Subscriptions have been phenomenally successful! Why we didn't do this a decade ago, I don't know; but the last few months has made it plain that monthly subscriptions are popular, and are the way forward.
So, how well are they doing? Well enough that we need have no concerns whatsoever about EN World's viability and future. We're in a safe, secure place, financially speaking. But not so well that we can quite afford to splash out on new features - and I very much want to get things like a new Gamers Seeking Gamers engine, more columnists, more products like War of the Burning Sky, tools and facilities for online gaming, send people to report on conventions, and so on.
To this end, I'm rejigging the community supporter subscriptions a little. I haven't fully settled on the list (although nobody will lose anything from their subscription), but we're looking at an additional higher tier subscription for about $6, and moving forum signatures into the subscription framework. That means that signatures will be only be available to people who have a subscription. Why sigs, and why now? Well, as I mentioned the boards are now self-sustaining, and I now need to facilitate growth - not in terms of size, but in quality. To do that, I want to encourage people to become subscribers without removing access to all the threads and ideas here, ensuring that these thing - the really important things - remain available to all. Limiting sigs to subscribers - a feature that I tend to find distracting - seemed to be the right choice.
I realise this won't sit well with everybody; and I fully appreciate that it can feel like you're having something taken away from you. However, I firmly believe that the long-term benefits of this move will make up for it in spades. EN World needs to move forward and grow, and it's quite capable of doing that. We all love the place, but this is a venerable site now, and it's possible for us to do so much more than we could five years ago - really make this place the go-to place for finding nearby gamers, clubs, and events; and so much more. I have ambitious plans for us, but those plans don't come cheap!
Over the next few months we'll be upgrading the base software here and rejigging things here and there. You can already see that we've re-arranged the forum list a little to make things a little less cluttered and a little more intuitive.
You're more than welcome to discuss the upcoming changes, and I'll be sure to post more details as and when I have them. These changes will take place over a period of time rather than in one fell swoop, and we'll try to keep you apprised in advance.
Thanks for listening, guys! I hope that most of you can get on board with the coming changes, and that I've managed to explain the reasoning behind them.
- Russ
So, how well are they doing? Well enough that we need have no concerns whatsoever about EN World's viability and future. We're in a safe, secure place, financially speaking. But not so well that we can quite afford to splash out on new features - and I very much want to get things like a new Gamers Seeking Gamers engine, more columnists, more products like War of the Burning Sky, tools and facilities for online gaming, send people to report on conventions, and so on.
To this end, I'm rejigging the community supporter subscriptions a little. I haven't fully settled on the list (although nobody will lose anything from their subscription), but we're looking at an additional higher tier subscription for about $6, and moving forum signatures into the subscription framework. That means that signatures will be only be available to people who have a subscription. Why sigs, and why now? Well, as I mentioned the boards are now self-sustaining, and I now need to facilitate growth - not in terms of size, but in quality. To do that, I want to encourage people to become subscribers without removing access to all the threads and ideas here, ensuring that these thing - the really important things - remain available to all. Limiting sigs to subscribers - a feature that I tend to find distracting - seemed to be the right choice.
I realise this won't sit well with everybody; and I fully appreciate that it can feel like you're having something taken away from you. However, I firmly believe that the long-term benefits of this move will make up for it in spades. EN World needs to move forward and grow, and it's quite capable of doing that. We all love the place, but this is a venerable site now, and it's possible for us to do so much more than we could five years ago - really make this place the go-to place for finding nearby gamers, clubs, and events; and so much more. I have ambitious plans for us, but those plans don't come cheap!
Over the next few months we'll be upgrading the base software here and rejigging things here and there. You can already see that we've re-arranged the forum list a little to make things a little less cluttered and a little more intuitive.
You're more than welcome to discuss the upcoming changes, and I'll be sure to post more details as and when I have them. These changes will take place over a period of time rather than in one fell swoop, and we'll try to keep you apprised in advance.
Thanks for listening, guys! I hope that most of you can get on board with the coming changes, and that I've managed to explain the reasoning behind them.
- Russ
