How do you make your guild use the website?

Hmm, well, I'd think that you should maybe try and make it as interesting as possible so that people actually want to go to the site. Stuff like, Real-life Photos and competitions might draw in more people.

Most pre-packaged guildsite makers come with stuff included, so there shouldn't be much to worry about on that front. Personally, I like my guild forums to be cheerful, a place for discussing various goings on.

Hope I helped.

Post raid strategies, guild activities, and raid signups on the website. Anyone who wants to raid must go to the website to sign up and also see who else is/ is not going.

Some people might prefer to use the in-game calendar for signups, but having the raid signups on the forums will both drive traffic to your site and also allow more communication ("I can make it on Thursday but I might be late by 10 minutes due to working overtime. Will that be fine?").

I've found that the problem generally is that if your guild is not originally web-oriented, it's difficult to make it so after the fact.

For example, guilds that handle all recruiting through their websites tend to have more active websites, simply b/c they require their class experts, role experts, and raid leaders to review applications submitted to the website and decline or approve them.

That provides frequent traffic, and attracts other guildies just to see who has applied and what interesting (or 'sticked for the lawls') things the applicants say.

Another use is anytime the GM, raid leader/s class/role leaders finding themselves explaining things repeatedly to new members, new 80s, new raiders, etc., the website can serve as a repository of that info. Anytime those questions get asked, the asker is just referred to the website.

Finally, some guilds all know each other on Facebook, Myspace, whatever as well. If that's the case, then linking the website with those social networks also helps integrate the website into the guild community, and vice versa.

In my real life, I write commercial wiki software and really this parallels the question we get from most of our customers. "Hey, we love your product, but how do we get everyone else to use it?"

The simple answer is how you get people to go to any website. Give people a reason to use it. If all the guild website does is replicate information that is available in-game (the guild calendar) or on other sites (wowhead/thottbot/wowwiki/ej, even epicadvice), nobody will use it. Why go to the guild site for general game or strategy questions when you can go to a global site with a bigger and probably more expert audience?

Focus on things that your guild might need that isn't readily available elsewhere:

• Planning for future runs. Make being on the site necessary for having a say in what the guild does, and give priority to people who sign up for raids on the web
• Post mortems and discussion of previous runs
• Skill exchanges: need things manufactured/gemmed/enchanted? Provide a way for people to list what they need so someone with the relevant skill can volunteer their services
• Gear Clinic. Everyone gets their armory information imported into the site profile, and members can leave comments, critiques or suggestions on how they could upgrade
• Personal touches, like having new guildmembers introduce themselves, or grats to members for particularly noteworthy achievements

Make sure there are ways to subscribe to updates. At a minimum by email (maybe a "what's new on the website" weekly newsletter), but through RSS/Atom feeds as well if at all possible. People will quickly forget the site exists unless they have something reminding them that there is interesting information waiting there for them.

(For reference: my guild's site)

I think a guild site is vital to maintaining an active guild. There are several uses, each adding value to the members of the guild and the guild as an organization. Let me give you an example, my own guilds webpage. The site has three major uses:

1. A front page with news, progression and information on how to apply to the guild
2. A forum where the members can discuss different topics
3. A raid signup system.

Let me go into a bit of detail on each of these:

The front page This is basically a wiki (MediaWiki) with a custom skin. I don't think using a wiki is a very common approach, but it was easy to setup and I like the way you can easily create new pages etc. I guess a lot of guild sites use Joomla or similar CMS.

The idea behind the front page is that it should be a nice looking entry point for anyone interested in the guild. Showing the latest news, boss kills, guild highlights, progression ladders, the guild history and so on makes the guild more appealing to a potential new member.

The forum This is where basically all off-game guild activity happens. Our forum uses phpBB. The forum is split into several sections: officers, members and public.

In the members section we have several different subsections, General Discussions, Boss and Instance strategies, Raid Planning, Raid Debrief, Class discussions, Professions discussions, Addons, Guild Bank requests and so on. All sections are frequently used by our members. We use a separate Raid Planner (more on that later) to handle scheduled raids, but for unplanned raids, fun raids and so on we use the Raid Planning section. At the end of every raid we post raid logs to the Raid Debrief section and members are encouraged to discuss the outcome of the raid, how to improve, what went well and so on. In the members section there is also a post that collects all the vital information that a new member needs to know (how to signup to raids, TS servers, guild bank policies etc)

The public section is primarily used by applicants to the guild, using a predefined application template.

The officer section is used by the officers to discuss and evaluate members and trialists. It is also used to discuss future raid targets, what recruiting needs we may have and so on.

The raid planner Here we use the raid planner from EQDKP to handle raid signups. If you want to raid on any of the official raids you need to sign up here. It is a great tool that makes planning and executing raids so much easier.