What I've Learned

After over two years, I've learned a lot about what it's like to run a large fan website.  Care to know what it's like?

Let me start with a little history. I began this whole affair a little over two years ago. My main goal was to learn some HTML and, in the process, run a site about what I really enjoyed - talking tactics, strategy, and formulas/discoveries about Diablo. The process of learning HTML brought me to many different site designs (seven total), each one getting better in appearance and code. I can now code HTML in my sleep. So, that goal was accomplished. :)

We're talking SMALL.  With a tiny site, I was simply tracking good posts on Blizzard's Diablo Strategy Forum, or DSF.  The idea was that people who didn't have the time to read the forum every day could come to my site to follow the good posts and good threads.  That's it.  I also wanted to host some strategy articles that were written there so that they wouldn't be lost forever (the DSF does not archive posts).  Finally, I'd provide links to all the other small sites on the Net that are what I call the "rare gems," the little sites that have an excess of quality and not quantity.  Too often these sites would be ignored or lost in the sea of really, really bad sites out there with either bad information about the game or cheats.

I never imagined how big this site would get.  I never planned on it or even wanted it.  To me it was just a side hobby, something to do.  At first, even, I was just treating it as a study in web design and HTML.  The release of Diablo II, and more specifically, its beta test, changed all of this...

See, this site was started over 2 years after the release of Diablo 1.  By then, the only people around were the die-hard players and the new players.  So, on forums like the DSF, you had a stark contrast between those who had been around for years and those who were brand new to the game.  Thus, traffic to this site was small and die-hard, just the way I wanted it.  I started a forum on this site a few months after it began so that DSF regulars and vets had an "alternate" place to chat about Diablo and everything else.  Boy, was I naive.

Thus, the LL became known as the "place the DSF regs hung out."  It really helped that these were all of the most knowledgeable and die-hard players of the game.  That built the tradition of the LL as the source for expert study of game mechanics and discoveries.  So, as Diablo II approached, things were set up for the die-hard D1 crowd to dig into the game's sequel.  Of course, not every D1 fan liked D2 as much, some liked it as much as the original, and some liked it even more.  Thus, there was some shuffling of the crowd at first, which was natural.  The site remained obscure, however, due to my efforts not to have it get placed on any search engines and to keep discovery of it via word-of-mouth only.

Once D2 came out, things changed forever.  Word spread of this site due to its content - the posting of game discoveries, the fact that Blizzard employees were posting here, and the gameplay news that for some reason, other sites ignored.  Discoveries such as ARx4 by Jarulf made top headlines here and nowhere else.  Why?  Beats me.  But having news of gameplay issues brought in loads of people who shared an interest in discovering how this game works.  The fact that practically every facet of the game either lies to the player or doesn't tell the player the full truth of what's going on makes a site like this one necessary.

Email started picking up.  This is the thing that takes the most time when you run a popular site.  It's not the coding, not the news collating, it's the email.  It took one full year to reach 100,000 hits, and then I disabled the hit counter on the site because it was just exploding (at this site's height, it would get that many hits in less than three days).  As time went on, this site slowly became more than a hobby for me.  It became a significant part of my life.  It has to for you as well, if you ever want to run a site as large or as popular as this one got.  The main thing that a site takes is time.  The commitment to time is one that you must face to be a webmaster.  Are you willing to put in 14 hours a week?  That's what I was doing.

When you combine the emails with forum moderation, you're really into it.  In fact, in retrospect, I'd recommend that as your site gets really popular, you find others to moderate the forums for you (be wary of those who seek you out and ask to be moderators, for often they just want power over other posters).  This will allow you more time to maintain your site.  Forum moderation is VERY taxing.

Here are some things you can expect if you run a large website (especially if you do so alone, as I have):

1. People will expect you to be an expert on everything.  If you run a fan site of a game, you will be expected to know every last detail about how everything works.  It's a little unfair, yes, but don't let it go to your head, either, because you CAN'T be an expert on everything.  Nobody can.  I found myself constantly diverting questions to known experts on specific characters, game mechanics, etc.  When you've never played an Assassin seriously and you get 5 emails a day from people asking how to play her, it can be a problem.
   
   
2. People will hate you.  There is absolutely nothing you can do about it.  No matter how nice you are or how accommodating you might be of people's problems and concerns, you will make enemies.  The number of enemies you have will be directly proportional to the popularity of your site.  People you ban from your forums, players you attack via your news or site (in my case, cheaters, maphack users, PKs), and people who - get this - don't like the people you promote - will become your foes.  Some (most) are quiet and just leave you alone; others will bash you or your site on their sites, and then there are the rare few who are immature enough to decide simply to be as obnoxious as possible in revenge.  You will have to deal with it.  Expect DOS attacks, spam of your forums, hack attempts, and harassment online.
   
   
3. As your site becomes more and more popular, so too will your forums.  You have two choices: (1) Take a laissez-faire approach to forum moderation and let it run amok as it will, or (2) Be a tyrannical "fascist" who bans those who disrupt the flow of the forum.  If choice one sounds better to you, don't bother running a site.  Your forum will become more useless as it becomes more popular, and it will eventually descend into total spam and drivel.  If you don't like making enemies by banning those who spam, post useless crud, or only seek to start fights, your forums will suck, and hence your site.  Because, I can assure you, a site IS its forums - and yet, if you don't run a good site, you won't attract the good posters.  The two feed off of each other.  I didn't have to delete a post on my forum for almost its entire first year.  This summer, however, the moderators and I were nuking posts to the tune of 10+ per day in order to keep things clean.
   
   
4. At first, as your site is small (and all sites start small and grow exponentially), you will develop a "core" group of readers.  Treasure them.  They are the ones who know your site the best, where it started, how it began, and can offer you the best advice as to where it should go.  When your site is massively popular, it is this core group that you will turn to because they won't think of you as a grand poomba, but instead know you for who you really are.  Beware of those who arrive later, after your site is popular, and want to be your best friend - many times they only do so because they want to say that "I am a good friend of so-and-so, webmaster of such-and-such.  I'm important!"  Yes, you'll have to shield yourself somewhat.
   
   
5. At first, the ability to enter a chatroom or a game on Battle.Net and have people gasp "Oh my God!  It's you!" is kinda fun.  It gets old FAST.  This is related to point #4 - you will, over time, seek out those who knew you either before you ran the site or who have been there since the beginning, for they're the ones you can trust.  I've joined games where people were dying to give me items simply because of who I was, and practically took offense when I didn't want them (I don't twink).  This gets to be very annoying - anonymity can be a very wonderful thing sometimes.
   
   
6. Related to point 5 is how when your site is small, you have more freedom to say and do things you want.  This changes as well.  As the site becomes more popular, so do you, and so does anything you say.  Don't be surprised when things you start posting on forums or in B.net chat starts to get quoted around.  Be careful what you say to people, because people will enjoy sharing things you tell them to others.  This is again all about trust, because people may try to be your friend just to hear secrets or inside information from you.  It sucks, yes.
   
   
7. Things aren't ALL bad.  I'm dwelling on the negative a lot.  If you run a GOOD site (easier said than done), there are rewards.  The random "thanks for the good job" from a reader who has never posted but enjoys what you do.  A Blizzard employee telling you how everyone at the office loves your site.  Inside information about the game.  The fraternity of fan site webmasters (at least, the friendly ones who don't view it all as a competition).  Free junk through the mail from Blizzard.  :-)  Getting emails that start with "dear Lurker Lounge staff" because people assume that a site of this one's size had to be run by multiple people.  Always being "in the know" about what's happening and what's going to happen.  And, of course, NOTHING gets women excited about you more than telling them you run a major gaming website.  They LOVE that.  Really!
   
   
8. Stick to your guns.  You cannot run a site for everyone.  Stay true to your site's original purpose.  If you think maphack is cheating (and of course it is), don't let clueless fools who attempt to rationalize that it somehow isn't cheating to use a third-party program to make the game much easier stay on your site.  Get rid of them.  There are plenty of people who will love you for it.

In short, there's a reason why there are so few GOOD sites out there.  It's because the amount of time, work, and determination needed is always more than people think it is.  Perhaps you've heard of the "3 month effect" - that's how long most fansites last.  People get it in their heads to start one up, and then as soon as they see how much effort REALLY goes into it, they quit and the site goes into decline.  I don't blame them.  You have to be half-crazy to do this as long as I did.  When I look back at how big this site got, I just can't quite see how I did it.

That's what I've learned.  It was great!  Would I do it again?  Probably not, at least not by myself.  If, at some point in the future, I get the urge to do a site like this again (and who knows, Blizzard's World of Warcraft looks promising, but that's safely years off), I'd look for a team of people who feel the way I do about making a good website work and form a partnership.  The focus?  Strategy, gameplay, and mechanics, of course!

Anyhow, the closing of this site leaves a gaping hole that someone needs to fill.  It could be you.  My advice?  Start small, and don't try to be everything this site was all at once.  It's possible to try TOO hard.  Good content brings good posters, which in turn brings better content.  A pretty or snazzy layout and design is just eye candy for the random passerby.  This site was incredibly ugly through most of its existence, but that wasn't why the readers came here.  Good luck to you!