I admit - I am not a big contributor here myself but I have noticed the activity dip a lot recently, and I am a relatively new owner compared to most who post here.

I know forums are a bit old hat these days but I maintain they are the best place for a car community. I can't help but wonder whether the forum might have more activity if it moved over to some form of .com or other global domain (I do realise 300zx.com is already owned) and started calling itself a global owners club? Twinturbo.net is horrible to look at, let alone use, no way they are getting many new 300ZX owners in the US.

Thoughts?

I think before anything like that, the forum needs dramatic streamlining, something I've been saying for years but little seems to change. There are section after section of either unused or pointless sub areas on here which I'm sure puts folks off driving them to Facebook and to such dreadful pages as the poorly named NISMO 300zx page.

 

There are 44 sub sections on the forum's main page. Regions really needs to be combined to a national section - there simply aren't enough active users and owners to generate traffic and regular regional meets.

 

The PC Tech corner is probably the biggest waste of bandwidth on here with one section not being posted in for a decade...A DECADE. That whole area needs removing - this is a car enthusiasts' page. The Premium Members' area is full of pointless sub categories too. 'Jokes plus video games and links'. Why is that even on here?

 

In my opinion this is all you need to make it slick:

 

Standard Member forums:

* Meet the club and membership enquiries

* Newbies

* Issue tracker:

 

Subscribed Member forums:

* General Chat (non Z related)

* Z General Chat

* Technical

* Styling

* FAQ area

* Meetings and Events

* Classifieds

 

It doesn't need anymore than that. You don't need sub categories for Photoshop requests or dyno results, there just isn't enough traffic for that and only achieves in making the forum look heavily cluttered. Keep it simple.

 

This forum is (was) a wonderful resource; there's an amazing amount of information on here, a lot which helped me during my early days of 300zx ownership and then subsequently, information I put back in. Sadly though most of this is almost impossible to find with the migration over to this current forum software; the search engine just doesn't seem to be able to drag out the information and that's key to opening up this forum to a wider audience. It's now easier to search on the Facebook pages (granted, you get a huge amount of bad information on there, but at least it's searchable).

 

My two penneth.

Edited January 5, 20232 yr by Funkysi

Couldn't agree more with funkysi's analysis of the situation, however 300ZX cars as a whole are a dying breed as they get older and older which i can only see as a good thing as the less there are the more they will increase in value.. I think trying to expand a forum dedicated to a dying cause is not a wise decision. 

 

Just my opinion. 

I think something needs to change. I agree with streamlining bits on here, there is a lot of irrelevant stuff now that most people use social media so much more.

It should be just about the cars.

I do think that some of the threads where no one’s posted for years is off putting for new members, if someone comes to look at the website to see whether it’s worth joining and no one has discussed a meet up in their area for 3 years then they probably won’t join. A regional grouping may be the way to go. I’d be happy to travel quite far for a meet up if the numbers were good.

On 05/01/2023 at 09:19, Funkysi said:

I think before anything like that, the forum needs dramatic streamlining....

Agree with all of those points to be honest, just with the addition/keeping a section for the build journals. Focusing the forum on fewer more relevant areas is nicer for the current users and far more attractive to people popping in for a peek. 

 

9 hours ago, Toomanyzeds said:

Couldn't agree more with funkysi's analysis of the situation, however 300ZX cars as a whole are a dying breed as they get older and older which i can only see as a good thing as the less there are the more they will increase in value.. I think trying to expand a forum dedicated to a dying cause is not a wise decision. 

Of course owner numbers will continue to slide but I would imagine we are near the bottom. Regardless, a global forum with wider reach (dying numbers or not) can only really mean more potential members for this forum, which is what I was interested in. A more active, interesting place worth a visit. Besides, I'd say active communities drive up prices if anything.

I am not in the know as to what the structure is with regards to who runs the forum, but would be interesting to hear a comment from them? 

 

 

There is about 8 - 10 of us in total who run and assist the club and this site.

The main crew, at least those who have provided details and a picture are listed here :

https://www.300zx.co.uk/team/

The Sub-Committee as we call it now is a replacement for all the REO's and Moderators groups we used to have many years ago.

My role in hear is all the IT aspects but i'm guided by the others on what needs done.

 

Unfortunately things get side tracked and some of us are not online or active as much so we fall behind on things to get done.

But we appreciate posts like this as we all need to get active and get things done.

 

That been said the alot of the format of this club has now adjusted and old sections cleaned up and merged as they are no longer needed.

Any historical technical information and FAQ's have been moved to the Premium sections as we believe they are best suited to that section.

 

The club still needs to make some income to keep this place going so selling has also been restricted again to Premium Users.

 

The club is already national as it is but i'm guessing we just need to adjust the sections to cater for them too.

 

I do own some national style domains and i may try get these going as a mirror site so that the current and new domains work from the same databases.

 

 

 

Great to see a cleanup implemented so quickly - looks much cleaner. 

On the income side, again a bigger reach will surely help. From a users perspective, I have let my premium membership lapse as the community is not active enough for me to warrant it. I understand others will not mind that so much. 

When you say national style, do you mean like .co.uk but for other countries? Would it not be simpler to consider a .com/.net/.something switch? I believe having mirrors severely impacts Google rankings also last time I checked. A switch to .com with a redirect on the old 300zx.co.uk address I think would help the forum plenty. 

I understand moving things behind the paywall but if the team here did decide to try switching to a .com and branding as a global members club, might be an idea to open those things up initially as that is what many are looking for from a forum initially. You could then look to make a decision on whether to move it at a later date? I'd say technical articles are how people will land in the forum in the first place. If these pages are no longer indexed by google or locked behind a paywall, you might be having a negative effect on your subscribers long term.

All of this is just my opinion of course. 

By national i actually meant to say international and use a new domain name but do it in a way that both work or the old redirects to the new.

however 300zx.com belongs to z1motorsports and they wont be giving it up any time soon.

Problem with moving domains is that so many URL's encoded into posts use 300zx.co.uk and it would be a fairly large task to go through the database to make that sort of change.

I do have a domain in mind that could be used easily but it would be setup as a mirror site rather than replacement.

13 hours ago, JaiKai said:

By national i actually meant to say international and use a new domain name but do it in a way that both work or the old redirects to the new.

however 300zx.com belongs to z1motorsports and they wont be giving it up any time soon.

Problem with moving domains is that so many URL's encoded into posts use 300zx.co.uk and it would be a fairly large task to go through the database to make that sort of change.

I do have a domain in mind that could be used easily but it would be setup as a mirror site rather than replacement.

zedsrule.com?

So just over a month now since this thread was posted and boy a lot has changed !

The club now changed to a more international style domain name, we have cleaned up loads of sections that are no longer relevant

 

This is just the start, soon as we settle into our new home i think we should branch out and get some international mods onboard.

 

That's great. Loved the clean-up and that domain name is great.

International mods is great idea. Getting people onboard with this place being a nicer site all-round to use than the likes of twin-turbo.net.

 

Yeah I’ve gotta say I’m a big fan of all this, international mods would be a great idea. Building up a big network of people will be really helpful for parts and advice and help bring new people to the cars.

The competition is cool as well, although I don’t have any high quality photos of my car!