Well guys, I know it has been a long run for Xtrato Designs, we have been on a roller coaster for quite some time now.

It has brought and I have also seen ,that Our community, is somehow lacking interest , and there forth loosing members and activity.

In an attempt to bring back to this community to what it had sometime ago, i will ask for all the members to please post opinions , ideas , and anything they have to bring this community up again.

If you are interested in a Staff Position please send me an email stating your age, and experience on designing or scripting.

This is not my community, but ours , and i think its our necessity to bring it back up.
I will be around much more often from now on.

I will look forward to interesting, and strong opinions from members, i ask for all of you to please keep this threat clean and stable for all of those who wish to participate in the new Renaissance of our community.

It is time once again, and this Time it will Remain.
Thanks to all for reading , Serious Replies Only Please.

We lost a few post SORRY!!...

Originally Posted by Edge

Most of the people I know are going back to collage at the moment. Just seems like a very buisy time of the year for alot of people.
I sent this site to a friend who does game/web and flash dev. he said as soon as he has a spare second he'll be in here for sure...

As for getting people here, Free stuff does the trick lol...
Themes, graphics, buttons, anything old that you dont use rar it up give it a name... One persone garbage is another persons treasure
.

Originally Posted by high

More active sig of the weeks, open up the XD-Market like ya had going on the old site where people could sell/buy stuff for points.
Once in a while i go check out effectica's site and they have a auction for old sigs or new sigs they make for points/posts? if im correct.

Try to get the site fully working is a big i believe... most of the links on top of the (the 8 menu thing) some of the links point to pages that dont exist.

I myself just end up lurking around the boards but dont really post because i feel like im just either not constructive enough to go critisize anyone if they post their work... and im not a great photoshop expert myself i cant design a theme if my life depended on it... i can only make extremely simple sigs.

Create a section where people can post phototshop plugins they make or styles they have or even fonts they own and wish to share (freeware only of course... nothing commercial)

Tutorials will bring tonz of people to the website... i myself at times try them out even if i cant really come up with good stuff.

Create other battles like Wallpapers or the orbs like ya started to... Theme of the Month... i havent seen that in a while.

If i can think of more stuff ill edit or post more.

Originally Posted by fatman

i am a new member i like the info u have posted i am looking fowerd to reading some treds about biginner stuff i have been doing our clan for 2 years and every time i get it done i see something new i like i am just starting out and u have had many posts that have showed me what i needed or the staff helped me fix some info to post to the genal pop would be some help with php like what site hosts to stay away from if i find one i found out from a admin that the host i had was crapy and would always some how casuse a screwup also u could do the down load things like the other guy sayed junk to some id gold to others maby post some links for guys like me with the info on how to get started ps i like the point sytem an the stor to spend them lol

Originally Posted by Xtrato

yes , it was a simple task overlooked and believe me, i regret it , as much everyone who lost their post, it was a really hard hit for us, as we were growing up by the minute.
But we are now on our way back up, and this we will make sure we ramain at the top.

For a while I was the most active member in the community, by far. However, all that changed after the DB error and XD was down once again. Losing all those posts, all those threads, and all those members pissed me off so much. Not backing up the DB at least once weekly was such an amature mistake, I'm sorry, but after that I had lost faith in this community. I thought I would never come back to XD again. However, I've been slowing regaining my faith after seeing Mrs. X dedication, Mr. Vu's new works, Alx's new Portfolio, and of course, the always fantastic Zeronix I think I might be as active as I once had been.

So, there's the reason for my inactivity and probably why you havent been seeing so much site activity as well.

This community thrives on your Xtrato, and when you weren't around, Cox was a worthy substitute. But recently, there has been little coming from you and 0 from Cox so its understandable that is had been a bit slow.

So enough of my constructive criticism, but if you want to get this community back up to 10,000 members, I suggest you do a number of things.

Advertise - Banners like crazy, have your design team or staff members come up with things, even ask the community for help. There is a reason why the Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Lower Shop Costs! - Seriously, what the hell? The items in the shop are ridiculously over priced and the module is just collecting dust. Give people and incentive to use their points and post more.

More Themes - This is a given, but this is what you do and if you want the community to survive you should at least try for 1 new theme a month, commercial or public. XD has produced the best php-nuke themes ever seen and there should be 0 competition.Your talking about starting a Renaissance here at XD, release a bundle pack of themes, mods, blocks, what have you.

Staff - More staff means more support, more ideas, more talent, things that make for any successful company. I hate hearing about people waiting for days to get themselves verified or complaining about the lack of support. Because the truth is, we have enough people here to help out and frustrated customers should never be a concern.

Ultimate Project - Face it, most themes are gaming themes, but phpnuke is not the most team friendly CMS. Construct a modded phpnuke CMS with fully integrated clan features and theres no telling how far this community can go. Right now, the only real clan CMS is surreal-media gpanel, which sucks btw, but it sells because its the only thing out there. Hire some coders, get to work, and make this project happen.

I have more ideas but I will post them later...

Make me a moderator again!

I hardly post, but I do do a lot of moderating.

Naw, make me a moderator so I can ban this guy advertising porn^^^

Originally Posted by Arucard98

Make me a moderator again!

I hardly post, but I do do a lot of moderating.

Ultimate Project - Face it, most themes are gaming themes, but phpnuke is not the most team friendly CMS. Construct a modded phpnuke CMS with fully integrated clan features and theres no telling how far this community can go. Right now, the only real clan CMS is surreal-media gpanel, which sucks btw, but it sells because its the only thing out there. Hire some coders, get to work, and make this project happen.


^^^Very true....being a clan owner.
I payed a hefty price for my theme thats not unique. I love it but right after i payed for it and got it up. You dropped the price like $50. I was floored. I think they are overpriced but hey its your site. I think if they are gonna be non-unique they shouldnt be over $80 or so. You need more gaming themes. I would advertise the crap out of yall. Infact alot of my buddies have gotten theme3s from here now that they have seen ours.
http://ns-squadbase.com
Us gamers realy need a good CMS all setup.

Just my 2 cents....not much...lol. I know that Richard kid could pull it off. Hes a good kid. Smart as hell.

BTW anyone gonna fill my tickets?or is Xtrato.com just fading out?

Peace
Hizzle

I'm a intermediate user of phpNuke. And I've set up a few sites for myself, friends and some communitys. What brought me to Xtrato was the themes (free), the support on thoose themes and the friendly faces.

Some time ago, just before changing to vBulletin (i think) there was a change.
A change in focus and attitude. I cant pinpoint it but thats i s how I feel.
Now I feel this is more a "closed" community of designers and scripters. And not nearly as much "openness" and helpfullness to novice and intermediates as myself.

I belive that what makes a great community is the interaction beetween reguler people and experts. Remember that not all people can be great at design and so on, but if the greats has no one to share the art with its worthless.....see my point?

Take a step back and put some focus into helping people out, instead of focusing on designing this and that using renders or not.

Then slowly and with care, make people pay for that help (if making money is the objective).

That is just my thoughts on the matter, and I'm glad you brought it up! I showes insight and great perspective on things!

I will continue to visit as I have all along, but if you want to make the community grow, I belive that it has to be more attractive to the "middleman".

Another thought is that you could "team-up" with a community such as Ravens http://ravenphpscripts.com/ to offer a completeness in phpNuke that would be unmatched.

Ravens community offer a secure phpNuke distribution with great support and friendly people just like what I think I used to find here. If you could offer free themes (with options to donate for downloading them) together with great support along with Raven you could get a lot of new constantly returning members.

Maby a first step is to ask Raven to include a theme from Xtrato in the next release of RavenNuke? as default theme?

I think Raven is a great person just as I think Xtrato is, keep it up!

Cheers and thanx for a good site (not great as it were, but it can be again!)

/B