IconEra's First Month

Darth Vader

Master of the Dark Side
18 Jun 2022
145
392
Hello all!

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Today, IconEra celebrates its first month of existence, and I believe I speak for all the staff in saying that we couldn’t be happier with the current state of affairs! This thread has been created so that we can share some updates regarding the forum and our future roadmap, so that you know what we're working on to make your experience more enjoyable. As always, please do let us know of any suggestions you may have; while we may not be able to implement them all, we’ve received some great feedback that has been very helpful in evolving the forum experience!

CHANGELOG
  • Changes to the forum template so that your user account pages show in your profile tooltip when someone clicks it (screenshot below);
  • Fixed an issue where the thread prefix would show in the browser tab when opening a thread, even though it should have been hidden;
  • New Founder member section (https://icon-era.com/members/?key=founders) .
hm6C77C.png


ROADMAP

We have ideas we want to implement in our forum, some based on your suggestions, some based on our original ideas for it. Please be aware that we’ll only share timelines where a set timeline has been defined.
  • Trophies - We will be adding trophies to our forum by Q4. These are nothing but small rewards that get added to your profile as you complete forum milestones, and are merely symbolic in nature. They haven’t been added before as we didn’t want to keep the “default” ones;
  • User title ladder - There’s a few title ladders already, starting at “newbie” and ending at “veteran”, however we’ll be looking at re-factoring these, either by adding more steps to the ladder, or by changing their names. This is low on our priority scale;
  • White template - there was a request to include a white template choice for our forum. We agree we should provide more choice, and thus are working to have this implemented at some point before the end of the year. We have also tested the implementation of a pure black template, but this has not really worked with our current design, so we've placed it in the backburner for now.
PAID MEMBERSHIP

We wanted to add this as its own category even though technically it’s part of our roadmap. As you can tell from our Post-launch updates and what’s to come thread a while back, our roadmap includes paid memberships. Running a Forum incurs costs with servers, add-ons, licenses, etc, and so far our founders and admins have helped to cover all the costs for running the Forum. Nevertheless, we need to ensure that our forum keeps on growing, that we can keep on introducing more features (where needed) and that we can keep our lights on.

That said, we plan on introducing paid memberships either in Q4 2022 or Q1 2023, depending on how planning goes between now and then. Before you ask, here’s our commitment:
  • 20% of any profit, if profit occurs, will be donated to charity, and we’ll be posting information regarding that publicly for all to see;
  • Any additional profits, again if such profits occur, will be reinvested in the forum - there’s plenty to be done, from design work to the inclusion of new features, and we want to ensure we are providing you with the best possible experience;
  • In the future, should we grow to such a level, we want to be able to remunerate our moderators for their work.
So, what will be monetized? Well, we are not planning on including ads in the forum for the time being. We realize we’re a small forum, and as such any ad revenue would be residual and only cause additional work for us and nuisance for you, with little to no return. There are plans to introduce non-intrusive ads as we grow, but rest assured these are not being included yet. As for actual perks, there will be plenty but we’re not ready to share the list yet.

THANK YOU

Finally, I’d like to leave some words of appreciation to all of those that have joined recently. We’re currently at 240 user accounts and have had over 150 thousand page views since the 22nd of June, the moment we’ve started measuring that metrics. This is immense, and only possible because you have been engaged, commenting, creating new threads, etc. I'd also like to personally thank our founders, who have allowed this forum to become a reality, and our moderators, that have been tireless in keeping discussions flowing as much as possible. There have been mistakes, there will be many more, but we're all learning as we move forward!

FINAL NOTE

We do want to continue growing, and we also need your help for this
- If you like what you read, why not share it in your social media, or invite a few friends that may enjoy discussing games on forums? It’s an easy way to ensure we can have sustained, robust growth, and that we can continue working towards our goal of becoming a reference for gaming forums where the best gaming discussion occurs.
 

Sircaw

Pro Flounder
Moderating
20 Jun 2022
5,379
9,409
To all the people supporting the forums, you guys are awesome.
Yes, even you cat people sigh.

Toy Story To Infinity And Beyond GIF
 
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