We need to update.

[Plasmos]

I'm not talking about the skin,or codes, or anything about that, I'm simply talking about the forum. This isn't a question, this kind of is a suggestion, but it isn't so much of a want so much as it is a need. And what do I mean when I say "We need to update"?

Let's start with the rules.

They are made for a forum that was booming, and need to revise them to fit the needs of the forums now. They are a year and three months old. A suggestion I have is to make the avatar size a tad larger. With a smaller amount of members, we can handle it bandwidth wise, and it will give our artists more room to be creative with them. Siggy size should be fine, though.

Get rid of the advertising rule as it is. Don't allow advertising of any sort unless it is in a signature or something of the sort. It's obviously not attracting members right now, hasn't been attracting members. The only post in there is Tyloric's post showing off his livejournal.

The Archives section needs to be added to the "Forums section" section in the rules.

And... there's a dead link to a thread that's supposed to be a suggestions thread. My suggestion is that you update that.

Now, for the forum itself;

I had some great times in it at one point, but I'm going to be honest and say I'm not sure if we need an advanced roleplayng section anymore. When business was booming, it had the purpose of separating the elite with those who were not as serious as roleplayers, but in a forum that has only a handful of people, and less players, we do not need that separation; in fact I believe it detrimental to the success of the forum. My suggestion is to merge the forum with the original roleplaying forum and bid it farewell.

The Box currently only thrives on "What are you <Insert action here> now?" threads. What can we do to change this? How can we promote activity in this area?

Visual Creation is all but dead, with only a few members beating it's bloody carcass around. What can we do to encourage posting in this forum?

Roleplaying IS dead. The most we ever have going on in one time is possibly a single roleplay that's just going to die sooner than later it seems. What can we do to encourage posting here?

End of the World appears to be the only place active, and many useful discussions end up here instead of where they should be because everyone is there. How can we discourage posting here?

1000 words is more dead than the roleplaying section, with its last post being in the first half of 2009. Perhaps we should merge Visual Creation/1000 words to something more general with subforums to specific areas?

The KH areas are mostly dead, mostly because most of the discussion is drawn to End of the World because it is active and they are not. What can we do to promote activity here?

The mature section requires 500 posts to get in, I say we should lower this post count as no one potentially new is going to get into this section as all the discussion is in an area that does not accumulate your post count.

If you don't think this was important enough to justify a new thread, or Plasmos is just being melodramatic, go ahead and merge this back into the questions/suggestions area, but I feel that something needs to be done, or we will never see this forum thrive again.

EDIT: P.S. And we need to find a way to advertise the forums, even if that means paying $3.75 for a space next to a webcomic.

[Cloud]

Some of the ideas are good ones. 500 posts for the Mature Talk isn't even close to necessary. I honestly forgot that we had an advertising forum. It's not needed, and the rules don't even really make mention of it. It pretty much just mentions the signature. I don't think other forums should be advertised at all, a lot of forums are against this.

A lot of it just seems like since the forums are dead that we need to change everything. That is not true. At least not if we plan on bringing it back to life. All Creation and 1000 Words being combined might be nice now, but if the forum gets popular again then separating them again would be a pain. Same with the Roleplay section. I don't think the advanced section is really scared anyone off from making a roleplay. Or convinced those in that section to think that they were too good for all the roleplays in the general section.

Advertising the forum is a stupid idea. If anything, you would advertise the website in the ad spaces. The website is the thing that advertises the forum. Considering we are a Kingdom Hearts site that is supposed to deliver news, I would say that more news updates would help considerably. And I don't think I've ever seen a news site advertised on any webcomic, or pretty much anywhere if it is for a specific game. Not to mention that advertising right now would be kind of embarrassing.

We have affiliates right? Why not just ask them to tell people that KH-N is back up. I mean it would helped a ton more if we sent out the message when Kh-2.net switched to kh-n.com, but it couldn't hurt to try.

Also, this should have been just in the ideas drop box. It's not like there are so many posts that this one is just going to get skimmed by.

[Volente]

Roleplaying IS dead. The most we ever have going on in one time is possibly a single roleplay that's just going to die sooner than later it seems. What can we do to encourage posting here?

How many KH-N roleplayers are left? lol. I agree with merging everything from Advanced into regular. I think what could help is to remind everyone that roleplaying is not so much SERIOUS BUSINESS as it is fun. Sucky-roleplaying is no longer an issue here, however I think much of us have forgotten how to have some light-hearted fun.

[Riko]

I think I need to appoint a new forum administrator to cover the times when I am not able to install updates / clean the forums on a consistent basis.

[Riko]

Heads up... will be way busy this weekend!