Guild Site Building Advice

[Kage]

I've noticed that a lot of users use enjin, guildlaunch or shivtr for their guilds and Free Companies. I'm hoping to gain insight of the ups and downs or the bonus features of each one. Also, as users or admins, how do you feel about the customization and tools for either one?

 

On the end-game perspective, which voip service do you use? To what benefit do you get over one or the other? I've used both Vent and Mumble. While using Vent I've had issues with some users being virtually incomprehensible. While using Mumble, I've found it pretty hard to make the mic not super sensitive but it still picks up on activity like when I have a fan blowing on me in the hot Southern California heat.

 

Related but also not quite: On average for those trying to rank up their Free Companies, how long did it take you to get to Rank 6? The amount of members and what activities did you do?

[Nyx Ashkala]

I've been making guild websites for guilds on WoW for years and I do the graphical part of it. My fiance does the coding portion. For me, I can't stand Shivtr. It has very little in the way of easy graphic placement and if you make custom images, they have to be perfectly fitted. Enjin, which is what my FC's website is right now (mind you, I've been away for half a year so my website's trial expired. Website is a bit gimped currently), seems to be my favorite. I made animated images for the sides that looked like flickering lamps and I have glow effects in places. I was never able to achieve the same effects with a Shivt site. Guildlaunch is ok, but I still don't like it nearly as much. (http://thecatsmeow.enjin.com/)

 

Now with voice applications, I would actually suggest Teamspeak. People will rag on it, but it actually has the best voice quality despite it being the most unpopular of the clients. My fiance worked for Microsoft for a long bit and they used it because of the clarity and lack of lagging in the client. Vent's quality is awful and the lag time between talking and receiving is quite terrible.

 

I hope this helps!

[Kage]

When you talk about your use of enjin is it through free services or an upgraded premium type?

[LiadansWhisper]

I love Enjin.  It's very easy to customize, still looks good even if you're on the free program, and has overall been a really great experience for me as a website builder (though I am by no means a professional!).

[Maril]

I've been using Enjin for my gaming community (we have guilds here and in rift) for the last 3½ ish years and I am pretty happy with it - we're currently on the advanced plan but have been on ultimate as well. I would say that advanced should cover for most guilds needs, ultimate only really gets good if you have a minecraft server and are -very- into that. 

 

Our plan is pretty much funded by donations from our guildees, they have two ways you can do it, one that adds funds to a paypal account and one that adds days directly to the site - I recommend the latter, because then you don't have to account for what you do with the paypal money (since people can't see that)

Enjin is also very friendly towards new-to-site-management people, I learned everything by just clicking around and these days most functions has a guide on their wiki. There's also a good selection of free themes, and if you're artsy yourself you can upload your own design. 

 

I would not recommend using Enjin on their free plan. Shivtr is probably better for that, but I also find that shivtr is very limited in it's features and management of your users is a bit derpy. I haven't touched guild launch for years, but I know they once had a limit on how many posts you could have on a forum. You want to be looking out for those sorts of limitations. Enjin's free plan doesn't have a limit, but it lacks other essential features like a calendar. 

 

With enjin you can make entire sections of the website invisible until you allow a user to see it. We use this extensively, to protect journals and stories from being abused by strangers, for example. You can even change the front page to be different for people who have signed up, so they don't have to read the description over and over. 

 

 

As for levelling the FC, took us probably about 3 months? I've heard that you can speed it up if you do a lot of leves but it requires that you funnel a good chunk of money into it. 

[Faye]

I use Enjin and I love it! Granted, I use the Advanced plan, but it's easily worth it. It's easy to customize and the sites are simple to navigate. It has features like forums, polls, member rosters, chatrooms, notifications, applications, calenders, etc. and the Advanced plan also comes with a 10-man Mumble server, which I prefer to Vent as Vent has given me various problems the few times I've tried to use it. Vent is just more difficult to navigate, some people are extremely loud while others are extremely quiet and there's no way I can adjust it (despite tutorials suggesting otherwise--none of them had worked), and for a while my mic just didn't work with Vent at all until I messed with it for a couple hours. Mumble is very simple and easy to use. Do you mean you're having issues with your mic picking up background noise when you speak with push-to-talk, or you aren't using push-to-talk and background noises are activating your mic? Because if it's the latter, I recommend using push-to-talk always if at all possible.

[xelliexell]

I tried building my site on enjin, but after the "free trial" expire and it went to the no pay version, I found it unmanageable. The ads (two huge flashy ones, right on the main page) made me recoil and run away.

 

Because I am a free user, I've been more or less satisfied with shivtr. I had to do some, uh, creative image editing, but I don't think my site looks too bad. (Only one small-ish ad at the top that isn't nearly as noticeable.) It seems that either free version doesn't allow much in the way of CSS customization, so that is a bit of a hamstring.

 

Also, shivtr does NOT play well with IE. I've tried talking to every programmer I know and tried troubleshooting it for weeks, but my shivtr site looks unreadable in IE. (Last I checked.)

 

After enjin's free trial ran out, it reverted back to its default layout, but here is a comparison between add placement for either unpaid version:

 

hostingstars.enjin.com

hostingstars.shivtr.com

 

Also, I only use my site to display pertinent LS information and for the forums and calendar, really. So, I can't really comment on other features like Mumble and whatnot.

 

Hope that helps!

[C'kayah Polaali]

I'll jump on the Enjin bandwagon, too. It's easy to use and well-suited towards making a guild website. All the basics you'd want (forums, roster, calendar, gallery, etc) are there and easy to administrate. While the non-free version gives you a little more control over things (no ads, etc), the free version is just fine.

 

For voice, I'm a fan of mumble. I've used TS, vent and mumble over the years, mostly for fleet fights in Eve Online, and they've all handled their task well. I mainly prefer mumble now because of the ease of administration.

[LiadansWhisper]

I tried building my site on enjin, but after the "free trial" expire and it went to the no pay version, I found it unmanageable. The ads (two huge flashy ones, right on the main page) made me recoil and run away.

 

Do what everyone else does and get adblock.  Then you don't see any ads.

[Kage]

I tried building my site on enjin, but after the "free trial" expire and it went to the no pay version, I found it unmanageable. The ads (two huge flashy ones, right on the main page) made me recoil and run away.

 

Do what everyone else does and get adblock.  Then you don't see any ads.

I won't lie. I use it. The only time I have it off is actually because I want ads playing when I'm on twitch to help out Speedrunners who are streaming for charities.

 

 

Thank you to everyone for your advice! I think I'll be keeping enjin in mind for the future. It's just not necessary at the moment.