HTS Needs to Stop Sucking

[fashizzlepop]

I don't like the "corporate" feel, but I still like the "we know our shit" style. The Knowledge Base idea is great. I'm sure that the RSS feeds will be updated in the re-code.

Also, has there been any headway on getting Kage (or someone else) to post updates on the main page more often?

[sanddbox]

Thanks for the input. Here goes:

Early on in the dev process I was partially involved, I just have so much going on I rarely get much time to HTS lately. I'd be willing to offer my services in whatever capacity I can. My PHP is Jedi and if you want to increase traffic, user participation and community that's kind of my specialty - being a marketing developer... its actually my job.

We do have "promoter" under one of the staff position openings. We really could use one.

1. A searchable HTS Wiki or Knowledge Base. Make it big, make it bold.. LOOK FOR ANSWERS HERE FIRST. This way you can try and reduce the number of repeated forum questions, although you'll never end stupidity.

Sounds like a good idea. We do have a much larger, indepth, official FAQ page planned for HTSv5, but expanding it to a wiki may be a good idea.

2. I think the site could monetize better. Alexa rank of #48,358 at time of this posting. I would kill to run a site with that ranking and the sole ad space within the forum is a mini-banner.

You'd be surprised how much money we really make off of the front page ads/HTS store. Was I supposed to say that? Oh well.

3. Thetan was/is awesome but I think the re-code had lofty expectations and parameters. Why re-invent the wheel when there are powerful CMS/Community options available? Even if you were to pay for something like VBulletin or XenForo. Drupal 7 was just released as well.

I believe we are not custom coding the forums as these ones are, although the main site will be custom coded. (Devs: Correct me if I'm wrong).

4. Perception Vs. Reality of who HTS is. I think it's time to 'class' it up a bit. HTS still has a bit of a 90's wild west hacker look and feel to it, and some of our methods and examples are quite outdated too. We should try to present a "We are sophisticated, training/teaching oriented, security minded" and not a bunch of skiddies look. Bascially I'm speaking to the color schemes and layout, and the logo. HTS should present itself as a more mature, corporate style community.

Another great idea, and coincidentally once we've been discussing. HTS will always keep its early themes, but it's definitely going to class up. Especially with the graphics.

5. As far as I can tell, HTS is still one of the premier communities for hackers (Internet Security Specialists) that exists. In my world of marketing, we find our competitors, steal their good ideas and exploit their weaknesses. We should do the same. I saw we take a good look at http://www.defcon.org/ at use them as a template for improvement... minus the cheesy cartoon characters oh and their forums suck too.. but they have the right idea for social media tie-ins.

While their forums suck, their forum threads themselves are pretty excellent, and we've loosely set that as the kind of atmosphere to strive for.

6. Pull some RSS Feeds. Gizmodo or CNET, something like that.. pull some tech related news feeds from 3rd party sources to stream on the site.

We do have RSS feeds, but they're kind of thrown to the site and they're not managed very well. There's definitely room for improvement.

---

Thanks for your suggestions, and keep them coming. Also, have my children.

[insomaniacal]

Personally, I think lots of security related and "hacker" sites try way to hard to look l33t. A cleaner, leaner, and smarter theme doesn't mean boring either, personally, I'm a fan of GoNullYourself when it comes to style. It's sleek and smart, but easy to read and browse. Obviously copying their design wouldn't apply well, but it's that kind of professional but not lame look we need to adopt.

A wiki wouldn't be bad, I think Bren2010 set up a quick one for organizational use of #modtalk brainstorms, but coincidentally, I'm not sure if that's up and running.

[Goatboy]

For the Wiki, I had suggested this in the form of an Archive of all the good threads. The reason I don't like having it be a full-on Wiki is because there are already so many of those out there for this topic, that we'd do better to add to those and reference them.

Re professional look: Meh. I like the "underground" look, no matter how outdated it may look. The only other scheme I could see myself liking would be a hyper-futuristic look, but that would be too heavy on the graphics/animation I think.

Re advertising: I think sandy is right here. While we could make more money, I would hate to see HTS become (more) bloated with ads and offers.

[tremor77]

@sanddbox: I hate making suggestions for HTS without putting my money where my mouth is.. I think I'll go ahead and apply on that promoter position.

[fashizzlepop]

@sanddbox: I hate making suggestions for HTS without putting my money where my mouth is.. I think I'll go ahead and apply on that promoter position.

Why bother? There's nothing happening right now. Hopefully soon, we will have a change in authority structure and shit will begin to *click*

[sanddbox]

@sanddbox: I hate making suggestions for HTS without putting my money where my mouth is.. I think I'll go ahead and apply on that promoter position.

Why bother? There's nothing happening right now. Hopefully soon, we will have a change in authority structure and shit will begin to *click*

Good job derailing your own thread. Still mad about Korvin?

[fashizzlepop]

Good job derailing your own thread.

Derailing? Hardly. More like shedding light on the subject. In order for HTS to improve, HTS needs to be willing to improve and accept change. Obviously this isn't happening. There's no point in advertising a broken site.

Still mad about Korvin?

LOLWUT
Korvin? What did he do? Why would I be mad? I don't understand...

[sh3llz]

About Issue number 7

Forum policies should change. New member's posts should be more scrutinized. Many forums moderate the first few posts of new members. Rules are usually applied such as "Google first," "search for previous threads first," etc...

And Goat's reply:

I am a HUGE advocate of this. The biggest challenge is how much is built into phpBB. We've done what we can to regulate it, but what we need is a custom-built forum. And with the status of our devs... Yea...

I have a few phpbb forums, and I know the latest version of phpbb has support for this. By default, the first few posts made by a user are put in a queue to be approved by a moderator. This feature can be applied to only certain sections of the forum or the whole forum. This is dealt with by having new users placed in the "newly registered" user group which forces their posting and other rights to be regulated. Is this what you meant fashizzlepop or am I misunderstanding?

[fashizzlepop]

Thats exactly what I meant and I know Its possible in phpBB.