Site name and presentation

I've been thinking about writing a style guide for the front page to go along with our redesign (Avec, maybe you'd want to get involved as well?), but one thing I'm still unsure of is our canonical site name and presentation, since we're incredibly inconsistent with it at the moment.

I usually call us "The Lifestream", since I feel that is the name of our site. It appears in the title of our front page ("The Lifestream - Compilation of Final Fantasy VII"), in every article ("Give us your reaction to the FFVII remake! | The Lifestream"), and in our official forum name ("The Lifestream Forums"). It's also the name and handle of our Twitter account ("The Lifestream" and @TheLifestream respectively) and our Google+ account ("The Lifestream").

In many other places, however, we go by some variation of our URL, thelifestream.net. Examples of this include some articles ("TheLifestream.Net Podcast - 2015 E3 Special Mini Cast"), the name and handle of our Facebook account ("TheLifestream.net" and thelifestream.net respectively), and our main banner. We've even managed to be inconsistent while using this form, however: I've seen "TheLifestream.net", "The Lifestream.net" (notice the space, which isn't actually in our URL), "TheLifestream.Net" (capital N in Net), "THE LIFESTREAM.net" (all caps until the .net), and worst of all, "TLS.net", which should never be used, since we do not own that domain.

Our Tumblr account is in a class all of its own: the page's URL is thelifestreamforums.tumblr.com, its title is "The Lifestream.net", it refers to itself as "The Lifestream tumblr", its description mentions "the Lifestream.net", and it shows "THE LIFESTREAM.NET" in its lower-left corner.

Personally, I am strongly in favour of "The Lifestream". Not many websites use their domain name extension as part of their identity; I can only think of places like last.fm and twitch.tv, who choose to do so because they are somewhat related to FM (radio) and TV. One could make an argument that we are a network of Final Fantasy VII fans, but that's really stretching it. Our main purpose over the coming years will be to provide news, analysis and opinion about the forthcoming remake, not to be a network: we are TLS, not TLSN. I also find "The Lifestream" to be a lot less clunky when used in combination with other words - these are The Lifestream Forums, that's The Lifestream Podcast, visit The Lifestream website - and it gives us the flexibility to acquire a new domain (like lifestream.com, if it were to become available) without changing our whole identity.

I understand the benefit in advertising our domain as often as possible, especially since we're not a .com, but that's not going to be a problem in most cases: either someone is already browsing our site or they're looking at something which links directly to us, like our Facebook page, in which case they're much more likely to click through (or to do a web search for us) than to type an URL manually into their browser (and even if they do that, it'll autosuggest the correct domain if they've ever visited us before, and possibly even if they haven't).

We need to either reach a consensus on this or we need Yop to make an executive decision - either one would be fine with me, as long as we start being consistent. What do you all think?

I've always preferred "The Lifestream". I agree, .net seems a bit clunky. I think it makes sense in the podcast though since somebody listening to that may not neccesarily be on the site. But overall, I agree. "The Lifestream" is concise and attractive.

I'm basically fine with everything you've stated: using "The Lifestream" as default, "the Lifestream" in sentences where the definitive article is needed, etc. I agree that being consistent is ideal, as well.

The podcast was pretty much the only situation I could think of where someone could hear our site name and not have a link handy, but even then, I think we can call it The Lifestream while we're recording and just give the full URL at the end (maybe also the start) of the show.

Thirded.

I'm just not sure what we can do about our Tumblr account, seeing that thelifestream.tumblr.com is being used by a Portuguese chick. thelifestreamforums.tumblr.com is pretty odd. I know it would be a pain, but it might be worth changing. The focus should be on the site, not the forum.

I'd go with thelifestreamlog.tumblr.com, or thelifestreamblog.tumblr.com. And, seeing that those names aren't taken, I'll snatch them up in case we ever decide to use them.

I quite like thelifestreamblog since Tumblr is ostensibly a blogging site.

Edit: hmm, I guess this post should have gone in the other thread as well.

Any more opinions?

Shall we just crack on with adopting "The Lifestream" across the board, then? I know it's only been a couple of days since I started this thread, but every one of our staff members besides GlitterBerri and The_Kusabi_ has been online in that time and none of them has dissented.

I'm okay with that.

Aye The Lifestream is good.

I haven't weighed in at all here because I'm not sure it's going to make a difference to what I write. I'm always going "We here at The Lifestream" in articles but I'm not going to police it when people refer to the place as TLS either.

I don't have anything against people using TLS in articles if they write "The Lifestream" in full at least once, the first time it is used. That's pretty standard practice in journalism. This is specifically about referring to ourselves as TheLifestream.net, which many authors still do instead of "The Lifestream".

Flintlock said:

Shall we just crack on with adopting "The Lifestream" across the board, then? I know it's only been a couple of days since I started this thread, but every one of our staff members besides GlitterBerri and The_Kusabi_ has been online in that time and none of them has dissented.

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Flintlock said:

I don't have anything against people using TLS in articles if they write "The Lifestream" in full at least once, the first time it is used. That's pretty standard practice in journalism. This is specifically about referring to ourselves as TheLifestream.net, which many authors still do instead of "The Lifestream".

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All this sounds good to me. *thumbs up*

Thing is, TheLifestream.net is our brand. The Lifestream is just a phrase that is used, not just in the FF7 community, and has bad SEO. Putting .net reenforces who we are. And thats what we need to do right now, with people taking a fresh interest if FF7 and anchoring themselves with a trusted source of info about the subject. But what do I know.

Pixel said:

But what do I know.

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Why the sarcasm? I asked for different opinions and you gave yours. You have a valid point about the brand, one which wouldn't concern me if we were a .com instead of a .net, mind you. I don't think it's enough to change my preference, but if others feel as strongly as you do them we'll have to think about it further.

Well, Ive just noticed people wanting to change the site, the design, the look. All of which is our brand. I'd rather people concentrate on getting our brand out there, which is TheLifestream.net. Concentrate on our social media presence with that brand, which will bring people here,

I know its a trivial thing, but we've been handed the chance to attract more people to the site, and its not being taken advantage of.

I can understand where Pixel is coming from. In our YouTube channel some videos even have a voiceover (is it Pixel?) reading out "The Lifestream dot net". The same line is read at the beginning of Pixel's audiobooks. With almost all videos on the channel having been uploaded by Pixel, who has been sticking clearly to this dot net standard, I can see how he has the most investment in the specific "Lifestream dot net" brand.

To be honest I am very often going to refer to TLS as "The Lifestream". If Flint corrects me in articles and says "Add .net" then I might remember to do so for our frontpage material. But in daily speech, in my facebook page and on general forum posts my instinct will always be to write "The Lifestream" or "TLS" (with the awareness that newbies may be confused by the latter, ergo why I try to avoid the abbreviation "TLS" in articles). This whole "exact naming" of TLS is always going to be fleeting, just like the lifestream. But if a standard is set for frontpage articles, I will abide to what the higher powers request/demand.

Well, thelifestream.net thing on things like the audiobooks is because they exist outside this site. It serves as an advertisement. If I just put The Lifestream presents, its meaningless.

I was trying to think of a compromise but my brother came up with a very elegant one: we use "The Lifestream" on this site but TheLifestream.net (and I think that should be the preferred capitalisation) elsewhere. How about it?

Yeah, thats perfect

Yeah, that works for me.

Aye.

I was about to say, . Of note though is that if you google for The Lifestream - in an anonymous browser thing to avoid personalized search results, and/or with the '&pws=0' query parameter added to it to disable it, you get The Lifestream.net way up there at the top - that's good enough for discoverability IMO, if the context of its mentioning is clear enough that it refers to a website or organization. As for where people come in: 34% is direct traffic (i.e. via bookmarks, entering the URL, or coming in without the browser passing in a referrer for whatever reason). The statistics for coming in via search engines are useless though; the vast majority indicates a 'not provided' keyword, because Google itself actually uses HTTPS for most of their search results pages (especially if you're logged into google). Results #2 and #3 are the full URL and 'the lifestream' though, I'm somehow sure that's how most people come in via google (also because few people type in full URLs nowadays). The search queries also confirms it.

so uh tl;dr, it doesn't seem like people will end up somewhere strange (unless you think Wikia is weird) if they just look up our name. But, doing the full TheLifestream.net will communicate more clearly that it's a website.

Happy with using thelifestream.net outside the site.

I wanted to address this though:

Pixel said:

Well, Ive just noticed people wanting to change the site, the design, the look. All of which is our brand. I'd rather people concentrate on getting our brand out there, which is TheLifestream.net. Concentrate on our social media presence with that brand, which will bring people here,

I know its a trivial thing, but we've been handed the chance to attract more people to the site, and its not being taken advantage of.

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It sounds to me like you've misinterpreted what the goal is right now, which is to rearrange the site so that the segments that are going to be most looked for are going to get the attention they deserve. Also modernisation.

That does NOT mean we'll be touching "the brand", which is our colour scheme, the logo, the banner, the materia orbs, or any of that shit. Some tweaks to the colour scheme wouldn't hurt but it's about the layout and the buttons, not the actual graphic design (feeling protective Pixel? ).

Speaking of which, your input on that would be appreciated since you've reappeared

^ Further to that, I assure you (Pixel) that I am doing everything I can to promote our site. Even before the announcement, I was saying how great it would be for us if the rumour turned out to be true, so I'm fully aware of the opportunity we have.

I've also been pushing for changes to our design for a long time already. It would have been ideal to freshen things up before we got an influx of new visitors, but we didn't really have anyone willing to work on it back then, and I couldn't do it alone. You were exiled from TLS yourself during that time. The announcement has re-energised everyone here and it's no surprise to me that there's a new desire to improve things. Getting things in motion now might mean that we end up making the necessary changes four, five or six months down the line, so we have to make the most of this opportunity. As Lex said, your help would be very much appreciated.