Eve-Corporation

There are many reasons why you may wish to setup and run your own personal or corporation website including promoting your services or products and keeping your corp members informed.

The article below  was published in http://www.eve-mag.com/wordpress/archives/running-an-eve-corporation-website on 05. Nov, 2008 and written by Sam Guss. It highlights all the main areas you should think about when contemplating setting up a site.

One of the hardest things to accomplish is giving your corporation a stable presence on the web that is useful and used by not only visitors, but the very members of your organization.

It is my belief, that in most cases this is due to poor planning and implementation of the web site itself and communication within the game to encourage members to get their information from the web site versus in-game communication.

I highly recommend for starters, that the CEO of a corporation finds talent within the corporation first and then outside for recruiting into the corporation. I call these types of leaders “tech savvy” and while they may not have authority on a day to day business within the corporation, they do a great service for the corporation as a whole, they should be considered leadership and included in leadership meetings and planning.

Here is a list of items I believe should (or should not) be on an Eve corporation web site and why.

• Splash page: Splash pages are nice for the “wow” factor they can impart on visitors. Indeed, a splash page will most likely only be seen by visitors and the first time or two a regular member comes to the site. After that, they tend to simply bookmark other pages within the site and skip the splash page altogether.

Now there are a couple of different ways you can go with a splash page, but I would advise that unless there is a “wow” factor involved, it should be skipped altogether. One way is simply an incredible detailed image that reflects both the game and what your corporation stands for, or a short animation sequence of the same. This page needs to load very fast, so some technical issues may arise and should be accounted for. It should also include a quick link near the top of the page to “skip intro” – especially if your splash page takes longer than a couple of seconds to download.

• News Page: The news page should be the first page beyond the splash page or if you do not go with a splash page, should be the first page on your web site period. This page needs to be updated often! Even, if it is going to contain mundane information, I would recommend it being updated at the very minimum once a week and if it can be updated twice a week, even better.

Since one of the main types of visitors you will be getting on your web site is potential recruits, a solid splash screen will grab their attention and the News page will display to them that your corporation is fairly active. Both of these things help in attracting new members.

The News Page, should include a mixture of news about what is going on in the corporation – even if it is directing members to other sources of information within the site – like an upcoming Op on the calendar and news that is happening in the alliance and in the game overall.

• Forum: This is a big one and should be laid out in an organized and attractive. If, you can afford it (or have members willing to donate to the cause), consider doing a non-free forum host as this option can give you more and better options than that of the free ones.

I am a big believer in having several sections in a forum. In the beginning though, this can work against you as forums sometimes tend to be slow starters. However, an extensive forum section can increase the amount of information to be found down the road. This is important to members who may not be available in game but can still be in communication out of game.

• A Calendar of Events: I can not stress enough to have one of these and put out events! A small corporation can get by with an event or two a week, but medium and larger corporations should be striving for several events a week.

You don’t have to use the Calendar of Events for just planning ops. You can and should include member’s birthdays, anniversaries, outside gaming events for the corporation, like a monthly lunch out, etc.

• Roster: A roster is nice to use so that everyone can see who the corporation is made up of and in general what their specialty might be. Which means include this information in the roster as well.

This serves a couple of purposes. For starters, officers can quickly find out who is in the corporation and if they are trying to find specific needs for a planned Op, they can find out whom to approach. In a large universe such as Eve, some of your members may become a little more known than others – this is a place where those so inclined, may decide that since they know someone by reputation may decide this is a corporation for them.

• Rules, bylaws, charter and Contact Info: This one should be self-evident, but I am attempting to be thorough here.

It is very important that this information is included on the web page because this is vital information potential members and current members need to be aware of.

The rest is purely cosmetic but should be included as well:

• Themed graphics to your corporation
• Your corporation logo
• Corporation banners

Optional:

• Photo album of members
• Gallery for screenshots
• Guide and article section for members to read and research on their own
• A link page to good resources within the Eve, again for the betterment of your members

I hope this guide has helped out a little, whether you are planning your new corporations web site or updating or upgrading your current one.