ESOCommunity

The website is named after a dead studio, and although it sounds good to my ears, I think it's not a very "futureproof" name considering the incoming releases.
Plus, it doesn't relate enough to AoE or even to gaming, unlike RTS-Sanctuary or AoCZone, which became AoEZone btw (more inclusive).

Not to mention the homonyms:

Elders Scrolls Online Console
European Space Operations Centre
European Stroke Organisation Conference.

I'd suggest AoECouncil, strategoi or herrknight's jacuzzi. How about you?

Basement-aoe.gg

Agree, the name is quite strange I think. I would def search for something with aoe if I were to look for a community like this.

Rebranding is really hard and has potential to lose members due to it. For example, people looking for ESOC from watching old Interjection videos where he mentions ESOC might have trouble finding it. Rebranding probably means at least some changes to site theme, or changing forum structure to incorporate more games. Some members might not like these changes and leave. Getting multiple games under one roof is similarly difficult -- our effort to integrate the AoEO community was largely a failure.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do both of those things, but it will take a concerted effort to do well. Requires media, development, and graphics work. We'd probably also want to retain the `eso-community.net` domain as a redirect.

http://www.Garja.com - EZ

Weird name for a community of weirdos.

ESO are updated, bugged, unstable servers, we include those initials in our name and we want to succeed. I wonder what would happen if Microsoft closes them for good, would we keep our name?

-ESOCK
-electronic sock
-top players beating their epeens off

holy frick, I've done it.

ESOC started very small and at that time I don't think anybody expected it to grow as much as it have.

I pushed for a different name, more related to aoe3, in the early days, but people were already worried about SEO and too much work to change the name. Now the work to do it is enormous! You need to have very good reasons for a name change now IMO.

- We would have to keep the old domain and make sure to redirect every single request from the tons of (otherwise dead) links all over the web.
- We have no idea how Google would react, we might drop down a lot in search results
- "ESOC" is EVERYWHERE by now. You would keep seeing this name for years after the change. There's no way you clean all references up even in a month. Plus users would still use the old name for a long time.
- All products and events naming would be inconsistent (EP, tournament names, event names) with new events. Making it pretty confusing for new people.
- All social media would have to be renamed as well, is it possible? will followers stay or disappear?
- What would the new name even be? How would we ever decide this properly when we can't even agree on patch changes?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would require someone to take responsibility for all this with a solid long-term plan, and also know what they're doing. Last thing we want is every link to ESOC from other websites to be dead links. And no more drama pls

A simple redirect from eso-community.net to a new domain?

Djigit wrote:The website is named after a dead studio, and although it sounds good to my ears, I think it's not a very "futureproof" name considering the incoming releases.

Well, technically it's named after a still-living online multiplayer platform, but I would have to agree it's not exactly futureproof.
As others have pointed out, rebranding would be a massive undertaking, with negative consequences at least in the short term. It's something we might be forced to do as the new releases come and ESO actually dies.

Snuden wrote:A simple redirect from eso-community.net to a new domain?

Yes but it needs to capture the full url including querystrings, and handle http/https/www/not www from the old domain without "too many redirects" issue. That's possible, but have to remember to test it every once in a while. It's going to be hidden and forgotten eventually too, need to make sure everyone understands that it's important and shouldnt be canceled or removed.
It's not a blocker, it's just work that needs to not be forgotten. Along with the other things

Nah, the next community site for the next AOE game should be something completely different, started from scratch. Something that is not owned by anybody in particular and does not have a "business team". Something organised by the community itself for the community itself. You can fund it via a Patreon account, if need be, for very specific and punctual expenses that would be reported back to the community.

But that's kinda both too early and too late. Too early, because nobody knows if the next AOE game will actually be at least as good as AOE3 and it won't be a complete flop. And too late, because this should have been done right from the start. The branding shouldn't have been made based on Microsoft's trademark that is easy to mistake for other brands too.

The whole thing about redirecting old links is moot imo, because if a new AOE game is made and if it's good and successful, there will be a lot more interest from the general public than from this niche community. So, for that new public it won't matter much that there used to be a smaller, niche community for AOE3, since that's not what they would be interested in. For older users, having a redirect is not that big of a deal. Replacing a bunch of strings in the database or in the site templates is no big deal either, imo.

Apart from whether it would be a good idea or not, in case of changing, it is possible to use redirects so that Google's value of pages will be passed on to the new ones.
You can setup specific redirects for the most important pages such as tournaments, wiki, main forum, etc. You could include specific forum posts in this way, or you can create 'auto-redirects' for all remaining pages, including all technical differnt versions (http, https, etc). It should also be technically possible to redirect all remaining pages automatically to the new domain (with exact strings and keywords), as long as the structure remains similar or definable.
If this is done properly, Google will handle this well and you shouldnt lose SEO value or drop in search results (perhaps temporarily untill everything is re-indexed, but that goes fast). You can also smoothen this via the settings in the Google Webmaster Console, where you can manage how this site is indexed and viewed by Google.

Dolan wrote:Nah, the next community site for the next AOE game should be something completely different, started from scratch. Something that is not owned by anybody in particular and does not have a "business team". Something organised by the community itself for the community itself. You can fund it via a Patreon account, if need be, for very specific and punctual expenses that would be reported back to the community.

But that's kinda both too early and too late. Too early, because nobody knows if the next AOE game will actually be at least as good as AOE3 and it won't be a complete flop. And too late, because this should have been done right from the start. The branding shouldn't have been made based on Microsoft's trademark that is easy to mistake for other brands too.

The whole thing about redirecting old links is moot imo, because if a new AOE game is made and if it's good and successful, there will be a lot more interest from the general public than from this niche community. So, for that new public it won't matter much that there used to be a smaller, niche community for AOE3, since that's not what they would be interested in. For older users, having a redirect is not that big of a deal. Replacing a bunch of strings in the database or in the site templates is no big deal either, imo.

Do you know any site that works like this? I don't see how it would work

You redirect the domain name only from the control panel of the domain itself. Then that change propagates itself onto the rest of URLs from the site. Because, most likely, site templates have relative paths, so they are all added to the domain name, which is the only thing that would be redirected.
Yes, pretty much any redirected site works like that.

That's why you should always use relative paths and manage domain names and certificates where it's relevant (ie, in your domain provider's control panel and your server's conf files). I hope nobody hard-coded paths while building this site. ^^

SEO is a meme, tbh. The AOE product is not made by you, it's made by Microsoft, so you don't need to advertise it yourself. All you need is to link your community forum to the product and that can be advertised in many ways (on streams, on other forums, on youtube videos), until you get word out about the new site. For older users, redirects would be enough.

Dolan wrote:You redirect the domain name only from the control panel of the domain itself. Then that change propagates itself onto the rest of URLs from the site. Because, most likely, site templates have relative paths, so they are all added to the domain name, which is the only thing that would be redirected.
Yes, pretty much any redirected site works like that.

That's why you should always use relative paths and manage domain names and certificates where it's relevant (ie, in your domain provider's control panel and your server's conf files). I hope nobody hard-coded paths while building this site. ^^

SEO is a meme, tbh. The AOE product is not made by you, it's made by Microsoft, so you don't need to advertise it yourself. All you need is to link your community forum to the product and that can be advertised in many ways (on streams, on other forums, on youtube videos), until you get word out about the new site. For older users, redirects would be enough.

I know how it works, i meant a site by the comunity that anyone can work on (and mess up)

Does it really matter? The Patreon model is a relatively new thing. If all sorts of Youtube streamers can fund themselves through Patreon, I don't see why a whole community couldn't. And if there aren't such examples, we can ｉｎｎｏｖａｔｅ.

We fund ourselves using YouTube & Twitch money, idk why we would switch to Patreon

You said the same when I proposed to create an ESOC-TV Twitch channel a few years ago (I think it was 2015 or 2016). You and Mitoe said "why would we need a separate Twitch channel, when we already have access to Microsoft's channel and no major AOE3 player would want to stream on it and lose their own audience". And then, a few months later you proceeded to create the Twitch account and claimed it was your idea.

Oh well, yeah, we don't really need a Patreon account, it was just a suggestion. Lots of big streamers have Patreon accounts too, if you insist. For example imaqtpie or Nightblue3. Why? Possibly because they can generate revenue from multiple sources and they don't need to be forced to stream to keep getting money. They don't depend on the stream or youtube only, they can get money even when there's no new content or no stream. That could be one reason why they keep a Patreon account too.

Inb4 you make a Patreon account too then claim it was your idea again.

Dolan wrote:Does it really matter? The Patreon model is a relatively new thing. If all sorts of Youtube streamers can fund themselves through Patreon, I don't see why a whole community couldn't. And if there aren't such examples, we can ｉｎｎｏｖａｔｅ.

Sorry i misunderstood when you talked about starting from scratch. Why start everything from scratch rather than change the existing way? Patreon is just another way of getting donations anyway.

As for the owner I don't think anyone would mind having public ownership if that's even possible. But I have no idea how to do that, I have never seen it... Plus it would be weird to let a whole community do the admin work of money? You could select a few to do it, but then i dont see a difference compared to now..

91 wrote:i dont see a difference compared to now..

Ok, then go on like this.

ESOC always were a bad name. Aoe3 Community, for example, would have been better. The overlap between that and Agecommunity (which was always going to disappear after a few years, regardless) would have been less damning to the organization, than that between ESO and ESOC – which is the reason the latter is such a dumb pick.

The trademark argument is ignorant and presumptuous, though. Unless you want to pick an even dumber name, you're always going to name the site after AoE3 – which so happens to be a trademark owned by Microsoft. Disregarding that, entirely, this constitutes no legal problem, in the first place.

zoom wrote:The trademark argument is ignorant and presumptuous, though. Unless you want to pick an even dumber name, you're always going to name the site after AoE3 – which so happens to be a trademark owned by Microsoft. Disregarding that, entirely, this constitutes no legal problem, in the first place.

Not really. For example there are plenty of popular sites that provide services for the LoL community that don't even mention LoL. Eg, op.gg. But there are plenty more. You just need enough imagination and you need to get out of your small world a bit.

Dolan wrote:Nah, the next community site for the next AOE game should be something completely different, started from scratch. Something that is not owned by anybody in particular and does not have a "business team". Something organised by the community itself for the community itself. You can fund it via a Patreon account, if need be, for very specific and punctual expenses that would be reported back to the community.

But that's kinda both too early and too late. Too early, because nobody knows if the next AOE game will actually be at least as good as AOE3 and it won't be a complete flop. And too late, because this should have been done right from the start. The branding shouldn't have been made based on Microsoft's trademark that is easy to mistake for other brands too.

The whole thing about redirecting old links is moot imo, because if a new AOE game is made and if it's good and successful, there will be a lot more interest from the general public than from this niche community. So, for that new public it won't matter much that there used to be a smaller, niche community for AOE3, since that's not what they would be interested in. For older users, having a redirect is not that big of a deal. Replacing a bunch of strings in the database or in the site templates is no big deal either, imo.

+10000

Dolan wrote:Nah, the next community site for the next AOE game should be something completely different, started from scratch. Something that is not owned by anybody in particular and does not have a "business team". Something organised by the community itself for the community itself.

Can you go into more detail on how is this different from the current state? ESOC is currently entirely organized by whoever of the community wants to help, with 100% of all donations and revenue going back into the community. By not having a "business team", are you suggesting a publicly shared paypal password instead of business guy n0eL managing it, or how is that supposed to work?