Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Odds are, your guild has its own Web site. With Web hosting becoming so cheap, there's really no excuse not to have a site. You've done all the ground work, paid the fees, set up registration, created forums, designed a shiny new logo, and posted pics of your latest Prince kill. This week, one reader wants to know, after doing all that, how do you get your members to actually use it?

Scott,

First off . . . a small bit of background: I'm the guild master of [. . .] the largest Horde guild on [my server]. We have about 200+ accounts in our guild. The guild has been running strong since August 2006; but what sets us apart from all the other guilds on [the server] is that we are VERY laid back to the point that we almost cater to the "casual" gamer. [. . .]

Here's the question that brought me to e-mailing you: How do you reconcile the difference between your guild's in-game roster versus your guild's Web site roster? For example, we have all the usual bells and whistles of any "organized" guild (bank inventory, dedicated Ventrilo server, domain name, forums, ranks, etc, etc). But one thing that has been a constant battle for me is _getting_ people to come to the Web site. Each week I take a tally; promotion to our first rank requires Web site registration . . . Nonetheless the better of 50% of my guild has never even visited our Web site let alone registered there. Last I checked, of the 209 accounts associated with [my guild], only 100 or so had actually visited the Web site and registered. This makes it very difficult for us to keep everyone informed and, more importantly, to get everyone's input on what they want out of the guild, etc.

So, how do you effectively encourage people to visit your guild's Web site? What is the "secret"?

[Reader's character and guild]