Forum:Preparing for the big release

It is fairly obvious that Battlefield 3 is quickly becoming a highly anticipated game, from gaming sites to the fans. Yet it is a little bit surprising that the community here is still quite small -- the most amount of hits the wiki ever received came with the release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam which was around 6,500. In comparison to other Battlefield sites, that's barely anything.

This is why I think it would be in the best interest of the wiki to adequately prepare for what could potentially be the biggest launch in 2011.

1. Reach out to other Battlefield communities

Awareness of the wiki would help us increase site activity. If people have never heard of the "Battlefield Wiki," then odds are they ended up visiting here by chance. As it stands now, we have no site friends or affiliates outside of the Wikia network, all of which do not have anything to do with Battlefield. If we were to reach out to other Battlefield fansites and communities, be they small or large, would increase our readers' familiarity with the wiki, and knowledge that it exists. Between now and the release of Battlefield 3, making connections with other sites (particularly those that report on BF3) would be doing a great service to the wiki.

2. Make changes to the main page

I'm not saying that it looks terrible, but it is debatable whether or not someone would want to keep reading if he or she judged us by our current main page design (unfortunately, many people do judge books by their cover in the case of websites). I have a work-in-progess redesign for the main page on my sandbox page, which I encourage others to add to if they would like. It adds some flash to the main page with the slider, and I believe it also has less coding than the current main page.

3. Report on news

Currently, news seems to be a semi-frequently updated template on the main page. One thing that has been used on the Call of Duty Wiki is news blogs. These appear on the main page (in a condensed form), and allow commenting -- much like other gaming sites do. Blogs and their respective commenting show the world that we are an active site, and also prove that we encourage everyone to contribute. People who have not yet registered an account often start out as blog commenters, and often eventually become active editors after a while.

These are only some suggestions that I have for preparing for the release of Battlefield 3 this Fall, and hopefully you'll agree that they will only benefit the wiki if we act on them. - Bovell (talk) 14:51, March 17, 2011 (UTC)