Scheduling - when 3++ first started growing rapdily (around the Blood Angels release), we'd just drop a post whenever it was ready. This quickly morphed to scheduling where we would often have 4-5 articles a day. This was maintained for a long time though after a while we dropped it down to three a day simply because a lot of the articles were becoming filler content, stuff like e-mail replies (which whilst important, aren't always what 3++ is about). At the end of 5th even this was difficult and you saw a lot more Warmachine content (something which has dried up currently as everyone is gaga over 6th - expect it to return worry not!).
So with the new site coming up and the forums being integrated into 3++ proper, I think we'll be moving to two posts a day - spread over 12 hours posted at 10pm/10am GMT+10 (this also means if I need to write a post in the morning before work, I don't have to get up at 5am! It's in the details!). The impact of this I hope will be two-fold, well three-fold really.
- The Articles will be all quality, all the time. There may sometimes be lapses but with 6th edition being so new, don't count on that anytime soon. Regardless, e-mail replies are likely something which won't crop up often and will be changed as we see below.
- More front page time for the articles. This was a major issue before when we had 4+ articles a day - articles got lost in the white noise. Now hopefully they'll get more time on top where the discussion winds itself down rather than more posts push the discussion to an end.
- Weekends become more relevant - it's really chicken or egg in terms of whether or not the weekend was quiet and thus I put filler posts on during that time or I made the weekend quiet by putting filler posts up. Regardless, the past couple of weekends have seen excellent traffic for posts (one of the reasons we stopped posting quality articles on the weekend is they often got lost) so hopefully quality posts will continue to get the appreciation on the weekends and since we're writing less articles overall, this should be more feasible for me to schedule during the week (as I often have zero computer time on the weekend! Life beckons and all that).
Which leads us to e-mails. I will still of course reply to your e-mails and I will still reply to the majority of them personally as I do currently (or pass them onto the addressed authors). However, rather than posting the extras, more interesting ones, etc. on the website, they will most likely be posted in the forums so they can still generate some discussion and be associated with 3++ whilst not taking up important article slots on the main page.
In short, changes abound! When the new behind the scenes stuff is put together you'll know, and we'll let you know and when we let you know, that's the time for extra feedback in regards to that! For now, feedback on what we're planning to do as outlined above please?
