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StevieLaner7777 · Moderator

I thought I'd mention the "Talon Owners Group" forum has a map, Just so you may see how they went about doing this. They have used a link to the page via the "General" topic.

Stevie Thumb Up!

AirGunEric · Site Admin

I haven't looked around the TOG for awhile (I don't own a Talon!). So I just created our own page for it:

http://www.airgunhome.com/pages/map.html

There is also a "Sticky" note in General Airgun Questions for people to find it.

AirGunEric · Site Admin

OK, I got ambitious- people can now enter their "location" in their profiles which will be displayed to everyone.

If someone leaves "location" blank- the "Location" tag on their posts will not appear. If they fill in something- the tag will appear with the info.

I guess "a few days" on this stuff was overstating it a bit, huh? Very Happy

StevieLaner7777 · Moderator

Hi AirGunEric

Looks like not too many people are filling in their location on the frapr map, Yet!!

We only have four people adding what I believe to be their real location so far (Excluding you AirGunEric, As I know you don't live in Bolivia, LOL).
Things seem to be moving very slowly!!!.

Stevie Thumb Up!

AirGunEric · Site Admin

Just so everyone knows- periodically I change my location in a sort of "Where's Waldo" kind of game. So far I've been in Borneo, Juneau (AK) and Bolivia. Where might I be found next? Razz

Anyways- as to the issue- here's our problem: We have nearly 150 members but about half of them have never posted anything and apparently the idea of adding names to the map hasn't encouraged people any further.

Now to 'add insult to injury' as it were; the site/forum here went from a 4 millionth position in webranking to below 2 millionth in two months. We are indexed by every search engine around (and on many airgun-related search terms come right at the top of the list), we have a bandwidth level and traffic that is noticeable and if we continue at this growth rate for people viewing things, we will need to upgrade the hosting service within the next 7-8 months to handle the traffic. My point is that we are starting to beat out a number of the more "established" airgun forums on people viewing this forum daily- and this is without the search engines putting the content in the hidden forums up for people to reference/search on- yet very few people actually sign up. I haven't figured out what people are looking at/for precisely- but apparently they are finding enough of what they seek without actually registering- or finding very little of what they seek and move on. This is neither here nor there- but it would be nice to figure out what we can do to get people to "open up" and let us know who/what/where they are and what their interest is in respect to airguns. "The more the merrier" and that sort of idea is what makes a forum.

After considering the things that have been mentioned/talked about- like a chat function, the raffle (which has thus far not drawn in tons of people), the "deals" pricelist, the picture map, re-integrating the 'location' option in peoples profiles, I'm not sure what can be done to get more people to join the party. Perhaps I will have to move ahead and make a couple of dedicated web pages with things like links and common resources (i.e. the shooting guide and the minisniping guide) which might give more people a reason to move into the forum and ask questions- perhaps these resources are too "hidden" for the average, super busy person to find easily(?)

There are some things that can be done to assist people more effectively in the future such as having forums specific to a given airgun- i.e. like a Talon/Condor specific discussion area, one for the Crosman 1077, one for Umarex's etc. etc. but we just haven't got the membership or a full set of resources for this quite yet (although, technically-speaking, I don't know that there are any more worthwhile resources to be found on the 1077, as an example). This may happen if we grow large enough and have a good volume of people with an interest in a specific gun/line of guns.

Anyways, my final note is that we have been teetering on the edge for about a month-and-a-half now- we have the traffic and flow that we could jump into "significance" in the world of airgun forums- if we could just figure out a way to get a good "push" forward to get over the 'hump'.

StevieLaner7777 · Moderator

Hi AirGunEric

OK.. I'm going to have to write this out in sequential sections to maintain coherency.

AirGunEric Wrote:

AirGunEric · Site Admin

StevieLaner7777 · Moderator

Damn it!!

Australia was going to be my second choice!
But I had to choose Kasachstan because I'd recently watched a documentary program where these two British guys travel 20.000 miles from London to New York on their motorbikes (BMW's), I think it was called "Long Way Round", And that country name kind of stuck in my head.

Stevie Thumb Up!

AirGunEric · Site Admin

Well- I took the "Buy, Sell, Trade" topics off the Registered Users Only format- figured people selling and trying to find items could use all the exposure they can get...