About the new EN World front page - I LOVE IT!

[Mistwell]

That depends on what you judge as the "most important content"; which isn't, necessarily, "the bits you read".

Back in the day, sure, we had a news page and a rudimentary messageboard with 4000 members or so (by comparison: not much larger than CM is now). Nowadays, EN World is much, much more than that. It has 80,000 members, and those members are writing reviews, making blogs, joining groups, searching for gaming groups, and all sorts of things. These things, while more recent, are not less important than the news page.

In fact, given the deficit of interesting news these days (the buildup to 4E was fun, but it's over), I'd argue that those other aspects are more important.

And I'm not talking about my general opinion: I use Google Analytics to analyse site traffic. And some of those post-medieval elements of a modern community website do - believe it or not - generate high levels of traffic.

The days of thinking "news page plus a forum" ended years ago. It's 2009!

Whatever it is you think your site is about, pick one or two things and focus on those things. I don't care what those things are, it needs to be focused. You can not focus on everything at once at expect to be known for anything.

If you feel news is not in the top two, then don't focus on news on the front page. Me, I figured you were going the magazine route and were hoping to some day pay reporters and cover panels at cons and write articles and develop company sources for those articles and develop into a magazine site, which is why I mentioned news. That is the route that comicbookresources.com took, and now they are making a ton of money in advertising.

But, if you are not going that route, fair enough. But, you should pick a route of some kind, and do that thing. This scattergun approach isn't a good one. You should have links to it all on your front page, but the focus should not be on all of it at once, if you want the site to grow and prosper more than it is now (which I assume is the goal).

 

[Morrus]

With all due respect, Mistwell, you've advised the "copy my favourite site, Comic Book Resources" strategy more than once in the past. Unfortunately, I can't. You may as well tell a small software company to copy Microsoft, or the Nigerian government to devlop a military to defeat Russia.

I don't have the resources or the technical know-how; I can't afford to pay people; and volunteers always crap out halfway through leaving you in a worse state than when you started. The D&D world doesn't have a fraction of the breadth of news that the comic book industry does; it's not even comparable. DC and Maarvel produce dozens of comics per week; WotC produces 1 book every month or so at best.

So modelling EN World after CBR isn't an option, attractive though that might be (and yes, I agree CBR is very well done). EN World will never be CBR. Sorry.

Anyway, in the short term, traffic has increased. We'll see how that works out over a longer period. All the random opinions are interesting, but the stats tell the truth.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Of course not! I don't promise to use 'em, though - but I'll keep my fingers crossed that I'll like 'em!

By the way, I'm still on it... but there are a lot of buttons and getting something that looks consistent is hard, especially as I am not the greatest artist.

Well, I hope that your commission turns up something good faster than I do.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Morrus]

By the way, I'm still on it... but there are a lot of buttons and getting something that looks consistent is hard, especially as I am not the greatest artist.

Well, I hope that your commission turns up something good faster than I do.

Cheers, LT.

Cool. I don't actually have a commission - I put some feelers out, but that's about it so far.

When you do your first button, why not post it here? That way we can see what direction you're going in?