Just a thought...What made us initially join the site? I for one, was looking for a dating site but stayed because in reality the site is so much more.So the new logo/name must reflect what got us all here in the first place!
Re the bikermatch clothing...I only wear mine at BM meets/rallies and cos its a vest it only comes out when its hot!! lol
Sorry guys but this IS a dating site. As Alice just said that's why most join.
I don't mean "most" as in those who post, but the thousands and thousands of people around the world, so Matt tells us.
The people who post on here are a very very very small % of the membership. Just look at the karma stats for example there's usually a good few in there who don't post in the forum or go in chat room .... why I'm guessing because they are PM'ing cos its a dating site.
Name .... Biker Mates, no need to change the initials or does that sound too much like condoms???
Whilst I do feel mildly embarrassed admitting that this site is my biker club of choice, I have also to admit shadow and Alice are right. Most bike clubs have macho names that would put most mild-mannered folk off, and you simply wouldn't get the gender mix you do here, probably.
I'm sure you must be able to have a "club" primary domain name, yet still host BikerMatch as a "domain alias" to pull in those looking for lurrrvvee...
That solves both problems. Gives you a club name you can tell your mates (and hells angels in the beer tent) about, also advertisers that won't get involved with dating sites. Yet you can still pull people in as BikerMatch (too).
You (Matt) may wan't to vary the initial landing page for each to maintain the illusion, and to prevent Google penalising your current rankings for duplicate content, but i reckon you could pull it off. 1000's do!
Problem with having a real name and an alias is that you then lose the identity. Some folks are also easily confused (trust me lol).
You're right about Google too. We'd be splitting our incoming links giving each site half the weighting, then risk an outright ban if Google picks up it's a duplicate site.
That would destroy the site in fact! Google etc are so important to us.
biker mates... does keep the initials but i don't like the sound of "mates". Just makes me think of animals having sex lol, or is it just me? :-D