Website and Forum changes

[Thalamant]

I have changed the forum look to coincide with the announcement of our website that I've been working diligently to get up this week. It is mostly complete and I'd like everyone to take a look and let me know their opinions in this thread.

It is still under some construction so be patient, I plan on populating the home page with a Eorzea world time section and using the home page to post all the news on FFXIV and version update info.

I am also looking for anyone that is interested in volunteering spare time to write articles for the website. Stuff like reviews of game features, adventure logs, opinion posts, etc. I'd like to get at least 2 people if possible so that we can keep the website full of interesting new stuff to make sure it stays relevant. This would be an excellent opportunity for college students looking to build a portfolio.

Thank you for your time please take a look at the site!

www.sacreddawnls.net

[Tigerlady]

I like it for the most part. The gallery feature I find especially interesting the way it shows pictures.

So.. can you be a bit more specific about the articles you'd like people to write? I'm intrigued, and as an English Major it would certainly be a good addition to my resume, but I want to get a better idea of how time consuming it's going to be since I'm fairly busy as it is with my current English courses, one of which includes reading some 80-90 stories submitted to us in my Publishing class so we can get a book published by December. But yeah, time consumed per week with these articles, including necessary time that would need to be used playing the game? Length of the articles, number of articles a week, stuff like that?

[Thalamant]

I think time will tell what is reasonable to expect, but my current desire is about 1 article per month per person. So if I can get two people I'd like to stagger them by two weeks. That way each is really only doing an article a month but there is something new up every 2 weeks, but if they can get any articles out sooner that'd be a plus. I am also a college student and understand people's time limitations. I would want anyone doing this to do it because they enjoy it, but I don't want it to feel like a job.

The articles would be posted in the news area of the home page, and I'd give the authors plenty of creative flexibility.

I want our website to be relevant to the viewers, so the articles would be a primary feature. The idea is what do we have that other websites can't produce or already have? Sure sites like Zam and FFXICore do their own articles, but people generally will follow an author if they enjoy the material. Our writings will be our own, something that makes us unique.

[Thalamant]

I think what I want to do is try and setup a blog for each author and have it set to publish the blogs directly to the homepage of the website. I'm looking into how to do this now, but if it works then we'll be able to add content quickly without have me edit the html of the website to include a new post every time.

[Thalamant]

I'm going to try and re-answer your questions.

-Posts should be anywhere from maybe 500-1000 words depending on the material. I know that's a huge difference, but I want authors to have a lot of freedom. As long as its not a simple tweet about your breakfast then I think its fine.

-I'm not requiring game time to put into this, we're still a social and this isn't a job. You play to enjoy the game, if you want to write about you time in game then great!

-Subject material needs to be FFXIV related in some way, but you have creative freedom. It can be an Adventure Log of your game time, or you can write an opinion piece on a particular feature of the game, or a guide to fishing or playing lancer, w/e. Every author has their own unique ideas and I want that to come through in their writing.

-It's purely voluntary, I'll take what I can get. I'm happy with a blog post a month from each author I get involved, and would certainly not complain about anything extra beyond that. I want this to be fun or we won't do it.

-I've worked out how we're gonna make it work using blog feeds from blogger.com. Each author will have their own account, will post when they can, and the home page will automatically get updated with the blog posts.

-I WILL be getting our website and blogs set up on search engines so we can get some traffic to the website and to the blogs.

Please post anymore questions you may have and I'll try and be as helpful as possible.

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