[Duion]

@

JeffR
It is not about posting updates, it is about updating the site, like first you update the description, since there is still the description from the commercial days that says like "Torque 3D is the best full source, low cost solution out there. " then maybe update the screenshots with some up to date stuff, ah I forgot that's not possible, since we have not changed the visuals or produced any new demo material in all of our history, but that's another issue.

With visitor counter I don't mean the thing from the 90s but something that counts visitors, so you get a rough idea how many visitors you get and from where maybe as well.
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LukasPJ is the admin so he must know of those things. First you need to have some analytics and then you do some SEO and see what happens.

[Bloodknight]

"then you do some SEO", I do like the way you casually toss this out like its a triviality that doesn't take a metric ton of manhours and probably money to even make more than a trivial dent in the effectively flooded SEO market for game engines. Like you don't have to pay to own a specific set of terms at which point you run headlong into the two engines that pretty much dominate every single search regardless.

A few years back there used to be relevant sites, I'm not sure they have relevance any more in the youtube age. What we really need is users, internet word of mouth is the new word of mouth.

Either way, if you have a way to get past the unity review bombing squad that has existed for the past decade or so that would be useful, that community has been deliberately shitting on torque for years one way or another. Not so much lately, since GarageGames has been doing the work for them :p

[Duion]

Basic SEO is not that hard, having some SEO is better than having none at all.

For example you should have meta tags, torque3d.org has none.

Here is an example on what garagegames.com has as metatags:

<meta name="Description" content="GarageGames provides game development tools and software including the Torque 3D game engine, Torque 2D game engine, Torque game engine for iPhone, and Torque game engine for consoles. Torque is also used by a multitude of game design and development educational institutions that allow students to learn how to make games.">
<meta name="Keywords" content="torque powered, indie, independent game development community, marble blast, torque engine, think tanks">

So you could add something like this at least.

[JeffR]

"With visitor counter I don't mean the thing from the 90s but something that counts visitors, so you get a rough idea how many visitors you get and from where maybe as well."

Ah, ok so you meant the same thing I did. Fair enough on that end then.

And metadata tags on the main domain site isn't something that occured to me, so thanks for the suggestion on that.

[Duion]

And metadata tags on the main domain site isn't something that occured to me, so thanks for the suggestion on that.

You could also go crazy and do metatags for every page. The topic is a bit complicated since there are many kind of metatags and standards, but you should at least define content type, description and tags, so search engines know what content there is. The forum probably uses some forum software and has bots from search engines, so that should be fine, but the front page, wiki pages etc could be defined with metatags.

[LukasPJ]

First of all torque3d.org, I believe it is hosted from this repo
https://github.com/crabmusket/Torque3DLandingPage
So theoretically anyone can contribute, but Buckmaster is not active in the community anymore, so I don't know if PRs are handled.
Furthermore, it was really freaking difficult finding that repo so I don't blame anyone for not contributing to the landing page.

For the forums, yes those are all SEO optimized to the extent phpbb does out of the box, I'm certain we can flip some switches and fill out some forms, but it has support for bots and the like.

For the wiki, I would expect it to be fairly optimized, as WikiDot is a commercial product, but I dunno.

As for statistics, there is a mod that does something, but don't know how much
https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/ ... tatistics/

I don't want to install a Google tracker or any other of those "free" tools. I think don't think we'd use it enough to justify the cost.

[suncaller]

I'll volunteer to help with getting these updates to happen, but can you point out exactly what you want changed? I've got my own list of modernizations that need to happen, and I'd be happy to add any solutions you have to my notes. Problems -- well, there are plenty of those, and we can all see them for ourselves. The issue is there's not enough bandwidth to deal with stuff that's not immediately important to our individual interests.

Also, can we all please roll the flaming back just a tad? The community is small enough as it is, let's put in some effort into trying to be more welcoming and less hateful. The reality is, we're getting heated about it because we care. That's something we have in common. Let's focus on that, and try to overlook the other stuff as much as possible.

[Duion]

So theoretically anyone can contribute, but Buckmaster is not active in the community anymore, so I don't know if PRs are handled.

Yes he is a nonexistent member of the nonexistent steering committee, that's why I'm preaching for years to get an existing steering committee, since having an existing steering committee, would solve a lot of issues by itself.

Regarding analytics, yes I would not install google analytics, I for example use: https://matomo.org/ it is pretty easy to use, you just install it and can operate it through web interface. It is self hosted and open source, so there are no costs.

Maybe we really do not need it, but I think the only thing that is visited regularly is the forum, the other pages are kind of unknown for the most part, so it would be nice to activate those as well.

[LukasPJ]

Oh, Matomo looks interesting, I will see if I can set that up somewhere!

[Duion]

It is relatively simple, you put it on the webspace, run it, follow the instructions and the website needs to get a javascript snippet somewhere so the analytics can count if someone visits it.