Building a Community

[borkusgod]

Now that you mention the search engine, I can see where you're going with that. Perhaps just add another panel above your statistics panel and and write a brief message of what the intent of the website is. I do believe that you could be on to something. A couple of things to bare in mind though. The average internet surfer has the attention span of a fruit fly, if that. The fact that you have people downloading your content does tell you something, however. Most people that create similar sites with get the views with no interaction. You have content on there that people are interested in, and that's a start. I do agree with you that it's very difficult to get users to stay, however. Through the years, I have seen sites that had an avid user base that for whatever reason decided to close and those users decided to create their own and it just didn't pan out. These were people that knew each other well from being on the site for a few years. To make a site that becomes popular and stays that way is a bit like playing the lottery. There is no doubt that hard work and forethought are critical, but I have seen people use that to the full extent and still not be able to keep a user base. So with that, don't give up. Put all you have into this one, but if it doesn't pan out, give it a go on another and learn from this one. But to come back to what I was originally saying, it's important to have the purpose of the site and some navigation tips for the browser that lands on your page. It's one thing to email your friends and tell them to check it out or to post here where we have your thread to get an idea of what we are looking for and can ask you questions if need be. But, like you said you are depending largely on search engine hits and these people come and if they don't like what they see or can't figure it out without scrolling down the page, they bounce. Hope that made sense.