I have seen lots of posts about promoting. and I think this is not bad suggestions like post in related fourms with your site address in sig. But actually this is hard to do. SOme fourm dont allow you with such link in sig. and some will ban you . :( Even u can do that, as a single person (even u have 3-4 friends can help u) the amount of posts you can send are very limited,and ppl who can view them and click your link is more limited.... So the results is you spend long time to know a new fourm for promoting your site ,but the result is not so good.

However,if you never do such effort, there are fewer ppl wil view your site. :P

So what is the best and efficient way to promote your site?

Lets forget the commerical promotion way, that's just about how to spend money on google,yahoo..etc . lets just focus on personal site? non-profit,and especially i have no money spend on promotion?

How to get more ppl for my site? thinking.............

Content is king,thats right...maybe this is the key point?......But all ppl know the theory,but its till hard to carry it out...

Maybe we should learn that site which its only have one page, and devide this page into 100 or more parts...then link with those famous sites with high page rank. then ppl who search those famous site will direct to that page ,then it get more visit rate??

maiki’s picture

In addition to self-promoting in one's interactions on other sites, you can tap into those same sites for content. If we assume that pure profits are not the motivation for creating a site (which I don't believe tranceplanet to be), then finding people of a like-mind would help in promoting your webspace.

As an example of this, you could ask someone on a different site to write a small editorial for your site. What better way of promotion than trading for promotion. Conversely (or complimentary) you could write content for another site. I know that I personally follow author links through to weblogs and the like after reading an article that held my interest.

A small note for tranceplanet: If I were you I would print up business card sized flyers and go to my local record stores. I am sure there is a wall or something like that for those exact things. Or maybe a college. Trance is awesome, I don't think you would have a problem hooking people.

maiki

.carey’s picture

I don't want to offend you, but I suggest you work on developing your site's identity before you promote it. The reason for this is, when you do get visitor's to your site, and you will, you want them to remember it. Although I like the theme you are using, it's a generic Drupal theme; it's not a theme that is good for branding. And a place like Trance Planet needs its own identity for branding purposes.

Take a look at these sites. They all play trance music. (here, here, and here)

After you've given your site a unique identity, I would suggest that you get a couple of your friends to help you write a few articles a week on trance music, artists, club happenings, and trance news. Become an expert in this field.

Then get your site listed on G00gle news. GN may bring in up to a few hundred visitors to your site after a posting.

Another suggestion is to put Trance Planet on MySpace, preferably with the same unique identity that matches your site, and include your site's link. Whenever you post a new article on Trance Planet, post a summary of the article along with a link to the original on MySpace's bulletin system so the people on your friend's list will know to check out the new article on tranceplanet.org.

Yet another suggestion: Your site will be indexed on G00gle. I suggest you make the best of it. What I mean is, create a cool trance graphic that can be used as a desktop background and offer it for free download. You'll pull in many trance music lovers that way, and because your site is cool, has a unique identity, and offers not only something for free but interesting articles and a community as well, they are sure come back -- and tell their friends. :)

This all will, of course, take some hard work and time. But Trance Planet could one day be the 'in' place on the web for trance music lovers.

You're already on your way, cause Trance Planet is an awesome name to begin with.

Cheers.

Carey

kalashari’s picture

Thanks all for your replies. As I said, I was thinking first to concentrate more on adding some quality content in the begining. There's really no use if site doesn't have any content on it.

When there is enough content, we would then tweak the design, make some cool frontpage that will display some little snippets of content. (for example display "featured artist", "featured user", "featured review" etc....). Basically front page will list news + popular content on the website.

Do you think we should concentrate on making a suitable design right away, the same time as we're building the content?

drupalian’s picture

hi

Have a question. How did you create this page? http://tranceplanet.org/zoki. I would like to create something like that and any advise will help. Also, how did you come up with Featured user?

Thanks
drupalian

http://www.hangoutwith.com

kalashari’s picture

Users are nodes (usernodes). http://tranceplanet.org/zoki is Usernode... It uses cck for all data that user needs to fill in. It is highly customized page, especially the buddylist part.... I had to to do additional programming in order to get small avatars of friends listed (just like myspace). Comments to the user are regular node comments.

"Featured user" is just a view that pulls out 1 random node of a "usernode" type and puts it in a block.

Hope it helps a little

drupalian’s picture

Thanks for the response. What are all the modules I need to create such a cool page? Can u please list them?

Thanks
drupalian

http://www.hangoutwith.com

kalashari’s picture

Usernode
CCK
Node images
Blog
Invite
Privatemsg
Buddylist
Buddylist Invite
Imagecache

newms’s picture

Great job! What module did you use for the gallery on the user profile?

newms

newms’s picture

Was it the Node Images module that you used for the gallery on the user profile?

newms

kalashari’s picture

newms, yes it was Node Images module for the photo gallery on userprofile..

netranger’s picture

I love your user profiles omg. Can you please post more info on this please. Also can you post more on the image gallery for users? Love your site and I'm trying to make one for my friends and I. Your site inspires XD.

kalashari’s picture

Image gallery of users is Node Images module. In Usernode content type you specifu that node images can appear at the top of a usernode. In access control you say that regular users can create node images. Therefore "images" tab will show for each user on his usernode. Also in access control you specify that regular users can "edit own usernode". I do not use regular profiles for users, I use usernodes. So the main avatar image of a user is actually custom CCK field.

Usernode is basically a node just like any other node (nontent type). You specifu all custom CCK fields for Usernode and they show up when user edit his/her usernode. Yhen you have to print out on the page each CCK value , like :

if ($field_display_name[0]['view'] != '') { print 'Name: ' . $field_isplay_name[0]['view']; 

and so on...

Michelle’s picture

You don't need custom programming to show the buddy list. You can do that with a view.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com

kalashari’s picture

and what if I am not using regular profile avatars... rather I am using custom CCK fields for user avatars? Why is that? Because I have usernodes as actual user profiles.

Michelle’s picture

I'm using usernodes for the profiles and regular profile avatars... One doesn't mean you can't do the other. I don't know offhand how hard it would be to do a view with buddies and an image from the usernode... Should be possible, but I haven't tried it.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com

drupalian’s picture

hi

Can you share what you have to create http://tranceplanet.org/zoki ? I downloaded all the modules, but not sure what to do next. I am a newbie to drupal and trying to learn. If you can share the code or guide me with detailed instructions, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks
drupalian

http://www.hangoutwith.com

.carey’s picture

I see you've changed your theme. Your site is looking good.

kalashari’s picture

Thanks.

We added some new features to user profiles, and to the frontpage. ("favorite artists" list, user rating system, popular people/artists etc...). Also, some new features will be added as there's more content on the website.

Cheers

netranger’s picture

Your profiles are pimped. Share your knowledge with us noobs.

kalashari’s picture

Do you expect me to paste .tpl.php file for user profiles? I mean not that I don't want to do it, but you would be even more confused about what you're supposed to do in order to create nicer user profiles, trust me.... It's all custom coding, it's not some "end-user ready" thing.... Hell even I am confused when I look at some parts of code, and I'm the one who wrote it :-)

Basically you need to have users as usernodes. Those are nodes that are automatically created when a user registers and they are automatically assigned NID. Then you assing some CCK fields for usernodes (like about_me, drink, smoke, etc....), then you print all those values in tpl.php for your usernode (node-usernode.tpl.php).... Something like:

if ($field_city[0]['view'] != '') { print 'Town/City: '  . $field_city[0]['view'];

Of course, this is all assuming you have basic knowledge of php & mysql (well actually MORE than just basic knowledge -> string manipulation, db queries, arrays...).

As for the presentation layer (look & layout), you do that with html & css styling.

Hope this helps a little bit.

Michelle’s picture

Your profiles really aren't much different than mine other than the layout and I'm writing a tutorial for mine. He's just impatient. ;)

Michelle

--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com

kalashari’s picture

Do you people have any more suggestions about the website in general? I 've changed the front page quite a lot.... Do You think there's too much content on the front page?

I donno why, but a week ago, visitors rate suddenly dropped a lot, and most of them were coming from G00gle.... I'm not really sure what to do now, will it come back to "normal" or what? I am adding new content every single day, pages are SEO-zed etc...

I definitely need some header-logo image at the top in order to make a visual identity of the website. Also, I have some more features I wanna implement, so.... oh btw I made a myspace account for Tranceplanet: myspace.com/tranceplanetdotorg I guess patience and hard work is the key.

Thanks in advance,

k.

kalashari’s picture

hey its me again,

ok, look again at http://tranceplanet.org/zoki

does anybody here have an idea how to CACHE those "Favorite artists" section and also a "Buddylist" ? Keep in mind, they are all custom SQL queries that print out all those results for that page.... That page you are looking at is giving me like 340 queries at the moment... which is a lot... and the main reason is Pathauto I think... it neds to make paths for both images and links below images (fav artists and buddylist).

I was thinking to somehow make a block view, put that code for fav artist in it, then somehow pass the user id to the view.... Then on that profile page displaye CACHED version of the block view.

There's gotta be a solution for this, I beleive.

Any thoughts I appreciate.

k.

p.s for the frontpage of the site, I managed to drop num of sql queries from 500-something to 64 :)

gurukripa’s picture

its an excellent piece of work....except the sql queries u mentioned..

where r u hosting ur site..and whats the hosting plan....

have u tried the advanced cache module..maybe it cld help in some ways for the queries.

another thing..u cld make the Recent Blog posts and other such things have a link..which says More...so people can see other posts...

http://tranceplanet.org/zoki

u were asking about how to spread word..maybe u can link up with other websites...and have reciprocal ads with them

do keep in touch..:)

kalashari’s picture

The website is hosted on VPS XEN box.... http://Budgetdedicated.com you can make your hosting plas as you wish. They are pretty good.

It wasn't the number of queries that was the problem... the problem was that the site was previously on OpenVZ (free version of Virtuozzo) virtualization.... So when I moved to a XEN vps, I got normal page execution times.

Advanced cache is turned on, as is the block cache. Also, I use Drupal built-in caching functions wherever I can (cache_set, cache_get, cache_clear_all).

--

http://seek4pal.net - Find a friend, date or just hangout

http://www.iwant2visit.net - What's your next travel destination? Get informed before you go.

gurukripa’s picture

both ur new sites are cool.

can u share ur user profile template...wld like to study it to make a good one myself..wld be nice if u cld share...

if u r agreeable i will send u a mail thru contact..and then u cld share..thanks

kalashari’s picture

Hi,

I recently started a blog about learning Drupal and making cool Drupal websites.... it's at http://www.learndrupalcms.com/

I just wrote an article on how to create simple photo gallery with thumbnails in Drupal....

I plan on putting up an article about creating user profiles just like on http://tranceplanet.org/zoki and http://seek4pal.net/zoki

Cheers.

----
http://www.learndrupalcms.com - Learn Drupal

http://seek4pal.net - Find a friend, date or just hangout

http://www.iwant2visit.net - What's your next travel destination? Get informed before you go.

happythoughts’s picture

What module did you use for your user pages? They are very nice!
Melissa
www.thewomensnest.com

The_cobra666’s picture

I can only ask to. It looks great and is everything I've been searchig for! Does something like this exist for Drupal 6?

Michelle’s picture

http://drupal.org/node/133350#comment-220851

Unfortunately, most of the modules you need to make decent profiles aren't available in D6 yet. I'm advising anyone making a social networking site to stay on D5 for now. Will likely be a few months before D6 has enough contribs ported.

If you're using D5, I of course reccomend advanced profile. ;)

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.