Why WitchesChat went back to the old site style

[Malatesa]

Why the site reverted back to the simple style

I want to talk about why I got rid of the forums and reverted the site back to the days of simplicity. I was able to watch the number of page hits the site got every hour, day, week, and month. To be sure, the site collected from 2 to 10 new registrations per day. But the page "hits" actually showed that of the few hundred people registered, only a small handful came back. And looking at which pages did get used--which features, it showed that the forums were only being used a few times a week, if that. It also showed that the chat room page was being accessed less and less. You might wonder why it is that a site with many more options could be less useful to people than a simple chat-only site. The answer is that although all of the gadgetry of the more complex and feature-filled site was attractive to look at, it distracted visitors from doing what they came there in the first place to do, which was to chat. Once they got there, they got busy filling out their profile and uploading images and browsing the forums, The chat aspect of the site was lost in the activity. Now, to be sure, the forums and galleries were important to people, and I do not mean to minimize their value at all. And forgive me for not completely being able to define how my intuition works, because although it has been a work-in-progress for 45 years, I still do not understand it myself, but I saw clearly that the right thing to do was to revert back to the old-style site where simplicity was the rule. For the most part, nobody missed all those flashy toys, but a few people did. And I want to apologise to some of you for removing a resource that was important to you. Velim HP, Widders, and several other did use the galleries and forums extensively, and they invested countless hours contributing content. I weighed that into my decision to revert back, and I knew it would always be something I felt bad about. In life, you really need to try to finish what you've started, unless it's a car that's turned out to have some engine troubles that seem to cost you more and more each month. In that case, you need to have the guts to get rid of the car. yes, you will lose some of your investment, but in the end, you might save more than you'll lose. That's what I decided to do with the site reversion. So, please forgive me, those of you that miss some of the functions on that bigger site, and know that I did not do it without first weighing the impact it might have on people.

Things have a funny way of fixing themselves

A few days after the site was down, MC told me he was preparing a replacement forum and gallery. I'm really happy about this, and now that I'm not tied up every day working on a big complex site, I will have time to contribute content here and in chat. I'm posting this just prior to his site opening to the public. It is my hope that everyone use his site to the fullest, both the forums and the gallery. I know I'll be using it a lot for WitchesChat, and perhaps other sites or groups will too. I especially hope that the major hitters to the old gallery will repost their content here. I think I will probably not sleep as well until that happens.