Can't believe how dead this site has become...

[EpicGamer12]

Don?t blame Nintendo for the lack of users, blame the staff and the users themselves (No offense to anyone). We, as a community should be working together to self promote the site. Even the higher ups should work or do something to put the forums back out there. Nintendo doesn't run this. Yes, a new animal crossing could bring more activity (as people are joining for pocket camp) but I think it's only enough to bring some of them in, not make them active or stay. I've always said that you need to do 2 things to successfully get people to your site. You need to attract them to your site (advertising, self promotion), and find a way to make them stay (Features, Some sort of hook). On the other side, advertising do cost money. This leads me to my point...

The forum is stale. We have the tbt fair, advent calendar, Halloween event. It feels like the same thing over and over again, imo. I might be wrong on the event thing, but it feels like it could improve. Do something every month, get people excited and hopeful about something. I know staff do a good job at work hard and are busy but there are tons of active users who will like to help and provide ideas at any chance. Let's spice up this relationship!

Finally, touch up the site. Don't do a full redesign but make it more modern. Ditch the gradient and use plain colors. Use an actual wood print pattern similar to acnl and make the navbar a lighter brown. The template and graphics are already fine. I'm not saying the website look sucks, I'm just saying it could be more animal crossing like. Css is an amazing language, ya know. I might make a stylish theme theme once I get a laptop.


This is my opinion anyways, some might disagree or agree.

P.S. Doing a self advertising contest like make a thread and reward them (They can like post who they invited) and the person they iinvited 5tbt. Y'all can compare IPs to spot duplicates, right? I remember some people who joined after being a guest for a very long time, maybe try to convince guest to join?


Also, Staff does an amazing job anyways. Can we just appreciate them?

Forget it, the forum is fine as it is and was before this message . People do join but the reason people are inactive is because people just don't have a reason to stay. They could be busy with life, ya know.

I was just gonna respond with "lol" but I don't want a warning for post quality. TBT doesn't need members right now. The amount of people who play ACNL still is very small. Why would anyone who doesn't play anymore (majority of people who replied to this thread don't play anymore) want more users? Once a new game comes out there will be new members to the community. TBT will get users when it needs them.

 

[cornimer]

Idk, it doesn't seem super inactive to me. I go on another forum that gets about five posts a day, this one still gets hundreds and has hundreds of active members, even if they're not all on at a given time. Also there's nothing going on right now so it's understandable there are not as many members as some other times. I'm sure we'll see more people around when it's time for an event (like the Easter egg hunt) that everyone knows and loves

Also, I personally love this site's design.

 

[PunchyTheCat]

Part of the reason there are so few members & guests on the last few days is that a fair amount of us are experiencing difficulties getting on here. For the past 2 weeks I've had Resetti screens, 505 & 503 errors. I've only been able t0 be on here for about 5 minutes before the site would crash for hours for me. Today seems a bit better as I've been able to stay on longer but the pages are loading slowly and some things I click don't seem to be working. The mods stated in a different thread that they're working on it. I'm sure they have been because things are better for me today.

You said it perfectly. The errors on the forums are more annoying and difficult to avoid. I'm actually kind of concerned that tbt is dying. I remember during the new leaf birthday thing there were many people online, and yet right now, there's barely any.
Edit: Oh my! There are 175 or something guests on right now, and only forty members. Maybe this is causing the lag?

 

[Antonio]

I was just gonna respond with "lol" but I don't want a warning for post quality. TBT doesn't need members right now. The amount of people who play ACNL still is very small. Why would anyone who doesn't play anymore (majority of people who replied to this thread don't play anymore) want more users? Once a new game comes out there will be new members to the community. TBT will get users when it needs them.

Why make a thread about how dead the server is if y'all don't want more members to be active. Who cares if they are new to acnl, this forum welcomes new member. There are tons of people who play acnl and with the hype of pocket camp, users join. I just feel like a lot of people aren't as aware of the forum. That's why we don't see as many people. The ideas I provided were just ideas that can hopefully improve attracting users and maintain them. Hopefully some of those ideas would also bring back old users and spice things up.

 

[Chewy.7204]

Lately the site has been very iffy... kicking users off and not working properly, glitching, etc. So that is probably one of the reasons for lower user counts

 

[KaydeeKrunk]

The site has been kind of deader than usual, but over the past few days a lot of people have been having issues, me included, with the site lagging and being really slow and weird, so I've been posting less than normal as well... =/ Like other's mentioned maybe it's because it's the new year and a lot of people have stuff going on, which isn't surprising. Next event I am sure will boost the activity and maybe when a new AC game comes out. =]

 

[Lemonsky]

I'm wondering what kind of mega forums people are used to if this one is considered almost dead. I think some of the inactivity does have something to do with all the lagging recently.

 

[Jake]

It's a common cycle. If you think now is dead, back in late 2011/early 2012 there were honestly like only 5 active members. I'd come home from school and you'd be lucky if even 5 threads had been posted in, and you'd be even luckier if a new thread had been created. There were so many times when I was the only member online.
Once they announced a new main series Animal Crossing game, the forum will peak interest again.

 

[xSuperMario64x]

Once they announced a new main series Animal Crossing game, the forum will peak interest again.

Yeah I figured that. It'd just be nice if they wouldn't leave us hangin like this for so long :/

 

[Locket]

Edit: Oh my! There are 175 or something guests on right now, and only forty members. Maybe this is causing the lag?

I promise it's not the guests. There's been times where TBT was attacked by bots which caused 1,000+ guests, which caused some lag but not as much as the past week or so.

 

[Nenya]

Part of the reason there are so few members & guests on the last few days is that a fair amount of us are experiencing difficulties getting on here. For the past 2 weeks I've had Resetti screens, 505 & 503 errors. I've only been able to be on here for about 5 minutes before the site would crash for hours for me. Today seems a bit better as I've been able to stay on longer but the pages are loading slowly and some things I click don't seem to be working. The mods stated in a different thread that they're working on it. I'm sure they have been because things are better for me today.

This...2 minutes from "reply to this thread" to this page (I timed it). Yesterday I had two giveaways going and had very little response to either. Who has 2 minutes to wait for a page to change? Some people want to get on, spend some time checking on threads, making replies or whatever, and get off. If it is too much of an effort, then they just stay off, which contributes to the "staleness."

I underlined what I especially agree with of Valzed's comment. Adding, yes, today I can at least navigate, but too slooowww still.

Suggestion to mods: take Jon_Snow's advice and pare down the forum if necessary to speed things up...are there archives for threads from 5 years ago? Would archives help? Idk, but someone does...

- - - Post Merge - - -

It's a common cycle. If you think now is dead, back in late 2011/early 2012 there were honestly like only 5 active members. I'd come home from school and you'd be lucky if even 5 threads had been posted in, and you'd be even luckier if a new thread had been created. There were so many times when I was the only member online.
Once they announced a new main series Animal Crossing game, the forum will peak interest again.

Oh, only took 5 seconds that time! Jake, I speak for myself, and possibly many others, when I ask for more communication from the moderators as to what is happening these past two weeks and what is being done to remedy the issues. I am not asking for any kind of technical explanations! I could use more encouragement than "we are aware and we are working on it." Yes, we are thankful for all the time and effort that you all put into this forum! Without you there would be no forum! We're sure you are working on it, but it is a challenge to go on faith alone. Just a tad more communication when things aren't going well, please? Ever hear the saying "Communication is the beginning of understanding."

Also, if you are communicating about this somewhere on the forum already, how about a link, please?

 

[AnimalCrossingPerson]

^

Yeah, they seem to keep quiet on a lot of things. Would be nice to at least know what the suspected issue here is - if it's the hosting company, a botched update or something more.

 

[AnimalCrossingPerson]

^

Yeah, they seem to keep quiet on a lot of things. Would be nice to at least know what the suspected issue here is - if it's the hosting company, a botched update or something more.

 

[xSuperMario64x]

Oh, only took 5 seconds that time! Jake, I speak for myself, and possibly many others, when I ask for more communication from the moderators as to what is happening these past two weeks and what is being done to remedy the issues. I am not asking for any kind of technical explanations! I could use more encouragement than "we are aware and we are working on it." Yes, we are thankful for all the time and effort that you all put into this forum! Without you there would be no forum! We're sure you are working on it, but it is a challenge to go on faith alone. Just a tad more communication when things aren't going well, please? Ever hear the saying "Communication is the beginning of understanding."

Also, if you are communicating about this somewhere on the forum already, how about a link, please?

100% totally agree. It'd be nice to hear some updates on this issue. It's becoming more prominent for me since yesterday and it's actually starting to get on my nerves.

Is it possible that there's an issue with vBulletin itself?

 

[Jacob]

The lack of fun and interesting members nowadays is definitely a contributor... There used to be these threads that would make me laugh so hard I couldn't get off my computer. I don't know if it's because I've stopped looking for them or if I just don't relate to recent threads but everything in Brewster's (which used to be THE spot for me) is like super edgy and boring.

Like I know the moderators are not fans of "troublemakers" but the people who used to spam the forums with like legitimate ironic comedy and not even care about infractions and warnings were the main reason this place was entertaining for me, by just watching. But a lot of those fun members left, so I feel like a big part of the site's laid-back-ness left too, idk

 

[Oblivia]

Nothing is being intentionally kept from the members. All communication about the site issue(s) have to take place between Jeremy and our server host (the site moderators aren't and can't be involved in the process), and until we're able to get a reply from someone who's actually able to help and/or knows what they're doing we're kinda stuck in limbo here. When we say "we're aware and are working on it", it's because that's all the information we currently have while we wait for our host to investigate further.

It's a common cycle. If you think now is dead, back in late 2011/early 2012 there were honestly like only 5 active members. I'd come home from school and you'd be lucky if even 5 threads had been posted in, and you'd be even luckier if a new thread had been created. There were so many times when I was the only member online.
Once they announced a new main series Animal Crossing game, the forum will peak interest again.

Yes, this! There are bound to be lulls in activity when a game's been out for ~5 years. There will undoubtedly be an influx of new members as soon as a main series game is released, and hopefully some of our loyal and long-term members will be here to welcome them when they show up.

 

[MopyDream44]

I actually assumed that the difficulties I've been experiencing lately were due to my crappy ISP, so I honestly haven't paid much attention to it. I honestly don't believe that the current issues are responsible for lower traffic, though if people are frustrated about that keep in mind that these things can take time to sort out.

I've been a part of a few AC forums since Wild World, and it is very normal for the activity to fluctuate with new releases. I feel like every new major release of the game brings a lot of activity from both new and old users that can last a couple of years before it starts to slow down again. While I love Happy Home Designer and Pocket Camp, I think it's safe to say that many AC fans have been waiting a very long time for the release of the next full console version of the game. This is the longest period of time we've had to wait for a full release of the game, so it makes perfect sense to me that the activity isn't as high at the moment. I suspect we will start to see an increase of activity as soon as we have an official announcement for the (hopefully inevitable) Switch version and an even bigger boost when the game is finally released.

 

[oath2order]

It's an off-time between games