5. Don’t Compromise Reliability
It sounds ridiculously simple, but as a website designer it’s easy to get carried away with the latest slice of bread than it is to focus on maintaining the loaf you’ve already cooked. Spend your time primarily securing your website, making sure you have reliable backups, fixing bugs in existing scripts, dealing with problems that your members have - once you’re on top of that, you can start optimising your table indexes for that half percent speed increase and developing new, even more demanding features.
6. Be Courteous
Sometimes people get upset, sometimes people will be angry at you, sometimes people will leave without any reason, and sometimes people just mature. Either way, they’re leaving and that’s a kick in the shins for you – but you should be courteous. They’re going to be moving on with their life, and they are still a part of the community in spirit. This is the perfect time to ask them why they’re leaving and evaluate what you could have done, if anything, to prevent the situation. And with that said…
7. Listen To Your Members
Whether joining, actively participating or leaving, every member has an opinion. Take every opportunity you can get to take an opinion, include your community in choices you make. Treat your website as though it is a home owned by the entire community, rather than the community being guests at your house. Listening to your members makes people feel valued, and in return those members will reward you with their loyalty.
8. Act Like You’re In It For The Long Run
Spend time evaluating problems with your site. A few months ago when we had a crisis with our server, I took a couple of hours out to write a document about all the problems I think the site has. 9 bullet points later I had to take a breathe, I couldn’t believe I’d let the site get into such a state. After some TLC, the site is taking a turn for the better, but had I just taken time to listen to my members and my wife they’d have never got to that point in the first place.
9. Monetise Your Site
I hate to say it, but monetising is important. Place advertisements where necessary, offer premium accounts to members who are willing to invest in the community’s longevity. Just make sure that you monetise your site properly, because without the money there is no honey (often referred to as reliability or server).
I think one way to think of this list is to imagine it as though each point can be represented as a feature. Reliability is a feature, courtesy is a feature, actively responding to your members is a feature – unless you’re selling heroine on your website, this is what really keeps people coming back.
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