I am trying to promote more forum usage in my guild. For some time we have been lax on using the ingame calendar and especially the forum calendar. What use is there to use the forum calendar over the ingame one? Well hopefully with the right answer there is one

I am not sure if it is possible, when I set up an event within the calendar can I provide a link for others to follow via the description? We are going to be pushing through heroic modes in our 10 man group and it would be cool to provide the link to the post that has the details in regards to the current fight we are working on.

And also maybe you can tell me the benefit to using the website calendars versus the ingame wow ones. Our forum participation is very low and I am looking for ways to pump it up!

A poignant question, and I salute you for asking such a critical question.

Admittedly, the on-site calendar does lose much of its luster with the addition of the in-game WoW calendar.

For many casual guilds, the in-game calendar is more than sufficient, and even for some hard core guilds it's fine. But what in-game calendar lacks is where our calendar shines:


1) Specify multiple roles rather than just the holy trinity. Want to make sure you have 3 ranged DPS and 3 melee DPS? Want to specify that you have at least 2 Humanoid CC's? Not something you can directly do with the WoW calendar.

2) More detail rather than "Tentative", "Accepted" and "Declined". You can automatically waitlist people after 10 have accepted, or after there've been too many of a certain role. This simplifies codifying the rules for your members. "Max of 3 Ranged DPS, 3 Melee DPS, 2 Tanks, and 3 Healers" After the 4th healer signs up, they're auto-waitlisted, even if you still have fewer than 10 signups (which you can then use in WoW to add them to GRSS's waitlist system).

3) When you assign points and DKP to a calendar event, then clicking that calendar event will show all data associated with that event: Raid attendance, Signups, Items received, you can even compare the signups with attendees to determine who was a "no-show" (who said they'd be there, then were not actually present) - especially valuable when you're struggling to make that leap from 10-man to 25-man. It's critical that your members show up when they say they will.

4) Ability to provide signup notes (honestly, I don't remember if the WoW calendar does this), along with the "Late" toggle ("I'll be there, but I'll be an hour late - I have to work until 8").

5) Raid the same days every week? Use a recurring event, and stop making individual events on the WoW calendar.

6) Keep a complete raiding/attendance history is nice especially for the old guilds. On my guild's site, we still have all our attendance and signups from Vanilla WoW, and sometimes for nostalgic purposes, I'll check it out. Hardly a critical feature, but it's icing on the cake.

7) Approve other members for events if you're an admin. You have a member that's not by a computer right now, but sends you a text or something saying "I can't make it", just change their signup for them.

8) Limit eligible signups to specific rosters. Instead of using the "Invite everyone" option in WoW, you can use a custom "Raiders" roster on your site, which only contains level 85 characters of a certain rank. Then only those characters can sign up for raids.


So that's the general idea. I've used the WoW calendar and it's OK - it does the job. Perhaps the above features are overkill, and perhaps not, it really depends on your guild's needs. Most of the features of the calendar were added because I needed them specifically for running my guild, but most of them were also added before the in-game calendars.

But all these lack the one critical feature the in-game calendar provides: signups while in-game. Perhaps this can be something that could be added through the DKPProfiler Mod. I'll have to research those options. Then it's just as simple as requiring the DKPProfiler mod for your members (which will improve your site anyway, since the DKPProfiler can get all kinds of info that the Armory doesn't have access to).

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It's all in the reflexes.

Now as for your more general issue: Getting members to use your site. That's a much tougher question.

The first order of business is making your site fun, and the heart of every guild site should be the forum.

Get you and some of your ultra-core members posting regularly. Post strategies and videos, make polls, post suggestions for policies. The key is getting people posting, but they won't post unless they have something to say.

Like any good party host will tell you, you'll have to drive the conversation. You start the posting, keeping it lighter at first, and increasing your posting as more members come in. I've always felt the strength of a guild is reflected in the strength of their forum. The forum builds camaraderie, gets people knowing each other, and provides a centralized place for your members to hang out when not in-game. This gives your guild strength enough to stay together even after a game change or something of the like.

Make your forum active, and to be active you need to have multiple people posting. Eventually others will join in the conversation.


Truth be told though, no matter how active and tight-knit your guild might be, there will always be people who just don't care to participate. Example: at the height of my guild's success in Vanilla WoW (several weekly 40-man raids) with many members, and an extremely active forum (100+ posts per day), some just didn't care to hit the forum, even if it was once a week or once a month. There's nothing you can do about that: some people just don't want to participate. They just want to play, get gear, and move on. The important thing is to get those that do care posting.

Once the ball is in motion, it's inertia from there.

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It's all in the reflexes.

CHOPS!! I just wanted to say thanks a ton for replying with what you did. You could have just given a one line half ass paying attention reply, but you did not.

For us right now most of those features are overkill. You definately sold me though if we were a larger guild. Right now we have a core 10 people that do the raiding. Every once and awhile someone else will come in to cover.

As for the forum usage your post was well written. I am one that uses the crap out of the forums. I still post a ton on my old vanilla wow guild forums were 98% of the people that post there, no longer play the game. They have not played for 3+ years.

I think that out of our current raiders, some people just dont care lol. Which is ashame because a lot of times when we enter a new fight, we take 5 minutes to all watch a video LMAO! When this video has been posted and some people have already been talking about it via the forums.

I did have another question about the calendar sign ups. Can you sign up with multiple characters? It would be cool to know who has what geared alt that could fill the raid in a pinch. So like a backup sign in sheet

You can sign up with an alt, but you cannot sign up with both an alt AND a main. That does present an interesting option for the future though.

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It's all in the reflexes.