PSA: Server Promotion

[keinrider56]

A tiny lecture on promotion

Well! Here we are. About a month in, and the server has grown quite a bit. It's important to know numbery things, so I'll throw out a few statistics for ya.

We have...

• Whitelisted 79 players since the last MCForum restart,
  
  
• Banned 14 players since the July restart,
  
  
• Seen the rising of 6 player towns,
  
  
• Seen the expansion of 2 player cities,
  
  
• Seen a top balance of $73,000
  
  
• Have reached a maximum of 35 players online at one time
  
  
• Held 5 Hunger Games Events
  
  
• And have eaten 5,362 cookies. (AKA, all of them)
  
  
• Explored out to 50,000 chunks.
  

Not bad, for our first month back. But for a 64 slot server, and for all of these good numbers, our activity isn't quite where we want it to be. 6-12 people online during weekdays and 12-24 during weekends isn't terrible, but it's not spectacular. Of course, many of us are now occupied with school and other fall-y activities, but I would like to take a minute to consider ways to "thicken our ranks", so to speak.

Therefore, let me introduce to you the new campaign for... Shameless advertisement. Yes, I know what you're thinking. "Knight, where did you come up with such a spectacular idea?" Well, hopeless player, it has come to my attention that servers stay alive purely through advertisement on forums, such as MCForums and Planet Minecraft, and the attention we've been getting from our topic has been a little subpar.

Think of our server, for a moment, as a volleyball. The objective of volleyball is to keep the ball in the air, and to occasionally smite other peoples' faces in with it. Now, by posting on our forum topic, we considerably "bump" our server back up into the air. This may seem easy, but it becomes difficult when there are 14,000 servers being bumped around by even more volleyball players. Before I take this very cheesy simile much further, simply know that we would like to continue playing the volleyball game before our ball hits the sandlot, and we're going to need a lot of bumps to achieve it.

Now are we asking you to (illegally) go around MCForums and bump our server? Well. Kind of. It's not that we want you to post pointless things about... Well, nothing. But we would like you to share things that you have been doing, projects you have been working on, or even ways we could improve the server by simply posting on the thread.

No, we are not paying anyone or ranking anyone any time soon to bump our thread. It's a bit of a shameless (Ha!) tactic that I've seen on a lot of the bigger servers, and I've always despised the idea of it. Most of the time, the player base you will be getting from those kinds of bumps are not exactly friendly or permanent type, either.

It's up to you, really. The fact that you're even reading this message is probably proof that you have some dedication to this server. Or that we forced you to read it with our hypno-toad. But do what you can - As it is for our mutual benefit. We want more players = You probably want more people to help you, trade with you, adventure with, and inhabit your towns. The server being filled up is a good dream, and we hope to see it, some day.

Promoting the forums

Another smallish note:

Our forums, while having somewhere around 35 members, is only frequented by about 3-5. This means that messages like this... Don't quite get out to everything. We have tried our own personal advertisement, but sometimes the best way of getting the word out is by mouth. So in part, it is also up to you few who are viewing this to get the word out to the public players as much as possible.

Thanks, guys. We hope you are active in this.

[Deleted]

I was thinking "Knight. This is a terrible idea. Shtap.

[Deleted]

Jooooooking. Sounds like a legit idea. But as you know I like to see the WHOLE picture and bring into perspective the minor details we shouldn't sweat. (Call it Wisdom. I DO have grey hair. I'm allowed to do this.) Now I'm sure you understand the risks of making the server too popular right? Of course you do. You're Knight. But for those who don't, I'll break it down.
1. Server becomes popular.
2. We build up a huge, dedicated fan base.
3. Minor griefers with small server crashing mods or tools target the biggest servers they find.
4. Major griefers use a Java input that can crash online clients in a heartbeat using the Boolean Operator. (I won't go into specifics.).
5. We get mad.
NOTE!!! All of the following is unlikely. VERY unlikely. So the chance of anyone who only wants to rustle people's jimmies targeting us is 1 to (Input Infinity Symbol Here).

No, I'm not saying having a big server is a bad thing, but I've been around (Take that with a grain of salt) and people don't understand what you need to do when gaining popularity. We are lucky to have some of the most talented and friendly (Simultaneously) admins and mods running this server (In my book, Neon is a Mod). And since I'm a worry-wart here's a tip that people seem to ignore.
~Sometimes 1 layer of security isn't enough!~
Just saying, (NK agrees) with NoCheat (If that's not the server's security please excuse me.) there are ways to get around it. On my server (Here we go again.) we had the mods constantly searching for ways through our plugin security. After a while we realized our server wasn't big enough for people to even go through the trouble of trying to hardcore hack us.

Long story short if we're going to go big, we should prepare for the worst. And that's why I'm here! To yell and scream at you until you tell me off, jail me, or take care of the problem. Thanks for reading another one of my rants. Feel free to rate, comment, and subscribe!

[keinrider56]

You've got a very valid point with your concerns. I think it'd be impossible for us to (Any time soon) become "That popular server." I'd like to keep us on an averagely active basis. With about 15-20 active weekdays and 30+ weekends. That sounds like a good middle number. Small enough to prevent crimes from going unseen and big enough to make the server alive and full.

I've been considering ways to enhance our security system, but I'm afraid I'm too inexperienced with plugin work to not have been around the block too many times with hacking. If you have a suggestion for a good security program (Perhaps outside the box of orbfus), try and post it, please.

And Neon is neither Admin nor Mod. He is... Owner.

[evilpro]

What would happen if an MCF Moderator joins the forums undercover? That would be a Problem

[keinrider56]

Pfffft. They won't find out. We're like the friggin' SS, here... Ohwait.

[Deleted]

A couple things:
1: I can start hosting advertisement for the server via PMC so we can get those PMC guys who wanna test out adminy shit.
2: I have experience with plugins and security ones (ie Orebfuscator, the one that no one can figure out how to config for some reason)
3: NoCheat has some flaws...look at the random kicks it does and all dem minimap bugs...
4: A rework of the plugins (yay more plugin related spam ), something I will be more than willing to help with and it helps that i have perms set up for plugins in mind already.

Server security can never be taken too lightly and even with the player base we have now, people still try and find ways to abuse it (and some do since NoCheat aint the greatest). Having several layers is always good and having staff that are in a more diverse set of time zones helps too, because it makes it difficult to ask for help or get a serious problem dealt with when everyone is at school or work. Far too often (when Im on the server, which Im afraid to say has become increasingly less), I see people on the server who are having issues with players or whatnot and no one is there to help and /report doesnt have the immediate help option...But on that same note, the server isnt really big enough or active enough to facilitate the increased staff load.

[keinrider56]

Sept 17, 2012 1:28:44 GMT -6 @nkcazy said:

A couple things:
1: I can start hosting advertisement for the server via PMC so we can get those PMC guys who wanna test out adminy shit.
2: I have experience with plugins and security ones (ie Orebfuscator, the one that no one can figure out how to config for some reason)
3: NoCheat has some flaws...look at the random kicks it does and all dem minimap bugs...
4: A rework of the plugins (yay more plugin related spam ), something I will be more than willing to help with and it helps that i have perms set up for plugins in mind already.

Server security can never be taken too lightly and even with the player base we have now, people still try and find ways to abuse it (and some do since NoCheat aint the greatest). Having several layers is always good and having staff that are in a more diverse set of time zones helps too, because it makes it difficult to ask for help or get a serious problem dealt with when everyone is at school or work. Far too often (when Im on the server, which Im afraid to say has become increasingly less), I see people on the server who are having issues with players or whatnot and no one is there to help and /report doesnt have the immediate help option...But on that same note, the server isnt really big enough or active enough to facilitate the increased staff load.

Agreed. Depending on server activity, we'll have to see what happens, in the security department.