How can we make Psynews more active? Post your ideas/opinions.

[astralprojection]

5 hours ago, MikroMakro said:

Thanks, well you know, you have to make judgements and make a decision. Given the original post was 2012 it seems ever so slightly late, which is a factor.

No way! What if we all died tomorrow. It's never too late. 

[Richpa]

Psynews has been a cornerstone for all psytrance related topics: from music, party/festival annoucements, new releases news, discussion about various topics ranging from album/compilation reviews/talks, interesting video sharing (interviews, old video-clips), production tips and tricks exchange, general talk about culture, entertainment, spirituality and so on.

That being said, my opinion regarding the improvement:

Disclaimer: I'm aware it requires resources, mostly someones time, knowledge and some money, but here me out.

Two things are here important and both of them can be seen as a great foundation for eventual re-haul/improvement of the website/board. First one is content and second one is user-database.

Forum/board should be just one segment of the website. The front-page of Psynews.org shouldn't be board. It should look like a interactive web-page where you can find couple of things:

- A nice clean horizontal menu with few sub-menus such as: News, Videos, Reviews, Events, Playlists, Forum. You can add Contact and/or Newsletter info as well
- Big horizontal header, Psynews logo or promoted banner for certain release/event/something else
- Top 4-6 articles should be right below, in form of a box or as a list, but pinned
- Eventually side-bar with latest topics/threads from the board/forum
- Everything else is a matter of details
- Footer with standard copyright and privacy policy

Now to the point: When you have already great content, such as well-written reviews or proper music annoucements made by members, you can use that to put it (highlight it) on the front-page of your website, with nice image attached it's like pro-looking article. For example if you are using Wordpress page, you can make great SEO (search engine optimisation) of each article and attract more visitors to check your website and engage in other content (including the forum). It also gives nice exposure to artists, event organizers, label owners, DJ's as something representative. It's a win-win situation. Turn on some social-media commenting below the article, or link it with board/forum, you have engagement.

I'm not that much into technical side of things, especially regarding the server/hosting that Psynews got, but I believe it supports latest version of Wordpress. You can get nice web theme/template in style of blog/magazine for like 50 bucks. Everything else is a matter of details, how you segment your page, what kind of plugins are you using and how you format certain text within articles, what images are you using and so on. But let's be honest, it would look much more professional and more involving for many content creators, no matter are they posting new release infos or putting up some album reviews or just sharing the event details with public, as well to some random visitors or psytrance enthusiasts.

Regarding the forum membership: I'm aware that many registered members are inactive, but let's keep focus on active members, lurkers and eventually newcommers. Form a small team of 5-10 well-spoken users who will be in charge of re-posting forum content on the front page. Start with ongoing year 2024 - put up all reviews up in the frontpage, pick couple of festival annoucements, some upcoming releases and create 20 articles. You can, but you don't need to re-post other reviews, news, but it would be great to get each month at least 20-most commented/viewed reviews in form of article (form past years), just make sure to change the date when creating the article (in case you don't want to see it up in the lastest article sections). Add couple of articles regarding the most important festivals, share some nice DJ mixes. You can always edit articles, format images, credit the authors.

Instagram reels, Facebook posts and new YouTube uploads by labels or artists can be great source for a fine article. All you need is a engaging article title, 200-300 words, link within article, nice looking photo and of course some links. The best thing is to directly add/embbed a clip or a videot. Put some hashtags and it's good to go.

Feature some playlists by DJ's - make it on weekly or monthly basis. Daily throwback - put a highlight on some forgotten artist or release or even label.

I can go on for hours with this idea, but in the end, what matters is the will to re-shape this great website, and I'm not sure is that even an option, but if someone from Administration decides to deal with it, I will be first in line to check it on daily basis and support it by recommending it.

Sorry for lenghty post.

[astralprojection]

great ideas mr richpa, make it happen

[kokanje]

On 5/2/2024 at 5:35 PM, Richpa said:

Forum/board should be just one segment of the website. The front-page of Psynews.org shouldn't be board. It should look like a interactive web-page where you can find couple of things:

- A nice clean horizontal menu with few sub-menus such as: News, Videos, Reviews, Events, Playlists, Forum. You can add Contact and/or Newsletter info as well
- Big horizontal header, Psynews logo or promoted banner for certain release/event/something else
- Top 4-6 articles should be right below, in form of a box or as a list, but pinned
- Eventually side-bar with latest topics/threads from the board/forum
...

Agree completely. For reference of how it could work, perhaps look at https://www.psybient.org/ which has managed to stay going for several years now despite not having a working forum section.

I would be happy to help out with this project, either on the technical side (I have a software development background) or by assisting with funding. Like Richpa said, with current Wordpress templates I think there is a lot that can be done with relatively low initial effort.