Greetings

[Pred]

Hello everyone just a quick introduction of myself;

I'm an avid CoD player, started off with United Offensive back in the day, moved onto CoD2, CoD4 and now finally MW2, used to game seriously when I was younger now I just play for fun.

I used to be a Moderator on the old codforums about 3-4 years ago, not sure if this is linked anyway to the old url but anyways...

Thanks for reading this and Happy Gaming to all.

 

[Jason]

Hello there Pred,

Great to see an old face visiting again, did you just type the URL into your browser to see what was going on at the site?

We have no connection with the old codforums, but i'd love to learn a bit more about the old site. I've visited archive.org but it doesn't seem to have a lot on record, i see the site used to be a clan website and then after that it was forwarded to a gameserver provider. There doesn't seem to be any trace of a previous forum though, which surprised me given how popular the series is, and how great the URL is.

What happened to the old CoDForums? What was it like?

Hopefully you like what we're doing with the new CoDForums as well

 

[Carlos]

Jason, not too many people can spend a lot of money just to be able to get a server, a nice forum, and put together a nice skin like you did with the current CODForums. So, the best alternative to a full blown website - cheap, freebie-like forum. Websites like gameservers provide hosting to gamers - with gamers in mind.

The problem is the design of the site, its not good. Secondly, when you have a banner that is FAR from your forum's theme - its a dead give-away that you're not putting the time and effort to make it look good for users. The other problem is the fact the owner did not pay attention to the little things that count in marketing the site; finding a SEO tool for the forum itself - which is quite another problem with the old site - the forum software it was powered by does not have too much developer support. So, this limits that forum to a few options, nothing else.

The other drawback was that this was freebie-like forum, this limits administrative powers such as upgrading, editing, installing new hacks, etc. etc.

Sure, your site may be old, but it does you no good, unless you know how to implement a marketing scheme for it. For example, my site's marketing is done through - backlinks. Where? Lookie, I have a signature. The longer you leave it as is - the more google clicks, and indexes.

Back during the internet boom, the most popular forums was vBulletin powered, until iKonboards, IPS, and others came into the scene and tried to vie for marketshare. These forums didn't need any SEO, either you had members that will bring 50 members to your site, and its hot stuff - boom instant 1k members in months' time or you had members that were passionate about the community or the forum will just take longer to penetrate visitors.

Its like right now, the most essential thing to marketing is social media, SEO, posting a lot, making design count, adhering to members' requests on making forums better, etc. It doesn't happen overnight anymore. It takes time. Money. Due Diligence. Persistence.