ReveNews Site Improvements and New Years Resolutions

While everyone is enjoying the holiday season with family and loved ones, we’re going to be kicking the tires and making a few tweaks here that should make ReveNews more friendly to conversations, readers and writers.

1) The commenting system is terrible (I partly blame MovableType 4 but there’s also some site structure problems from the relaunch back in September). I recognize the commenting system is terrible as I’ve been frustrated out of my mind trying to improve the “republish” speed (MovableType is different from Wordpress in that you have to “republish” the content with each new comment… more on that in #2) on the backend. Evidently, from what about 5 other CMS savvy people and myself can figure out, there is an incredible amount of content that is clogging everything up when a comment post starts the refresh. Good news is that a team I have working on this thinks they have the problem spotted and we should be able to leave comments as quickly as a Wordpress blog. That is good news indeed. Look for the fix to be in place sometime between Christmas and New Years. I’ll keep you posted if it will be any later than that.

2) For ReveNews bloggers, it takes an eternity to write a post and then go through the republish process. This has led to multiple duplicate posts and all sorts of fun nuisances that you don’t get to enjoy if you’re not a blogger here. Again, I recognize the travails of writing a quick (or long) post here and have been working on ways to remedy the situation. This issue goes hand in hand with #1 and we should have the problem fixed within the next week. And you thought Christmas miracles were a thing of the past!

Of course, one of the possibilities is a move to Wordpress, which would solve many of the user and blogger problems and allow for some of the customization that I am more familiar with having worked with Wordpress for a few years now. However, that is not a cheap process based on the quotes I’ve had sent over. Nevertheless, that is my ultimate “want” for ReveNewsyu and I am trying to make that work. If anyone out there can translate MT4 template files into a Wordpress friendly theme and help us move the backend, feel free to contact me (sam@revenews.com or my number is over in the left sidebar).

3) Speaking of ReveNews bloggers… I’ve reached out to 4 bloggers here who have been steady contributors on a weekly (if not daily) basis to see what they need in order to keep up their production and feature their always interesting and thought-provoking posts. Instead of “cleaning house” and kicking out all of the bloggers who might contribute one or two posts a month, what we’ve come up with is a structure that will more fairly promote the top bloggers here on a daily basis while leaving a section (something of a “Contributors” section) for bloggers who still want to contribute here, but in a more casual involvement. I think this is fair to both sides and will give credit where credit is due while also still giving others a chance to contribute as they see fit. If you are a ReveNews blogger (or not) and I haven’t reached out to you about being one of the more involved bloggers, please get in touch (again, sam@revenews.com or my number is over on the sidebar).

There are a few more smaller tweaks I’m working on this week and into the early parts of ‘08 (fun stuff like restructuring databases and making php calls more efficient… good times) that you probably won’t notice immediately but which will make the site more responsive, quicker and more “sticky” for readers.

2007 was a year of change for ReveNews (new ownership, new look, new bloggers) and 2008 is going to be a year of growth for ReveNews as we continue to evolve the site with the online marketing and advertising industry, and my goal as editor and publisher of the site is to provide a platform that remains the center hub of discussion in that space.

Since we’re in the marketing world, numbers are important, so here’s my statistics resolution for the site in ‘08… now that we’ve broken past 2,000 daily feed readers on a consistent basis and gotten the traffic back on the upward side of the curve, it is my goal to have the site daily reaching 10-15,000 feed readers by the Fall. Content-wise, my resolution is to continue to move this site back to its place in the center of conversations and discussions of important online revenue discussions, ideas, events and thought sharing. We have an incredible foundation of bloggers, devoted readers and content to grow on, so I am confident we are positioned for success.

In the meantime, look for those three improvements as well as a series of others that will come in January and February. If you have any questions or (reasonable) suggestions, feel free to get in touch (sam@revenews.com or … yeah … sidebar). I generally think crowd-sourcing is a terrible idea for improving a site, but if you’ve read this far then you are clearly a dedicated ReveNews reader who is interested in the health and well being of the site. While this site will never grow to Techcrunch readership levels (thank goodness), there is a considerable need for a place like ReveNews for us to discuss, rant, comment, create and grow. I look forward to helping more people realize that need in 2008.

Happy Holidays and continued to success in 2008-

Sam Harrelson, Publisher and Editor

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