The Future of NF

As of today we at NF have our own fighting game, Sparring. That comes complete with an upgrade and economy subsystem, Training & The Shop respectively. There is also a Mission feature that works to compliment those systems by awarding further EXP. For the future, D & Eri are working on bringing in original music into the academy, and a revival of the community podcast, just two more features of the many yet to come. This is where we presently stand.

That being said none of the features I mentioned above matter if there is no community to engage with. I want to look toward attracting new members and I want to get your input as to how best to do that, and how to better the website in the process.

When I look at other Naruto forums with hundreds of registered users, I find its rare for them to have unique user created content like us. What we have are original ideas that I feel warrant more traffic than what we currently have. We should have more. That's why I'm looking to expand and improve upon our little site as best we can. Here are just the immediate things we can look at when it comes to improvement. Lend me your thoughts.

1. Message: Perhaps the most important choice we face is to remain primarily a naruto site or expand into a more general direction. What would you prefer? And why? The Academy is based solely on the Naruto series, so if we choose the latter we'd need to navigate around having one section revolve around one specific anime series somehow.

2. Aesthetics: What do you want the website to look like? It's been said the site looks too gloomy, so how do we get it looking more appealing? What colors do we use? Do we have a moving banner at the top(or a static) showcasing different characters? If so which characters? What about the icons next to forums? Should some of them be changed? What do you want to see when you click open NF?

3. Domain name: I'm not 100% sure but I think we can change the name of the site. Going from the-nf-redux.motionforum.com to somethingelse.motionsforum.com. The motionforum part cost money to change though. The name is important because it impacts how people perceive us. I've had friends refuse to join for it being simply a naruto site. But going too inclusive also has a risk of running a jack of all trades master of none. There should be a balance. It's important to note whatever we decide, "NF" will still be a part of the faction in some way, whether it's the name of the site or simply a separate section of the forum, we can't forget our roots.

4. Recruiting: Finally what's a good way to get to recruiting? I advise not attempting until we have all our bases covered, but once we do then what? What are some effective ways of accomplishing this?

Lastly, any other suggestion you may have I'm open to hearing. All for the betterment of NF.

partnering may cause conflict in terms of leadership. Alot of the Academy games require the admin power..can we guarantee that. Although if we absorbed smaller naruto factions then i think were going somewhere.

I don't think there's anything smaller than us Eri.

1. Being mostly general won't really make those things out of place, we could still have Naruto anime and manga threads in addition to threads based on other mangas, animes, shows, and movies.

2. I prefer dark layouts, but if we want broader appeal we have to look like facebook/youtube/twitter/everything else that's popular. white and one other color. I think white and orange would look cool, or white and purple. we could just go white and blue and look like every other site, if that's what appeals then whatever.

3. NinjaFaction? NfinityFaction? Both are available motionforum urls, I think we can have something smaller than motionforum too. There's other motionforum sites with shorter urls ex: http://infinityforums.8forum.net/

4. Partnering with other sites and communities, the best place to start is with the factions that left GT and branched off. Also put the url for the site in our profiles everywhere, twitter, steam, facebook, youtube. Signatures on other websites we visit could be used to advertise and link to this site, as long as we aren't spamming it's fine.

I suppose as it is we are pretty general in terms of threads, however how strongly do we advertise this? Should the front page be exclusively anime character(s)? How do we portray the site to more be more than just anime if so?

So far I've only got white and an additional color as the theme. Nobody else has any preference on that?

Hmm as for names besides narutofaction lone has suggested infinity forum

And those are some great ideas as far as recruitment goes

I would like to see more color in the forums and and more discussion about different Tv Shows/Anime/Manga

So you vote in favor of changing the direction past just naruto, the trick is how to advertise this as such

Any idea what kind of color scheme?

Well... i believe the priority should be getting more people to participate in the forums. I suggest dusting off that contact list from the old days of MSN convos and send them formal invitations to the faction again.

Another source of recruitment could be from already established manga sites like MangaHelpers, Leafnija or NarutoFan. Of course it would probably go against those website's rules creating a thread and spamming but probably through private messaging it could be done...

Hmm I can try getting jak codman shadow and maybe killerbee back. Everyone else disappeared.

Yes I agree those sites would also yield a good pool of potential members. I'm not sure if they'll stay for just series discussion when they can get a lot more on those native sites though

What is your opinion on the name and look of the site jec?

hmm maybe we should change the url to youpotn.com that way when people make a typo they'll be redirected here.

As for the color scheme, I dunno, I actually like this one. My only problem is that font size is a bit small, but I guess a more vivid color scheme is fine. Maybe make them rotational on the Five Ninja Village's colors or something.

Hmm....that's a thought. Lone is our sole remaining gfx editor I'm pretty sure, so it would be tough to commission only him to alter the look of the site and a bunch of recruiting sigs. Maybe we can get kcd back to help with that too.

Lone do you think you can come up with a variety of looks for the site? Getting what few details are posted here for reference. We can then vote upon which we decide on.

So for the easier part...some thoughts we have?

Black(different shade?) and orange
White and...?
Green and blue?

Silver and?...

Then continuing on aesthetics...the picture at the top of the website. It should be a bannertop like it was on GT. But maybe one that transitions from picture to picture, getting a variety of series in there

Iri I've seen you around. I'd also like your opinion.

Lone would you be down for handling a sample of different color schemes? Maybe getting kcd for making some official nf signs like our avatars?

Sure I could give it a shot.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Try your hand at a variety of different styles, make it tough to choose one.

Well I need to be an admin before I can mess around with that.

You just finished your mission, so done.

I honestly think there does need to be a color change to the layout. I think the darker layout is kinda a turn off to some people.

As for the layout, I think instead of just a symbol, it needs to show off whatever relates to the name of the site when/if it's changed, but also include something naruto related as, that's offered here in many ways.

Partnering I don't think would be best unless you just wanna be that trusting without many others than jut the usual users here. However, for advertising, it could be used through things like facebook, youtube, or links in pictures in sigs on other sites, although it'd be kinda harder than just that. It's more of like a chance it thing. If it works it works, if not well some other way would probably be seen better.

Orange banner and light Grey page.

Although I do second jecs five village color scheme as well.

For recruiting we gonna have to equlivant exchange for them to join us we gotta be active members for them till a merge of some sort can be established. I will be willing to do this.




...only if guys watch op lol

I agree. Any thoughts as to what color scheme you'd prefer chakra?

orange and white-grey would fit well I'd think for a banner...

The 5 village color don't sound too bad either. From thought it seems like it would fit well

so i read the entire thread and i was hoping tossing in my opinions and ideas is ok. so here goes:

message: so im not entirely the biggest naruto fan and i also havent read a whole lot of it BUT the whole concept that you gys have going on here is really unique and cool. the bigger forums like ign and gt and even the mangafox forums dont have the whole ninja academy type of thing going on in their forums, as far as i can see. so keep this naruto based forum going, i think. its very unique and fun.

aesthetics: the site is a little gloomy but i dont think thats the issue. i read how you guys want to do orange and white/grey which would be cool. i think the main thing is that the site is too dull. theres not a whole lot going on. maybe where the threads are you can put little icons like for the manga thread put like narutos head for an icon or for gaming you can put the ac symbol or whatever. something to spice it up and add colour. the moving banner would be cool but its not really necesary. im kind of in the middle of liking and not liking the banner. if you change it, keep it naruto. yes, a naruto based forum is hurting recruitment, but ill get to that soon. major things isnt really an issue to my eyes, its just the minor details like the icon thing for example. adding little things here and there would look nice. im not a pro at this stuff, im just adding opinions like i said.

domain name: so as i listed before in the message section, a naruto theme faction is good. even just saying narutofaction is good too. im not sure about everyone else but whenever eri and myself talk about the site we always refer it to as nf which stands for naruto faction i would assume. either way, when picking the name, its gotta be simple but it has to resemble what we know the site as. appeal is important but its also YOUR site so you want to show what your site means. it has to be catchy and meaningful.

recruitment: now i will start off by saying that i know im not around a lot or im here and then disappear often but off the site, me and eri talk a lot about whats mentioned around here. so i can say that it is somewhat established that once youre in, we have much to talk about on and off the site. before i joined i was really impressed with how close you all got with each other by just sharing opinions and discussing things through the forum. you even have your own podcast where you feature some members on the forum. so when recruiting, i think it should be mentioned that yes we are indeed a naruto themed faction and in this faction we do this this and this. list the features, the unique things about the site. the most important thing though is mention the friendships. as darkgeneral mentioned, some of you have been on forums for years building a friendship. thats definitely one thing that made me join when eri asked me. i saw how close you all are and that im very impressed with. now the hard part would be recruiting. a good place to start would be facebook and/or twitter. i understand we have a group on facebook but also make a page for the public to see. the group can be the sites thing but make a page for people to see. it may bring attention to people and then next thing you know they may check out the site. twitter would be great too because once you hash tag a tweet, everyone sees it so it would be great to put a link saying something like, for example, "See what NF thinks about the new OP chapter! (link) #Manga #NF".

these are all things that i think could help, but of course in the end, everything is up to you guys. losing members i dont think is an issue. just gaining more is.

another thing i forgot to mention was the whole thread topics. im not sure if this is the case but i think the gaming and tv thread isnt in use as much anymore because there isant any new users. its basically the same people always on and you all know what games you play and such. and when you do bring up games and everything you always stick it in the general section.