I installed a new CAPTCHA install on User Registration and Comments, basically to prevent automated accounts from registering and posting trash. It functions a bit differently then your typical CAPTCHAs so it should not be a pain I hope, please let me know what you all think or if there is something else that might be preferred.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am looking at different ways to manage a community mostly out of my own curiosity on finding a better way. However, how I am implementing things is of curiosity to most, so I wanted to take a second to note some things out.

Firstly, this is a WordPress installation, setup in a “network”. Previously this was known as a Multisite installation and functions similar to WordPress.com. A single install of WordPress can manage a number of different blog/sites. This allows me to quickly manage some of my sites easily, simply put instaGib.org and MatchMod.Net will be merged into a single WordPress install. Making my life significantly easier in the process.

The next step was to install BuddyPress. This is a social network implementation in a box. instaGib.org was built mainly around this plugin in this incarnation. It allows anyone to register, create groups, and actual entire websites that can be managed. I am keeping the sites locked down for the moment, but all other features are enabled for BuddyPress.

Lastly, bbPress was installed, this is what gives the forum functionality to the entire library of sites. As groups are created, they have the ability to create private forums and topics within the group by default. bbPress is what is providing this functionality.

Truth be told, this was about two hours of effort to get this all configured and running, the themes will be considerable effort to get everything looking nice, but I have not yet decided if I am going to devout the time to my little experiment here. We’ll see.

That is pretty much “it” in a nutshell. Feel free to register and ask questions or spawn your own thing here.

The current design can simply be summed up as Hawkeye thinking aloud. I have never been horribly impressed with how many of the gaming communities are pieced together. It really is ran more like your average company but everyone hangs out in the lobby. From my observations, here is what I see.

A typical “Community” in the gaming world includes

• A portal page (I refer to this as Public Relations)
• A forum (The Cafeteria/Water cooler)
• Site administration (Executive)
• Recruiting Area (HR)
• Donations (Sales/Marketing)
• Game Servers/Operations (Operations Staff)

Invariable, anything will need to have some amount of operational staff to keep the thing running, but there are a number of reasons there are issues here. The primary issue with this, companies don’t really give off a community feeling, I find that the social based sites seem to lend themselves much more to the goals a community is trying to accomplish. Over time any community grows to some amount and inevitably it splits. It just happens. The root cuase in my observations is people simply don’t get along, be it personality, political or whatever. The more people that are in the bucket, the more likely the splintering of the group will happen. So I am toying with a slightly different mentality in my mind.

The more successful communities really don’t have a “membership” section, they simply are, if you want to be part of the community, participate. You don’t need to wave flags to show your support (Clan Tags), the community aspect will simply allow you to be merged in over time. The social aspect is what is important. But how do you keep the group from splintering?

The solution I have come up with, and has been in place for a while, is simply not lump everyone into a single bucket, allow the members to create their own sub-groups as will, invite others, and do whatever they wish to do. The only real rules one needs are pretty basic.

• Keep things Appropriate and respectable
• You have nothing good to say, keep you’re mouth shut. (If you do keep it constructive and respectful)

What the goal here is to allow users to create their own sub groups at a small scale, for the purposes of my experiment here.. I created this site, to look at how this would work out. So there is the basics of the site administration. I created a private, invite only group for the people that directly maintain the site. In this group we have a forum to discuss whatever we want, and it is private to members of the group and I am the only one able to invite people in. Now since this is gaming based, I will likely create public groups for various games, say a section for Counter Strike, DotA, Tribes etc.. Allow members to merge into the groups and have their own forum posts in those sections. So if a new game shows up people want to try, I can allow anyone to spawn a new group and the old groups will eventually fall out os usefulness. So the site and the community can shift around wherever it would like. I don’t think you need to have clan tags or anything, just some place to hang out. If you want to look as a specific aspect, for example competitive versus casual, you can spawn a competitive group for those interested to take a look and go from there.

Amazingly, this is the base concept that is was around when the WWW first was setup, you can find a community of like minded people and enjoy yourselves. but finding the right community wasn’t always easy, and beginning your own was pretty daunting. This really began to solidify in everyones mind around the explosion of Facebook/Twitter/MySpace etc.. The ability to easily create communities and participate in them is simply called searching for it and participating.

So, mostly for my own curiosity, looking to see how this might work with a few people, discuss the ins and outs of what works and what doesn’t and hopefully all get a better idea of how to handle communities in the long term.  Not sure how far I will go digging into this, but something I wanted to look at.