"Confusing with devlogs feature, should you be posting in both places? "
I assumed the project devlogs were a way to update followers, and the devlog forum section was where I could post the same updates, in hopes of attracting new people who are not aware of the existing game page (and subsequent devlogs).
"The rules aren't clear: should you post a new topic per update, or have one topic with posts for updates? (you should be posting in 1 topic!)"
Although it's true - I believe it's also common sense (to post updates to a singular topic). I think the only people doing this are 1) new to forums in general (as most forums have a rule of "post updates in the same topic" or 2) doing it on purpose to try and gain more views because their old topic has no replies/little interest.
"There's no way to sort the posts, and no clear way to follow the progress of the game. (For topics, you have to subscribe to get notifications, but I think it's more valuable to get people to follow your itch.io account)"
The inability to sort posts is a problem... at least in the sense that it can take much longer to discover what you're looking for in terms of games. I don't think there needs to be an additional way to follow the game via the forum devlogs. I would think anybody interested would look at the game page and then follow it. after discovering the public devlog
"Where the best place to post to drive traffic to posts? This board could potentially be a source of traffic, but it's unclear how much"
This is true, but it's almost impossible to be accurate without detailed feedback:
- how many people viewed the devlog and then viewed the game?
- how many people viewed the devlog, viewed the game and then downloaded it?
Would it be possible to track views from devlogs, similar to how tracking many views your page gets from a direct link, or from searching the "new" or "platform" section? (ie. 6 views from people looking through [windows] and [new] games.
Also, allowing devlogs (in the public form) to be tagged with their platform (windows, osx, linux, android etc) and being able to search for devlogs tagged with those platforms, might help boost views. Similar to how you can tag it with a completion percentage.
> search for all windows games 50% complete or more
> search for everything 70% complete or above, regardless of platform
> search for devlogs tagged with "linux" or "android" only
I'm not sure if that would be too granular, or if people would use the system enough to warrant the effort required to implement such a system.