Post History

## TL;DR

1. #### Before launching a new site, make sure there are *a lot of* users who are willing to volunteer their time and effort to help build and maintain the community.

2. #### Overall, improve the UI of Codidact and give each community its own unique look and feel.

3. #### People should spread the word about Codidact with their families, friends, and anyone in general.

4. #### Once you have a *good* user base and a *good* UI, start investing in advertisements to reach the right people.

5. #### Reach out to writers properly explaining why Codidact is a good community as well as subject experts in communities we have here, and anyone in general who will add benefit to any community we have here.

## Introduction

I am surprised that a featured post written by an admin hasn't been unanswered for two years. Christianity has only 41 posts, which is a very small number. By looking at the launch proposal on Meta, you should have a larger number of users who are willing to participate to launch a successful community. By a *large number*, I mean 50 or more users. A community with only 9 people is unlikely to be successful.

Also, don't focus on finding moderators. But rather, focus on finding the right people to join the community. And eventually, some of those people will be willing to moderate.

## Looks leave an impression

While functionality is more important than looks, looks are the first thing we see. I've noticed that the [Judaism community](https://judaism.codidact.com/) has a custom widget that makes it look different from other Codidact communities. These widgets can be used to differentiate between communities until the UI is improved therefore we can implement something here that could improve the looks. I've to admit that the UI is not the world's worst thing, but it's bad for a site that people should use daily.

A quick search showed me that there're so many APIs that can be used here. We can show a new [bible verse](https://bible-api.com/) every day, for example. This would be a great way to encourage users to participate and learn something new every day. We can search for other APIs and implement them here too. [^1]

Overall, the UI needs to be improved. Developers focus too much on the technical part and leave the design part. This is a problem for all Codidact communities, not just Christianity. Jeff Atwood [joked about this once](https://stackoverflow.blog/2008/07/26/stack-overflow-beta-design/) at the beginning of Stack Overflow.

 > Trust me, you do not want to see the “programmer” design we had before this.

This is the same thing here, we have a "programmer" design. And accessibility is just as bad as design. [^2]

## Internal public beta

Before sharing the community or buying ads for it, people who suggested launching the site should invite everyone they know - their friends, and family and even write posts in their blogs or on public sites and media. 

Mentioning that this site is super inactive and relatively very small and needs volunteers, that way people who join will be willing to contribute because they already know that this site is small and inactive (and this is how all sites started - no one started big).

## Ads

After having *good* looks *and* a *good* user base (500+), you can start buying ads. This is truly the only good way to share Codidact. While we all don't like ads (and probably don't trust them), it's still forced everywhere in search engines and social media, therefore, a good idea to share Codidact. I mean once searching for "Christians Community", we should see this community on the first page (the higher the ranking, the better for sure).

Why did I suggest having a good user base? First is that sharing ads will attract people and people want to see other people posting and interacting with the site first, no one would volunteer to a dead site (only a few golden people do that). 

So, once you attract a lot of people, you want to leave a good impression with a good UI and great, useful content.

## Articles

Rather than ads, I'd trust articles written by normal users like me about Codidact. So an article on The Verge or a 10-follower Medium account is great as far as it explains why this site is a good place. I may suggest Codidact admins email writers about Codidact and how useful it's hopefully those writers may write an article about Codidact which will be a great boost for Codidact in terms of user base

I don't think writers would mind that unless their profile greatly indicated a "no to suggestions about articles". And most writers will like it because it's a non-profit organization that runs a great open-source project. No ads, and no tracking as well.

This is for Codidact as a whole, not just Christianity but eventually people who are subject experts in Christianity will find this community and participate in it.

## Tell people too

If anyone once sees a subject expert and there's a proper community for them here on Codidact, they should email [^3] them telling them about this community and that may turn them into an active contributor here which would be something beneficial as well.

## Welcome them!

This site should treat new people fairly. They may turn into great contributors later. The home page shouldn't show posts with low scores, closed or even duplicate, ever. Imagine you're a kid and it's your first time joining school. And once you enter your new school, you see that teachers are beating all new students, how would you feel? [^4]

I've listed the most basic ways to share this community. And I see that most of these suggestions are for all Codidact communities not just Christianity, but if implemented right they can be quite beneficial. 

[^1]: Respecting users' privacy, of course. An open-source API that doesn't collect data like the one I listed above would be great.
[^2]: If you inspect Codidact's header, you'll that the logo has an empty `alt` attribute which is not friendly for people who use screen readers.
[^3]: Again, we shouldn't be spamming people or wasting their time, but this should be more like a friendly invite. Also, this would be good, unless that user specifically said that they don't want such kinds of things in their inbox.
[^4]: A functional example, ain't it?