I was wondering, as far as promotion is concerned, whether the creation of forum banners would be a good idea. By banner, I mean an image that one can use for their signature on various forums, that could then link to the site. I tend to post at a fair few (not all language-related ones), so perhaps someone with any artistic skill could conjure up something appealing? It could serve as a way of promoting a product or site without breaking any rules that might pertain to specific forums. Just an idea.
This sounds like a great idea! Are you allowed to post banners on other Forums? If you tell me what you had in mind, I’m sure we could get something made up. We’re always happy for some promotion help.
It doesn’t breach any rules on any other forums I visit, as a lot of people do it to attract attention to their sites (it’s how the idea actually occurred to me). It also works rather well, because when used as a signature, it becomes attached to the bottom of every single post they make, so even if someone decides not to investigate it, they’d still be familiar with the logo, etc. I don’t use MySpace or anything similar so I’m not too familiar with it, but that again could serve a similar purpose, by attracting people to it.
As to signature sizes, something like 500x60 pixels would be a good size. Adding the logo and applying some artistic skill to fill up the rest of the space in an appealing manner could work out well. Familiarity with the logo would probably be the most important thing at this stage.
Anyway, just throwing some rough ideas about!
I looked around and found some examples and they seem to have quite a range in size. We will get one made up. We could also try and include some statistics or information in the banner such as which languages you’re learning or your Known Words numbers in each. Would that be attractive or is it better to just have the logo and a tag line?
Cool idea; reminds me a little of Last.fm’s banners that chart and promote the music you’re listening to. Maybe more than one version would be a good idea, that way users could choose from a variety (say, dynamic or simple static image ones). The dynamic ones with statistics might also work well for this forum in the future, so we all know who’s studying what by a glance at any of their posts.
We definitely will be building member profiles which will be visible in the Forum. Whether by banner or not we haven’t yet decided. We will work on the banners for now and a few options is a good idea.