Visitor Interaction

[Todd]

How important is visitor interaction on your sites? What kinds of things do you include, if any, to encourage visitor interaction? What kinds of things have you considered including, but haven't figured out how? Maybe we can discuss, brainstorm, and help each other out.

In the past, my sites have been mostly self-serving. Yes, I'd speak to the visitor, but I'd be mainly concerned about getting my thoughts out, and ranting and raving about subjects I love. I would include little things like an icons section, wallpapers, and sometimes galleries, so the site would have something more than my analysis.

With my Tidus site now, and with a couple of other new sites I am working on, I am attempting to get the visitor more involved. I have put comment forms on every page so visitors can comment on my articles, post their thoughts, and ask questions. Visitors have gotten a little bit of use out of it. I'm pretty satisfied so far, but I know that it will be something visitors have to get used to, and interaction should grow over time. I'm considering adding more things like polls, and forum (discussion) questions visitors can reply to, and I can hopefully post many different views.

I'm not going to do all of my sites like this, because I also like a lot of unpopular subjects, and I feel like the effort would be wasted on shrines to minor characters, or series not many are into. For subjects like that, I will continue making sites my old, self-serving way.

[Crystal]

My sites are pretty much, as you say, self-serving. I'm not over concerned about visitor interaction with my sites as they are more of a way I can express myself about a character or something else that I am passionate about. My Lyn site though used to have a quiz visitors could take to see what FE character they were (I think I still have it somewhere too). A lot of my shrines are to fairly unpopular subjects and I've never received emails from fans talking about my websites so it's not something I've really put too much thought into.

At the moment I'm just happy writing up information and expressing my thoughts, but I've been debating adding some media sections to some of them. Unfortunately for subjects that come from Fire Emblem it's kinda hard to really do much of anything (especially for minor characters) as they have little more than one official artwork a piece. Unless they're a main character you're basically out of luck.

So yeah, for now I just write up information about something and hope others like it. The majority of the time I'm happy with it too but feedback always seems to affirm things which is nice.

[Mikari]

On Fantasy Bit I have web design notes that people can use as a reference. They can also adopt some pixels, but I guess there's really not much interaction per se. There's less on my other sites, just some things that visitors can use, like icons and such. ^^;;

I have thought about updating some of my mini games, revamping them and make them give out little award pics, but haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

[Tara]

I've honestly never paid much attention to visitor interaction, mostly because my shrines are basically just my way of being able to ramble on about subjects for long periods and show them off! The most interaction I ever get with my shrines is here at Amassment, so I don't even host image galleries or anything of the sort. Not to mention I'm such a perfectionist when it comes to shrining, that since I don't have my own personal copies of screenshots and artwork from books, I don't bother.

I'm always trying to come up with new sections for my shrines, but sharing media related things are hard because image sizes and media networks are constantly changing. 100x100px avatars have almost become obsolete, and there's so many wallpaper sizes nowadays it's hard to just pick one size! iPhone wallpapers are also hard nowadays since the iPhone 5 was released, so the wallpaper sized changed, not to mention not everyone has an iPhone. It's just so... hard... Though I have thought about adding some of those to my shrines, since I know people might get some use of them. (I'm still using Samantha's Shinji iPhone wallpapers~)

I think adding the comments section was a really neat idea though, Todd, and I really like that about your Tidus shrine. I'd love to be able to talk to more people about my favourite subjects, whether it's intelligent banter or silly headcanons or even just random musings.

I can go on and on about my favourite characters, but usually it's my own headcanons, musings, and whatever else. It doesn't really fit into the content of my shrines, though I've thought about adding it sometimes, just to add my own personal flare to it.

[Destinie]

I have been thinking about adding the ability to win "awards" on some of my sites, I miss that kind of visitor interaction. And also, I wanted to add a clique to some of my sites, too. I think those are older, but fun, ways that people can get involved.

I like the idea of comments but it makes me hesitant to open up to comments on my own sites. I like hearing other people's opinions but sometimes people can be kind of...mean...

Another thought I had would be like a call for articles. Maybe have people write their own thoughts on the subject and you can post them on your site. I've seen other sites do that! I think it would be neat to have different sections, though. For example, if you had your thoughts on a proposed relationship and people could write in with their own thoughts and you can link them in that specific article.

There are so many options! It might be fun to try a site that is more visitor-oriented some day...

[nyxmidnight]

I'd love to have more visitor interaction on my fansites and shrines! My fansites have guestbooks, or used to, because nobody signs guestbooks anymore and even with a safe script that uses Akismet, the human-generated spam is overwhelming

I use IntenseDebate (soon to be changed to Disqus) for people to be able to leave comments on the fanfictions on my fansites. I have never thought of using it to add comments to my shrine, but frankly, I like what Todd's done with his Tidus shrine! I shrine pretty obscure subjects, so I probably don't have a lot of visitors, but I think visitor interaction is even more important in those cases, because some people are gonna realize they're not alone in liking $character/$series/$pairing. I'm thinking of opening comments on DILF as a test to see how I can make it happen and what will happen if I do.

It's no secret anymore either that I am preparing a sort of directory/megashrine to Megaten women and I will be accepting, nay, needing external contributions for the project. I think that could be a fantastic experiment provided it is framed with the right guidelines and rules (for example reserving the right to delete any flaming and trolls), and I have great hopes for it. I think if it works it could be a great example of a collective shrine.

[neo]

Hey, Todd!
I am really glad you are bringing up this topic. I'm working on a shrine at the moment that I also want to include a good chunk of visitor content. This was mostly due to the fact that my subject matter is an older series and older internet shrines were jam-packed with all sorts of extras that kept you on their site for a good length of time.

Since my content is older, I have some games/interactive/downloadable things planned. Pocket Bishounen, a Crossword, Adoptable Pixels, Fanwork Recommendations, I'd like to include more but I'm not super creative ^^. I have been trying to look at free javascripts and such to see what I can implement on my site.

I really think the comments you have allowed opens up an interesting way to interact that I haven't really seen before!

I do really enjoy reading essays about characters that mean a lot to me and comparing and contrasting my own thoughts to it. While I like both owner-oriented and visitor-oriented sites, I really miss some of the extras that were just plain fun :).

As far as my domain hub, I don't plan to add anything at this time. I have a Guestbook, because a little note or feedback from random visitors would be nice to see :). I also plan to link this guestbook to my subdomains. ( its guestbook down right now, but http://ethelion.net/ had a guestbook where you could select which site you were commenting on - I think that'd be cool to implement! )

@ Destiny - I really have to echo you here, I miss awards and I'd love to see that brought back!

[dubiousdisc]

I try to make my stuff interactive, but in the sense of interactive blueprints, the little easter egg in Oddball... I actually avoid having comment sections, forums etc. since I've had enough of that when I ran my first fansite that over the years became a community and it was so overwhelming, it became basically my full-time job to manage it, and just managing the community gave me little time to work on the site itself, and people would be requesting sections that I simply did not have the time to write, and and and...

Nowadays I am content of just leaving my email at the end and encouraging to talk with me directly about stuff.

[high seraph]

Making it possible for people to comment directly on my sites isn't something that has ever really crossed my mind; personally, I'd rather have them static in that sense, and motivate and direct discussion somewhere else-- like a thread (or, back then, the LJ post) where I've plugged it, or e-mail, or anything. I understand this means that some readers are lost in this process; some just don't feel like clicking the "talk to me here" link, some are too shy to actually go through with it (me), and a minority of them end up contacting you.

But I really praise the way that you have worked around implementing this kind of feature in your sites, Todd. It's something to really think about-- and could definitely work if you're writing about something that leaves enough space for debate, like controversial characters/themes (I can think of a few examples).

User interaction, for me, only goes as far as hovering over text/images or opening up hidden sections

I try to make my stuff interactive, but in the sense of interactive blueprints, the little easter egg in Oddball...

I've always loved the interactive touch you put on your sites, btw! It's the kind of dynamicity I'm always aiming to achieve whenever I'm designing a site nowadays Your work always made me so impressed lmao I remember all the help you gave me in one of my old site's layouts. Keep it up!!!

[Robin]

I want visitor interaction, but at the same time I kinda don't, if that makes any sense? I'd like to know that people are reading my stuff (after all, that's why I write it, because I want people to read it), but I've also run into multi-posting flamers, trolls, and spammers that have kinda soured me on fully dynamic sites.

These days, I basically use my newsblog and my Twitters for my various sites as the "visitor interaction"--that at least corrals all the visitor posts in one space so I'm not hunting everywhere for it. :) I have gotten a good bit of positive feedback this way!