The solution is honestly quite simple, and there are just a few simple steps that should be considered. Whats wrong 1. The shoutbox The shoutbox is a poorly implemented feature on the website. It's only visible on the main forum page which is primarily used to access the halo/forge/off topic forums. Therefore it does not receive much traffic and is a poor place to try to find people to test maps who may be online but are not actively on the one page it's viewable. In addition to this, on this same page is the link to the discord chat which brings people away from the website additionally lowering web traffic and page views How to fix it: include the shout box in more places on the website, ideally at the top of each of the three forums and anywhere else, include a small popup at the bottom right of the page that can be opened and minimized similar to the facebook chat feature. To remedy the discord issue, a potential solution would be to introduce a forgehub app that would act as the new discord and would be compatable with the shoutbox on the website. 2. Youtube presense Forgehub has been around since halo 3 and has weak youtube game. Compare forgehubs subscriber count (9,603 at the time of this post) to channels such as forgelabs which have 93,000 subscribers at the time of this post. How to fix it: produce more content. This will allow forgehub to monetize it's videos while still keeping the website free of ads. Additional subscribers and viewers will also drive more people to the website. Videos are an easily consumed form of content and are more easily digestible by the general population than forgehubs current system of articles all in text form. 3. Forgecast forgecast every monday gets posted and it's almost always the same content, goes largely ignored by the average user and takes up a large portion of the main page. How to fix it: A small banner on the main page should be more than sufficient linking to a page with all of the necessary information. Additionally, the name forgecast does not do a great job of illustrating to the user what it is they should expect by clicking the name, a simplified name along the lines of "lobbies and news" which while not having a pun for a name, does a much better of telling a new reader what to expect by clicking the link. 4. likes Those that remember the MLG forums probably remember the rep system favorably. it acted as a way for users to moderate themselves with less action required by the mods. Many other popular forums use a similar feature with likes and dislikes, upvotes and downvotes. These systems allow the community to show by voting what kind of posts will or will not be tolerated while rewarding posts with substance. How to fix it: Add a rep/voting system. likes can still show as they are with dislikes being annonymous to prevent grudges from forming. These are not in any particular order, nor are they all of the things that could be improved. Post your own ideas below.
Of course there are a lot of things that can be done to improve the site itself. There's only one way to fix the problem of a dwindling userbase, and I've been saying this since Halo 4... a GOOD HALO GAME.
You've gotta work with what you've got. A halo title with halo3 mechanics and halo5 forge would definitely be great for the community but that's not going to happen. Even then, forgehub feels so outdated that even if more people play the game, it's not going to gain a large following The fact that a forge channel such as forge labs can get almost 100k subscribers shows that there's still people who are playing the game and consuming content for it. forgehub is in competition with halowaypoint, reddit, beyond and other forge/halo forums for users, and forgelabs (and other youtube channels) for viewers. As it is now, forgehub is going to have limited growth and suffer from more users leaving than joining.
No, it's been true since Halo Reach, but I've only been saying it since Halo 4. I'm not suggesting ignoring the state of the site. As I said, there ARE a lot of things that can be done to improve the site. There absolutely should be an effort put forth to make improvements.
Don't know why they're keeping it a secret, but this website is being overhauled right now as far as I know.
Well the only reason Forge-cast generally stays the same is because nothing really changes, and actually in the recent months it has gotten more traffic. i wish i could add more content in there but since it is based mainly off of the community and what articles we have lined up there isn't much to do. It basically is meant to be a weekly calendar anyways. Also the name is staying cause puns are great, even though it takes a lot to come up with good ones and with not much content lately it is hard to sprinkle some in there. Also im not sure if you realize but the reason it takes up a large portion of the main page is because it is an article like all the others, so it is going to follow the same rules as all the others. A small banner isn't going to draw really anymore attention, but there is some plans in place, Forge-cast isn't a permanent thing but is staying how it is because there are people who value it like other websites and the testing lobbies. Which is what the audience is for it anyways. The picture was meant to convey the news pun but with the changing style in the articles it was dropped and decided to just stick with plain pictures (not my choice). Still your suggestions do not go un-noted regarding everything you listed for the forge-cast and other stuff.
Yeah I never use the shoutbox because I don't want to have to stay on a stagnant page just to participate. If it could somehow be implemented similarly to chats on Facebook, where the tab for the chat is always there, can be viewed or minimized no matter which page of the site you're browsing, I think that'd be ideal. Similarly, if user to user (to user?l private chats are possible on a forum, that could be interesting. Might let unwanted discussions like the alleged inappropriate WAYWO discussions of late stay in a chat between the users involved. Idk, might pull traffic away from the publicly-viewed forums though.
We have private chats, they are just a bit annoying to find, clicking on someones name in a thread brings up a little card and on it it says "Start a Conversation"