Favorite Custom Fields to Add

Just wondering what folks are using for custom fields on their sites. What are your 'must add' fields and what do you use the information for?

 

I like the blog feed field

 

I agree Brandon. That's a very useful field especially for a site like AA where admins can share their feeds.

As a matter of fact, with members having their own blogs or sites nowadays, it may just be a very cool way to help your members promote their sites as well. They'd be more apt to participate on your site to have their latest thread/news item display to folks

I normally add a "share your name" field as well. This makes it so that you can share their name by using the field results around the site.

Any others that folks use out there?

 

Let's see what I have:

What is Your Sex - Male, Female, Yes please
DeviantArt account
Xbox Live Gamertag
Facebook
Myspace
Linkedin
Twitter
all those other sites...

 

LMAO! I have to add that one...

 

For me, there's stuff like gender, but wifi codes for Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony consoles are often essential as well. I do admit I like the 'admin experience' field on a few of these types of sites as well though.

 

I do it for advertising. People can advertise to whatever sex they want to advertise to.

 

I've added such fields as real name, pet's name, clothing size... it all depends on the forum and what people are interested in.

 

For those custom fields such as "Facebook, MySpace, etc"....are you simply using the field and putting the code as facebook.com/$post[field] or something?

 

I always need to have the "how did you find this website" question for my own reference (usually it will only be visible by me/the forum staff).

 

Agreed. Standard fields such as gender and first name are added on all of my forums, but depending on the niche, other fields may be added. On my Linnie forum, there is a field for members to select how many linnies they care for. Here at AA, members can enter their forum URL as well is select an experience level.

Each forum has unique fields, but no matter what, I always try to add something other than the defaults to make it more 'fun'.

Me too. It's usually the first field I add because when some of the first new members join, I'm curious to know how they found the site, and this field is really helpful. Unfortunately, many people leave it blank, but I am appreciative of those that don't. Also, the answer of "on the Internet" is rather obnoxious and is the most common. I'd say it comprises 80% of the responses.

 

I've added the "how did you find us?" field, but give them specific choices from the dropdown menu selection.

I include each major search engine and then a few specific big name websites that are competitors or friends of ours. Also have some 'other' options as well.

At least this way, I get mostly specific info

 

Sometime's if you ask a specific question you may get a specific answer. I've found instead of using "How did you find us?" I use "Where did you come from to find this awesome community? (i.e. search, word of mouth, the other guy)". You'd be surprised about the variety of answers when you lead the way.

One co-admin added a question Where you lost when you got here?

 

That's interesting! I'll have to give that a try. I also like the idea of a drop-down menu.