Ideas

[Ash]

Hey,

So ive got a few ideas for TS

- Official TS Trips each have a dedicated topic open as soon as the meet is announced which contains the time/date/accommodation and perhaps a meeting point? The first post could then have a who going/accomadation list and allow for discussion underneath and allow people to sort out lifts and/or places to stay. Once the meet has taken place the same topic title is changed to show it is now for *reviews* and people put their reviews and pictures in the thread. This happens for every meet and at the end of the year all the topics are moved into the archive before the new ones are announced. Then archiving each meet like a story and by year.

- Meets which are open for others to attend should have the title "mini-meet" and follow the same structure as the official meet topics and is managed by the original poster or a mod who puts a "whos attending" list and meet info. This then contains the meet reviews.

- A Towers Street app to be considered containing Official meet info/Live chat/Forum/twitter feed. It could perhaps allow people to show if they are attending a meet and the details of them for the year and then the lists of "whos going" could be added to the official topic. It would help to improve meet organisation and hopefully make the site more accessible and introduce more.

- A easy way for people to submit pictures/video/audio to the site.

- A forum dedicated to community projects (rct projects/no limits projects/towers street app/mine craft/radio/youtube videos) where people can share their ideas and ask the community for contributions.

- A TST Live feature for meets which shares live pictures/video

- Deeper integration with twitter/facebook if possible tieing this into the forum maybe using facebook events also for meets? And hashtags for meet ups e.g #StaffsSandwich to create discussion for those in attendance on not

- Treat the history side of the site like a physical place. Actively look to get as much information and contributions from the community as possible.

- A history of TS section containing meet reports/photos/site designs history of what has happened with TT.

- Get an RSS feed for the news get all news out over FB/Twitter/Main site simultaneously pointing towards the site for more information

- If possible use YouTube as it is one the best way to spread a message perhaps with small news pieces for major news and meets? Perhaps allow a smaller team on the site to create these? Again pushing people back to the main site for the forum and meets?

- On the whole include the community in decisions and encourage growth. Like ive said in the past it depends on if the Team and community want the same things and what they are? Do we want something to grow and gain new members or just a place to talk?

- Set out what the site is and what it wants to become?

 

[Dave]

Huge post there Ash only had a quick look. I don't know if im miss reading it as i did skim but your suggestion for the meets topics sounds a lot like what we used to do on TTF which is what i believe we plan to do. Astro very much looks after the meets so he might be able to answer better.

As for a live updates feature on major meets, we have started to update our FB feed on meets but we have avoided doing a huge live feature as Towers Nerd do theirs so well and we welcome our forum users discussing their updates.

News will always be posted on FB and twitter and our new social media guru is working on our social media (check out tonights update).

The forum still has a few plannes changes so the suggestions on that are certainly interesting, there is plenty more to reply to but i have run out of break time at work

 

[Craig]

Some nice ideas there Ash, I'll run through each one

- Official TS Trips each have a dedicated topic open as soon as the meet is announced which contains the time/date/accommodation and perhaps a meeting point? The first post could then have a who going/accomadation list and allow for discussion underneath and allow people to sort out lifts and/or places to stay. Once the meet has taken place the same topic title is changed to show it is now for *reviews* and people put their reviews and pictures in the thread. This happens for every meet and at the end of the year all the topics are moved into the archive before the new ones are announced. Then archiving each meet like a story and by year.

We already had this to an extent on TT, with old meet topics archived. Will definitely look into trying to include information all in one central location. We already had some ideas floating around for making meet details a little earlier to understand for people perhaps new to them, so they'll definitely be considered for TowersStreet.

- Meets which are open for others to attend should have the title "mini-meet" and follow the same structure as the official meet topics and is managed by the original poster or a mod who puts a "whos attending" list and meet info. This then contains the meet reviews.

Can't see why this can't be done - should make it easier for people to notice mini meets etc. Will look at the best way of putting this in for topics in the next couple of days.

- A Towers Street app to be considered containing Official meet info/Live chat/Forum/twitter feed. It could perhaps allow people to show if they are attending a meet and the details of them for the year and then the lists of "whos going" could be added to the official topic. It would help to improve meet organisation and hopefully make the site more accessible and introduce more.

Definitely a longer term thing to consider, with the main focus on building the community and getting the main site online first. Once we've got the main site online, then we can perhaps revisit this one! Anyone who has experience in this though, feel free to shout up to perhaps discuss ideas.

- A easy way for people to submit pictures/video/audio to the site.

Something we've already discussed, so a great idea

- A forum dedicated to community projects (rct projects/no limits projects/towers street app/mine craft/radio/youtube videos) where people can share their ideas and ask the community for contributions.

We're looking at the return of an RCT forum soon, although might have second thoughts about what to include in there as I kinda like the idea of the whole community projects angle!

- A TST Live feature for meets which shares live pictures/video

We had a bit of a stab at this on TT which was still very much on a work in progress/trial basis, but it's definitely something we'll consider for TS. Facebook and Twitter are going to be a huge part of TS so integration will happen and with the addition of on park wifi it should make posting live updates much much easier.

- Deeper integration with twitter/facebook if possible tieing this into the forum maybe using facebook events also for meets? And hashtags for meet ups e.g #StaffsSandwich to create discussion for those in attendance on not

See above

- Treat the history side of the site like a physical place. Actively look to get as much information and contributions from the community as possible.

History is going to be a HUGE flagship part of TS. We've got a lot of work going on already, and as everyone knows Squiggles is massively passionate about it. I can guarantee it'll really be something special .

- A history of TS section containing meet reports/photos/site designs history of what has happened with TT.

Yup, definitely like this idea. Would love to see a nice progression log to look back on in future!

- Get an RSS feed for the news get all news out over FB/Twitter/Main site simultaneously pointing towards the site for more information

RSS feed is planned, Twitter, Facebook posts etc will be made for news stories too with djtruefitt managing the social media side of things .

Edit by Joel: RSS is/has been available for the news and forums at:

News - www.towersstreet.com/news/rss

Forum - www.towersstreet.com/talk/.xml/?type=rss

- If possible use YouTube as it is one the best way to spread a message perhaps with small news pieces for major news and meets? Perhaps allow a smaller team on the site to create these? Again pushing people back to the main site for the forum and meets?

Definitely something to look at in future - would be interesting to hear other people's views or ideas about this idea.

- On the whole include the community in decisions and encourage growth. Like ive said in the past it depends on if the Team and community want the same things and what they are? Do we want something to grow and gain new members or just a place to talk?

We'll always listen to feedback and suggestions and look to implementing the ones which have received positive feedback from the community. We'll also continue to have things which involve the community such as a the logo competition etc. In terms of where we want to go - a bit of both really. We have a community to an extent but we want the site as well to become a place where not just existing members can get info but also the best place for new or occasional visitors to Alton Towers to get information for an upcoming trip. So yeah we want to serve the existing community, but there's nothing wrong with growing either - as long as it's not at the expense of the values that we've set when we started TowersStreet.

- Set out what the site is and what it wants to become?

The pages we launched last week cover where we are at the moment in terms of what we intend to offer. It's difficult to have a clear roadmap at present as we don't even have final site design, so it's something which is yet to evolve over the coming weeks and months. We need and want feedback from the people who are already here to help mould it though, after all it's people reading this forum who have read page after page of websites and know what works and what doesn't! Posts like this really help toward that.

I'd hope that other members and not just the team have a good read of what you posted and give their own views on your ideas - it would really help us to shape the site and forum to what the community want .

 

[Ash]

What a brilliant reply

I may not be a massively active member of this place as much as I used to but I can throw ideas out there till the cows come home. Many not quite appropriate but some to hopefully help this place get even better and grow in a way I think it could and hopefully others too.

In regards to the community projects forum perhaps the initial topics could have the title "Proposal : Creation of Youtube Team" and hopefully with enough interest take off.

Perhaps we could put out youtube videos with TST news items?

We could consider a quarterly podcast? Opening Day, Summer, Halloween, Closed Season. If we were really clever record them on park? In the hotels? Could be really funny something to do before the pre chaos evenings of the main TT meet ups?

Perhaps also upload these to youtube as content as I do think youtube is the best way, outside of having a full marketing plan, to get things noticed and has been underused in the past.

A place for the gamertag/friends list stuff as well needs a home, again this could be integrated in a community type forum but could take away from a place for projects.

The history side of things is brilliant, perhaps we could get in touch with the Rev who wrote the history of Alton Towers book try and get him involved? Or the chap from the hex videos (unless he was an actor I cant remember) or maybe the professor from staffs uni? Or if we really fancied it asking Alton if they fancied doing something to document all of their stuff digitally before history gets to it? Allow pictures of old plans/concepts and such which are just wasted otherwise? Maybe squiggs could work his magic there? Would be an amazing thing to be able to share with everyone.

Also why isn't their a resort forum? For the hotels, conference, activities, golf and waterpark etc?

Cheers for the feedback anyway

 

[Dave]

As for the history section i wouldn't be surprised if Squiggles knows more than the Rev about the Towers. His knowledge is scary we have a few contacts too so you never know who may help contribute.

Obviously we had access to the Archives last November and we never got around to utilising a lot of the stuff we collected during our trip. I think the history part of TowersStreet is potentially going to be something very special.

 

[Sazzle]

Re: Re: Ideas

Also why isn't their a resort forum? For the hotels, conference, activities, golf and waterpark etc?

For the time being we're just being a little careful not to have too many forums, else we risk having lots of sub sections with barely topics in them - not a good look .

I think most of the discussion regarding golf, conference and hotels etc would fit quite nicely into the current forums we have in a 'past, present/general and future' sense.

As a side note, Ash, you've come up with some excellent ideas - many of which are already in discussion! It's nice to see such constructive ideas, and we welcome such input to help the site and its community grow.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

 

[Rowe]

I think the history part of TowersStreet is potentially going to be something very special.

I hope it's so special that once it's published online we all end up keeling over at the special in happiness and eventually weeping with "It's so beautiful!".



But seriously I like what Ash has put down for ideas much like with Sam's topic.

 

[Adam James]

Just a quick thought from me - perhaps on the top bar (during the preliminary months of TowersStreet), the talk and chat could be explained a bit for new users interested in having a look around before signing up?

Obviously members will be used to these as they're terms the community are getting used to, however maybe talk (forum) and chat (live) could be used, adding the words in brackets?

This wouldn't be a permanent manoeuvre of course, just an idea whilst the site bar is spacious and the site is rather new and shiny. Maybe i'm being silly, but it was just an idea that popped into my head as the words Chat and Talk are similar and could be confused easily!

 

[queenofspeed]

as i have said previously, an under 16/18's area/topic. just an idea.

 

[James]

As discussed in the Features We'd Like to See on the New Forum topic, an under 16s area does not have that much of a demand and the rest of the forums currently fit perfectly well for all ages.

 

[Dave]

The other problem with an "under-16" area is how do you police it to only let that age group in, The Taverns age range is only advisory due the the potential content. I suppose we see the rest of the whole forum as universal for all ages.