[ramble]
Okay, so you finally got me, Morrus. Old-time reader of Eric's site, and I'd gone all this way without making an account on the boards or really even reading them. Curse You! *shakes fist at the heavens emotively*
Okay, so that out of the way, on to what baited me to make an account: the potential redesign of the site.
It seems to me, from your post on the main-page and from finally wading through the whole thread, that what you're especially interested in is distinguishing yourself from the marketing wing of the d20 industry. I don't have any real easy advice there. To a greater or lesser extent, all websites for someone who offers a good or service for sale are marketing, the only difference is how genuinely the website is offered independent of a desire to promote themselves. Still, knowing that means that I'm not going to spend my breath on a lot of recommendations for look and feel. If things have gotten overgrown around here, usually the layout has been fine by me.
That said, here's what I do and don't use ENworld for. The number one most useful thing you do, in my books, is keep track of what community webpages have been updated. You do them and me both a service, because I'd never have the patience to check back for months without an update, so I check here instead and can follow a link to the site that's been updated.
Slightly less useful is announcements of when a given product is actually available for sale. I really don't care about any other product announcements other than when it is actually on sale. If the publisher is working on it or sent it to the printers, it isn't worth my time to read 99 times out of 100.
I also appreciate links to reviews of products, particularly when they are from a reviewer I have some faith in.
I don't USE the boards here, but I recognize their value and wouldn't want them to go. Your Message Board roundup is about the right level of involvement for me, and I appreciate it.
In short, I'm 100% in favor of getting rid of all or nearly all product awareness information for things that aren't out yet. I understand that this would be a major paradigm shift from Eric's website which started it all, but I don't think that the community is any longer truly in the mode of eagerly anticipating a particular product (and certainly not every product out there) as it was for the initial release of 3E. At the very least, this stuff can be de-emphasized. As there is a day for message board roundups from the message board area, perhaps there would be a press releases and upcoming products section and a weekly update to the main page with items of particular interest.
Now on to the nearly irrelevant stuff that I said I'd leave alone, just because I can resist a 'me too' while I'm here:
Look and feel is generally good. I like the nostalgic color scheme and all, although some minor changes wouldn't be offensive. I'd like to add a 'me too' to a minor dislike for three columns, and also in favor of considering at least the judicial use of frames to provide an easy navigation tool.
As to names, I think that you aren't going to escape the name ENworld no matter what, and don't think that it is worth trying. The name works. If you wanted to change the logo a couple of things like that to freshen things up, a '3EN' logo could look cool and would be a nice pun/word play which would let Eric further hide his name...
[/ramble]
And that's enough rambling and opinions from me for present.
SFG DM 12 LG (Lawful Gnomish)
