A few months ago Whits suggested expanding the website to more than just a forum, so we could have a homepage with news, articles, information and so forth. The idea was a good one which unfortunately fell flat on it's face, for whatever reason. Anyway, I've been pondering it recently, pitched the idea to Dazzza and I've got a friend on board who is a very good web designer (check out
www.rotates.org,
www.detonalstate.com and
www.loopeh.co.uk) and is willing to do most of the work involved in getting in running. However, that's not the difficult part - what is hardest is keeping it going, content in particular. We have a very active forum here and it would be nice to expand beyond the forum, whilst keeping the website designed to incorporate the forum as much as possible. Basically, I had a few ideas of some features we could do so I'll briefly run through each.
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Daily news With the wealth of daily news information, it wouldn't be neccesary to rewrite it all ourselves but a brief daily roundup of the days headlines - STFC relevant of course - with links and a summary of each would suffice.
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Squad info Just a small section with possibly a brief history on each player, maybe stats if it's not too difficult to keep upto date. Perhaps a small review on each players previous seasons.
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Columns Essentially, I would intend for this to be the crux of the website, the main feature which makes it unique to all of the others. Basically, people could write columns whenever they felt like it on anything that they wanted to rant about where STFC are involved. Maybe a match report, possibly a ticket price complaint, whatever you like. The most important thing is not only that people are willing to contribute regularly, but that people don't feel obliged to contribute. It won't be a job.
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Featured players Maybe a weekly or fortnightly thing where various forumers can write a profile on past or present players, their favourite memories or why they were so shit. Perhaps build up a 'legends' section.
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Match preview I once wrote a match preview for a Rushden & Diamonds website, where they got opposing fans to write a brief summary of their team, key players, tactics, the season so far etc. This may be more difficult to do, but could prove interesting. Mainly, it'd be nice to have a brief section on forthcoming opponents with information on previous meetings, form, players and maybe even ticket/travel/pub information as well but I think OST's column in the programme covers that fairly well.
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Match report Yes, those really long posts I make that nobody reads could get even longer! I'd be pretty happy to do these for all the home games but somebody else would need to do away games. It wouldn't be a match report per se, not in the sense that it would be a chronological review of the games events but a review of individuals performances, the game as a whole, the sort of posts people already make on the forum. I'll buy a notepad for next season.
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'Ask Reg' If he's up for it, we can all send him endless pointless questions and he has to answer them
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Polls Not the sort of shite you get on the Adver site, but link them to the forum to try and spark debate on breaking news, matches, players, ticket prices and whether the Winners lounge is full of old men or not.
Okay, so those are my suggestions for content. I'd appreciate more, so whatever you've got - please post.
Overall, I'm hoping it will be a website that will be for the fans by the fans which is a total cliché, but nevertheless I think it might just work. It'll be about opinion, not fact, and the focus will be on the forum. I don't want to detract from what we've got here, only to improve it. On the negative side, if this does work then it may end up having a detrimental effect on the forums. We could start getting an influx of the mongs from the Adver forums which is the reason we all moved here in the first place but then again, perhaps if we shout and swear at them enough they'll fuck off.
Lastly, if this does take off I can probably get adverts up on the scoreboard and maybe tie it in with the supporters club somehow. We're sponsoring a player next season thanks to Whits' hard work, time and effort, so it would be nice to have something to link it all in with. The only problem would be that if the forum became more widely accessible, we may have to tone down the content a little which isn't ideal really, but maybe a sacrifice worth making for a busier forum. Look at how busy the Shitty forum is, wouldn't you like that here?
Anyway, hopefully this hasn't bored you to death and you've all got something very exciting to say so please respond!
