I was thinking that it would be great if members were able to write reviews of Anime, Manga and hobby games using blogs instead of forum posts.

Forums are great, but not so great if you want to see a main article followed by lots of comments. Plus I doubt people would enjoy seeing forum topics buried under a pile of reviews by a prolific writer. So a blog facility would encourage people to contribute content to the site.

What do you'll think?

I like the idea. However, you can already add reviews to anime section. I don't think anyone has done so yet. Though a review section on board games is another idea.

For general comments about a series I think using the forums would be better, where it can be bit more of an open discussion. Plus some comments might go over a few spoilers so I think it would be better to keep them separated so you don't accidently read something that will ruin watching the rest of the series.

The problem I have with writing reviews is coming up with the right words so others can read and understand what you're saying. Just saying I liked the art style alone isn't enough to give much of a recommendation.

i never knew about that section till now. I had just written a review on an Anime on Anime-Planet.com, which i can transfer to the dargh review page. I'll be happy to contribute to that page.

The blog idea is good, but in my opinion I don't think it will work. The problem is not the forum, it's the user itself and the online shift over the past couple of years to social media.

The forum has been a key part of the dargh online presence for 99% of its life. In the early days, the forum was very active with the bulk majority of dargh members participating. Over the past couple of years though we've seen a drop in member participation in the forum, with the main contributors coming from the older members. While there was hope with the forum at the start of the year with some of the new members, it has gone back to the way it has been over the recent past.

There are many reasons I believe this has occurred:

- The rise of social media, especially with Gen Y (which is who our University Club are mainly targeting).
- Most of the older member and main contributors are working full time, and have no time to use the forum as much as they used to.
- Most of the members not being true fanboys and religiously worshipping anime and/or gaming.
- Shift to mobile internet (not a major thing).

When I built the current site a few years ago, my main focus was to try and bring forum integration back to the website. I managed to get some cool stuff happening. As Fonzie has stated, there's an anime section at the website which allows you to use your forum login to post reviews. Hardly anyone has touched it (well, maybe Lewis now). There was plans to get the gaming stuff up, with some cool ideas coming from discussions with Dean (which included recorded gaming sessions), but it hasn't happened.

The main problem with the website was that I decided to build it from scratch and to make it dynamic. It took me a very long time and a lot of very messy code to get the site to where it's at currently, and it will take a very long time to get it to where I wanted to take it all those years ago. There's also the problem of one person only working on the website, and he works full time now.

Right now, I'm thinking of tearing the website down and starting from scratch, using much more simpler and quicker methodologies.

An idea I have is to fully integrate the forum within the website. For example, if you're in the anime part of the website, you can see the anime discussions and contribute without having to go to the forum. I'm also thinking of introducing facebook integration to the website/forum. This will eliminate users having to create a forum login account, and to promote more user participation. You can use your facebook login to create a forum account or link your facebook account to your existing forum account. The main problem I can see is trying to integrate the facebook login with the forum itself. One solution could be to completely hide the forum and only rely on the website.

I'm currently looking at using a third party CMS system to rebuild the website. At the moment I have Drupal installed on the server and will be trying it out. I would ideally love to use .NET, as I can set it up more quickly and properly. But I don't think Sage would move the dargh website onto a Windows server

I think the main reason why no one is using the Anime section to post reviews is that no one knows about it.
I keep forgetting it's there, and I wasn't even sure if it was finished, since it wasn't announced anywhere.

The other main reason is laziness.

As for the forums not being used, you're probably correct.

Oh, and I refuse to use my facebook login anywhere other than facebook.

Agree with Lortarg, facebook login is horrid.

Also, I think different media suit different needs:
- Forum is for discussion
- blog is for articles
- calendar is for events.
- social is for fail and nonsense

The anime section isn't linkable (to my knowledge) from the forum. Perhaps the banner could take you back to the main page instead of the forum again. Try joomla or something.

Current forum is great, but like I said, I doubt people would want their discussions buried under mountains reviews. People may also want to easily filter by reviewer or series, something a forum is not easily able to do.