Homepage Updates Suggestion, Actively updated homepage for more highlights / traffic ? Options

[maharzan]

Hi Admin & all,

I have been here at GMC for quite a while now and actively participating. To tell you the truth, this has been more of a community to me than just learning place. Found great mentors, friends and I visit every now and then in a day. I have to say I have improved my playing a lot after joining GMC.

That said, I have seen that there are a very few active members here mainly when there are competitions. Like there are very very few entries when there is a monthly competition. We saw an average turnout in the 'grand' competition GMC might have ever ran. And then when it came to voting, I think there were only about 30 votes?

My main concern or I guess everyones concern is how to get more people in here to participate (not just signup and vanish). This may or may not relate to my suggestion but I have seen that the homepage hardly gets updated. I mean, it looks the same all the time, except the lesson updates (mostly on a daily basis). I might be wrong.

Now the New Competition highlight (which I thought should have been on the top somewhere) is at the last row and is still there after its already completed. You have covered a lot of things in the Journal which is really a good thing. But I think it would be great if you could also put some highlights of the competition on the front page to replace the competition ad. For the Journal section, perhaps put some highlights in there rather than just "Keep Updated" thing. People don't tend to notice when you always see the same thing, you know.

The main thing is the homepage content should keep on rotating every now and then (2 times a week at least IMO). Highlight mentors or students so they are encouraged to give more. This might actually pull in more members as well. Any competitions should be highlighted as if its a GRAND thing, meaning a full middle section of the site if possible. I know the prizes were great!

I am not sure how this is reflected on your new design but from my first view, it was just more like a redesign of gfx. Perhaps, you can put some of these into account and apply.

I have been a web designer for the last 6 years, thus IMO the site has more value when its homepage content is vibrant not necessarily nice graphics or flash zip zap thing.

I meant no offense to anyone. Just some of my thoughts on making GMC reach more global audience and more talents. I m thinking GMC more than just beginner learners forum and try including talents like guitar idol sites do.

Thanks!

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[Kristofer Dahl]

Couldn't agree more - it would be cool with more participants in the competition (al though we did have blast with the ones who did participate!)

Also we need a better structure on the site to present all the stuff we have got going on - hopefully we will take one step closer with the new GMC site design (which was designed with this in mind). The frontpage of the new design has a large area in the middle which will be built in a way so that it's easier to feature other new things than lessons.

Finally I want to say the the lower parts of the frontpage have been updated less than usual the last couple of months - I hope we can get better with this as well - as we get more 'administrative strength'!

Any more suggestions/ideas on how we can get new members to participate more in the forum is welcome! Brainstorming: Perhaps every active gmc:er should be a mentor (a mentor whose job is to introduce the new GMC:er to the community)

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[Emir Hot]

Any competitions should be highlighted as if its a GRAND thing, meaning a full middle section of the site if possible. I know the prizes were great!

This is true and I agree. This website is going to hit the web with complete new design very soon and I believe that many of the things you mentioned will be fixed. I know when the poll is open (any poll) we only see 30-60 votes and the website has over 7000 members. Many of those people probably don't want to be active on the forum but only learn lessons at home. It's really their right to chose whether they want to be active. I agree that we should see more people here but hopefuly the brand new redesign will fix much of that.

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[Fran]

The wiki frontpage & GMC Journal are updated very often and show the latest things going on at our site.

By the looks of the upcoming GMC design there's a good chance that part of those updates might be automatically imported onto GMC homepage, thus making it more "alive". There's a screenshot showing some community / GMC knowledge base content which looked really cool.

I also believe knowledge base is a much more accurate term for the wiki these days since it's gathering community resources, news & articles alike

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[maharzan]

That would be great Fran. From my experience, the pages you have mentioned are inner pages (mostly hidden). I too don't check those pages often. When I open GMC, its the first page, if there is no new lesson, I directly head to the forum mostly to ask questions or look at competitions and REC.

I am sure most active users do this as well. So, something on the homepage will definitely be helpful. Does GMC has a e-newsletter thingy? That might help. Like inactive members getting newsletter every month highlighting GMC members / competition winners etc. I have been to many sites and never visit them but do like to check out newsletters to see whats new from time to time. This is just my experience. It might lead more participation from inactive members.

It would be great to have interviews, gear reviews from the masters themselves on here at GMC. Like for example, I really need some help on gears right now.

Competitions are definitely a promotional thing. We just need to promote it more somehow.

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[Raph]

Imo if GMC is marketed as a "guitar based community" rather than a video guitar lesson archive, it would encourage others to be more active.

Also, if GMC was made to be the complete "GuitarSpace" or "AxeBook" then it would encourage a legion of Google guitarists to join.

Finally, if a "limited" account was made which would be free which would allow limited access to the videos and forum and full access to the "YouGuitar" section of this site, more legions would follow.

Enough of the rant and social network jokes.

Check out this site for a sort of idea of what I'm talking about.

BTW: it's a language learning site.

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Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

I think all these should be resolved with the new design (which I'm dying to see in action btw )

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

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