Suggestion -- Site Standardizations

Site Discussion Team Discussion
1

I don’t want to force anyone on this, but I’ve been thinking about trying to standardize things in regards to the site. I know Celesta tried this when it came to spelling and other stuff, but then she kind of brushed people the wrong way when it was brought up. And I know Mark also mentioned the whole “TCL” acronym and wanting us not to use it…but was left unresolved.

Anyhow, that being said, in order to try and get everyone on the same page, I thought about trying to implement a standardization in how we talk about the site. For example, When we reference the site on the front page or try to promote the site through other means (such as other message boards), we could say “ThunderCats Lair” rather than TCL.

I chose to use “ThunderCats Lair” for several reasons:

  1. As Mark mentioned previously, the acronym “TCL” doesn’t really help us promote the site very well. I started using TCL primarily because I didn’t like how the name looked without spaces. ThunderCatsLair looks weird to me. I’ll miss using TCL, but it’s for the good of the site that we refrain from using it.

  2. If we reference the site as ThunderCats Lair, we’ll be able to get the site to show up on Google higher since the word “ThunderCats” is being separated from Lair. As long as those two words are actually linked to the site, we’ll show up more when searched on Google, or any other search engine.

  3. Simply for the fact that we need to finalize what we refer to the site. If we can all reference the site under one identity (as in, spell it the same, then link it) then I think we’ve taken a large step in giving the site an identity and will be able to stabilize our rankings in search results.

When I changed the front page to show as ThunderCats Lair, Chris’ post about the DVDs was the first to show up on my Google Alerts, which makes me believe that the change worked for the better.

Again, I don’t want to seem like I’m forcing this on anyone, but I really believe that if we start talking about the site in a unified voice, it’ll help us in the long run.

What do you guys think?

…One more thing – I know this is a long post, so please bear with me – if you guys have suggestions on standardizing something site-related, feel free to bring it up here for discussion.

I’d like to bring up some other things, but would like to hear everyone’s opinion on the standardizing of the site name before I say anything else. :slight_smile:

2

Chris here…

Hey Manny, first of all can I say I think this is an excellent thread and exactly the sort of thing we should be discussing. As a side note, Celesta’s comments about trying to standardise spellings and stuff actually never bothered me especially, I just felt (to use my words from the time) that it would be a hard thing to enforce, given that many officially licensed TCats products (such as books, comics, etc.) often used different spellings, i.e. “ThunderCats” vs. “Thundercats”, “Ben-Gali” vs. “Bengali”, etc., and so different fans would have picked up different ways of habitually spelling things based on their exposure to different printed materials, for example, in my case, the UK comics. Both Kyle and myself actually referred to Celesta’s (sadly now deleted) thread on the subject for spelling clarifications - my only thing is, I do draw the line at spelling “Thundera” as “ThunDERa”! :wink: But, I digress… :slight_smile:

Although it’s a hard habit to break, I don’t have a problem with changing from saying TCL to saying ThunderCats Lair on message boards, etc., if it helps our Google ranking, etc., which I think is woeful pro rata to the size and standing of this site. :slight_smile:

However, if I could just throw one additional thought out there - one reason why I instinctively throw out the acronym “TCL” so much is to do with almost a form of “brand recognition”. The biggest problem with “ThunderCats Lair” is that it’s actually a slight mouthful, both to say and to type - from that perspective, we’d have been better off being www.catslair.net! A lot of folks, including those on our message boards and ThunderCats boards around the Internet, talk about “TCL”, because “TCL” is kind-of a shorthand version of our site’s name, easy to say and (most importantly) to type…

What does this have to do with brand recognition? Well, the name “TCL” in a typed form is short, punchy, and IMO should in the eyes of a lot of ThunderCats fans actually spit up a mental image of our site - in the same way that in the UK most folks think of Marks & Spencer when they see the logo “M&S”, also when I used to manage a folk rock band, known as The Carla Hendriks Band (again, another mouthful), I used to use an element of instantaneous brand recognition by emblazoning some stuff with a stylised “CHB” - which, in the context that stuff was appearing, would actually be more “instant” than seeing “The Carla Hendriks Band”. :slight_smile:

So, anyway, that’s just food for thought. I’d definitely be interested in hearing the opinions of some of the rest of the team, but FWIW I’m happy enough to make a change if it helps our Google ranking - and, like I say, I think this is an outstanding thread! :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

3

I never liked and still don’t like the name ‘TCL’

So I’m cool with calling the site it’s full name :slight_smile:

As for spellings, Chris makes a good point. Different official product spell things differently, so in short what Celesta did was pointless.

You would need to do a guide for each different categories of the property such as Cartoon, Toys, Books, stationary etc… (because I’m sure a lot of stuff does conflict each other as Chris rightly points out)

4

Thanks for your opinions. I don’t really care about the actual spelling in regards to the individual characters or locations in the series…I’m more focused on the actual site name. As Chris mentioned, brand recognition is key and I’d just like to get everyone on the same page.

As for TCL, I think it’s okay to continue using it, but we should probably try as much as possible to use the entire name so that the site is recognized and that people know what TCL stands for.

5

Chris here…

Hey Manny, as usual I agree with your comments 100% - when I use the site’s full name I actually just tend to type the URL, www.thundercatslair.org - from now on, on places like He-Man.Org and other TCats forums, I’ll try and post ThunderCats Lair, like that, complete with hyperlink! :slight_smile:

Quick question - in all of my signatures across the Internet I have www.thundercatslair.org - do you want me to change them all to say ThunderCats Lair? It’s an easy thing to do, so if it helps LMK and it’ll be done! :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

6

Great work Manny, very pleased with your thinking here.

I have a suggestion, which is to use two different ways to refer to the site:

  1. ThunderCats Lair - used when we put the name of the site up
  2. thundercatslair.org - used when we’re in a more public space and want to give people the URL

I think we’d be building the site brand more strongly by removing TCL from our language when referring to the site. Not just for the google aspect but in fandom too. If people say TCL and somebody who is new to T-Cat web world tries to figure out what that is they’d be a bit lost.

So for example in cereal:geek I’ve asked James to use thundercatslair.org as the credit on the animation art that I provided him. This way readers of the magazine can easily find us.

side note

Unfortunately there is a site ahead of us in the rankings on the google search for ‘ThunderCats Lair’ called Thudercats Seduction Lair. It’s a site for guys who feel the need to get together to talk about how to pick up chicks. An unfortunate coincedence that we’re so close to them on Google. We’re then followed by the new start up site that stole our name and plagiarized our logo lettering.

7

Is everyone else okay with doing this?