[Mosh]

Originally Posted by Parture

Do you think it is ok to have a fairly large guest welcome message like I have?

I just looked at yours, in my opinion it does not matter what size it is, it matters if the message is effectively put across and it helps encourage additional sign-ups.

My forums have a message that is about 5 times larger than the one you have, but the way I have laid it out has increased registrations and returning members by about 50-60%, there are now a lot more members who contribute to our community and return for more, so as I said, you have to pitch the welcome message to your target audience, if you do it effectively then they will come in droves

I would advise that you bullet point your special features rather than point them to a thread, having the benefits laid out in one place will far outweigh the time you take to properly lay out the message, you can use a lot of XHTML in your welcome_first_message to be able to put across an effective message, remember you may have to play with it a lot to get it to look right, but the benefits your community will reap will be worth it.

But saying that, the welcome message should only a part of your arsenal to retaining members, it should not be the only method of trying to retain members, because once you get them to register, your content will have to be able to be interested enough to to convert a member into a regular and contributing member. You will also want to advertise your site in the right areas and get the search engines spidering your site as well.

I hope this post points you in the right direction on how to get started.