A site that appeals to the masses Thread

I'm not sure who here has visited 'deviantart' Deviantart.com however it is a site I drew much inspiration from in creating the mod database. To describe it simply, it is an artist hangout, people upload their art.. others comment on it etc..

Now it has long been a dream of mine to create a website like that.. one which appeals to the masses (equally male and female) and fosters a great community (much like the modDB). Now i don't want to rip-off the DA idea, and i doubt i will ever create this website.. but i'm just wondering what sort of site you reckon appeals to the masses and fosters a really good community.

i'm just curious to see what people say more than anything else!

Edited by: INtense!

i think that competitive flash game arcades appeal to everyone.. except they could hardly foster a great community without a solid chat/forum

half the people on another forum i go to only register and post for the flash arcade, cause it keeps a high scores table

i want to make on my own or with you scotty a site that covers news about it all. not just mods or gaming but a site that has news about life, tech, movies, music, with the features of this site.

BlueWolf72 wrote: i want to make on my own or with you scotty a site that covers news about it all. not just mods or gaming but a site that has news about life, tech, movies, music, with the features of this site.

Sites like this are great and all but they are waaay to much work to run. Someone has to post the news.. write the columns / articles etc.. where a site like deviantart is run by the community. Thats my goal.. make a site which basically makes itself

i'd really love to see a good fiction site.

Theres fanfiction.net and fictionpress.net, but both off those make it to easy to get lost in the crowd.

A deviantart / moddb style site for fiction / fanfiction would be an awesome recource.

You should realise of course that moddb is an inspiration as well for many php coders. I know chis and I both are working on sites, and one together, that are inspired by deviantart and moddb.

Back onto the fiction site, writers tend to be pretty mature, good ones at least, and I would also imigine you'd have a community that would write even forum posts or comics well.

Writing is sure a case of art, and it also wouldn't be that hard to do, just an addon to your features engine, with upgrades like `doc` import.

I'd say should make something thats important to you, like mods must be.

thats were you are wrong...the community would write the news and we auth it. fark.com is based of the community finding the news and ths staff auths it.

What would be cool is I could do a interview with a sports figure and it would go on our site in the sports interview. A site like this would work and work well. I have a vision. but there is many dev art sites out and when i visit them they always revert back to the dev art site in some way so ya making a dev art site would be nice but that would be doing what is already done.

BlueWolf72 wrote: thats were you are wrong...the community would write the news and we auth it. fark.com is based of the community finding the news and ths staff auths it.

What would be cool is I could do a interview with a sports figure and it would go on our site in the sports interview. A site like this would work and work well. I have a vision. but there is many dev art sites out and when i visit them they always revert back to the dev art site in some way so ya making a dev art site would be nice but that would be doing what is already done.

thats true.. people do revert back to their fav sites.. but somehow you have to distinguish your site as different and gradually you build a community that likes these differences... of course this can go 100% the other way and no one likes what you try to create

oh and thanks ducktape.. glad to see you find the modDB php an insprirational tool

no site has these features like moddb for "free" could you imagine this set up on a dating site and charge 5 bucks a month. Scotty you would be rich!

but i just want a news site like fark.com/cnn.com that has moddb features and we talk about it all. id have fun!

You've definately succeeded in creating a site that continues to write itself, and I agree that that is what seperates good community sites from bad ones.

I'd like to see a site all about online gaming, with score tracking similiar to Csports.net, but more optimized, along with an awesome community.

[EDIT] Oh yeah, I'd also attempt to appeal to the independant game development crowd more, as well as to the modification community that modDB does right now. [/EDIT]

Edited by: San-J

I think this site is great how it is right now, but maybe you could try to draw bigger names to conduct interviews and become a humongous website (like gamespy.com). You could do a lot more with video games and mods, and be the #1 site to go to for game and mod information

Just appeal to the larger masses by building a much large web site, and that'll probably fit your tastes

How bout you make a portable database/cms thing and make it open source so others can have all the database sites they want thanks to you

Cheapalert wrote: How bout you make a portable database/cms thing and make it open source so others can have all the database sites they want thanks to you

be tons of effort to comment this code and add support for plugins etc..

booooo deviant art boooo

INTENSE!: You don't like DA?

SAJT! : Naw, most of the art is either animal men or those stupid abstract crystal formation wallpapers, and people putting filters on other images, and anime, and other crap. Oh and the domain is slow :p

Edited by (in order): INtense!, Sajt

Actually for about 2 years now I have been trying to find time to work on a site that reviews/previews upcoming and already released software, hardware, and games (including mods for games) I think that would be really cool.

A music site ould be cool. Reviewing albums and concerts and stuff. You could try and find lots of bands that are good but hardly get any attention at all. It would be grat.

That or a gun and politacal site

Intense: do you know Thefacebook.com ?

It kind of only applies to college students, but it is great. You list yourself and your interests, and put up a picture of yourself, and then find your friends and add them. Then you can browse other people, through searchign for interests or classes and such, and links between you and those people show up. I think its pretty neat

Sajt wrote: booooo deviant art boooo

INTENSE!: You don't like DA?

Of course he doesn't, it's furry/trash filled to the point where you can't keep your sanity

duckedtapedemon wrote: i'd really love to see a good fiction site.

Theres fanfiction.net and fictionpress.net, but both off those make it to easy to get lost in the crowd.

A deviantart / moddb style site for fiction / fanfiction would be an awesome recource.

You should realise of course that moddb is an inspiration as well for many php coders. I know chis and I both are working on sites, and one together, that are inspired by deviantart and moddb.

Back onto the fiction site, writers tend to be pretty mature, good ones at least, and I would also imigine you'd have a community that would write even forum posts or comics well.

Writing is sure a case of art, and it also wouldn't be that hard to do, just an addon to your features engine, with upgrades like `doc` import.

I'd say should make something thats important to you, like mods must be.

Wee. Thats an awesome idea! Id be all for that one!

Not bad ideas.. all done before but then what hasn't on the web

i think art is an interest area of mine.. and well my aim would be to create a site like DA only without the crap cheapie / SA mentions..

DA has become too big for its own good.. soo many people use it as a personally gallery.. 99.99% of the stuff submitted to that isn't worth showing let alone been called art

mind you the other 0.01% of stuff is brilliant (and still a great deal of things)

You could make a website devoted to like photoshopped and digitally enhanced pictures and stuff
or if you wanted to be original it could be about dancing llamas... which sadly would probably be my favorite site on the internet

I can't do much on Deviantart cos someone on my ISP did something stupid there and it makes life difficult for the rest of us due to dynamic ip's

How dynamic are these IPs? Do they change constantly or every connection?

varies due do disconnections of other users and such... don't see why they can't give everyone a static ip as it is cable...

i have been able to create an account though... more than previously

That really sucks :/

Anything that I could think of in this topic, I would not say and attempt it myself

Must most of the time its a failed attempt