The third birthday of Ghacks was ten days ago. I received lots of interesting comments in the birthday thread and would like to list them here for discussion. I would also take the opportunity to announce that the ten winners of the Ghacks T-Shirt have been picked and that they should have received an email by now asking them for their preferred T-Shirt design, size and location for shipping.
There have been some interesting comments regarding Ghacks in general. Some of you mentioned things that you would like to see changed or added and I would like to list those in the following paragraph and ask everyone to contribute to the discussion.
Some of them are impossible to fulfill because of restrictions either imposed by coding or monetization but I’m confident that some additions can be implemented in no time to add to the value of the site:
- Make the header logo clickable and link it to the homepage.
- Categorize the blog, add icons to categories, additional RSS feeds(?)
- Better Search
- More images in posts
- Cover additional operating systems
- Add Social functions, more interaction
Some of the points made are clear and easy to understand. I would like to receive additional information about adding more interaction to Ghacks. It would be interesting to see what readers like here and what they do not want to see. I’d also like opinions on the state of the site search, more images in posts and better categorizing the articles.
I was also thinking about something totally crazy. How about an ad free version of Ghacks for subscribers who pay a low yearly fee for that? I’m not sure if there would be interest for this at all and it probably would depend on the price for that as well. The benefits would be a cleaner design and faster loading times basically. What would a reasonable amount be?
If you have anything to add, be it new ideas for Ghacks, comments on what already have been said feel free to comment in this thread. I value every comment. Even a “don’t do this please” is good enough for me. The more comments the better.
Related posts:
Ghacks Birthday CelebrationGhacks T-Shirt Competition
Ghacks T-Shirt Competition Winners
Ghacks Monthly Roundup 1
Happy Birthday Thread
Thunderbird Birthday Reminder
Scriptastique web development roundup
Welcome to gHacks.net
What about a magazine like frontpage? I think the guys from woothemes might be able to consult you with that.
Another grazy idea…
You have used Wordpress for a long time, but I think you have outgrown that system. What about migrating to Drupal and making a true community website. E.g. seobooks.com had also made the decision to migrate to Drupal when his community became big.
About the idea with subscribing to stop getting ads. I think that’s not a very good idea because the people who don’t want ads can always install Adblock plus. And besides not showing ads you don’t have something extra for them to justify the costs.
And indeed search can be much better, I think there is a wordpress plugin for that and another is this one: http://yoast.com/wordpress/search-suggest/
That were my thought on this ;)
Hope is helps
Aargh where is the modification button. I made a spelling error :-P
You could definitely put more pictures to the posts. And what annoys me is that when you write about a program you never give the direct download link. Raymond does that and it helps a lot sometimes… For further suggestions check your mail :)
no post preview? how sad. least we have 4 minutes to edit…
anyway i’m glad the header will soon be clickable :)
(i’ll have to make sure i use my real email here for future contests)
I wouldn’t change a thing. Except for the clicky header. That’s always a quick way back to ground zero.
Or pressing ALT Home to go back to Ghacks, if you know what I mean :-P LOL
I have no problem with the ads on the site. I actually click on them about once a week. You are helping us, so we help you!
I have one thing about the adverts – the Google Adsense one at the start of every article is a pain as it means the article isn’t in a consistent column.
If you can, make it use the whole width and turn it into a ‘jump’ advert that interrupts the text rather than pushing the text to the side.
1.Don’t let gHacks become a dustbin for advertisements.
2. The current theme is good but how about a change?
Something to think about: An old saw says “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. If you can stand the comparison, your blog is what Lockergnome used to be many years ago; a place to get good, common sense help. When you start changing things it becomes a different animal. Thanks for providing a great service to the general public.
@tinwheeler.
That’s something I totally don’t agree with. Changing is very good, but only if you know what you are doing and you are able to know what works by testing.
Change is good!
@Martin. I would like to recommend you to use Google website Optimizer ( http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer ) to do some A/B split tests to see which ads work better and e.g. to do some other tests to increase your conversion rates. A good book to help you with is “Always be testing” from Bryan Eisenberg ( http://www.amazon.com/Always-Be-Testing-Complete-Optimizer/dp/0470290633 )and his other books he wrote (”call to action” and “waiting for your cat to bark?”). And if you have the money you might even hire him or other folks who are doing conversion rate optimization. Which turn down that you do change your website, but to increase conversions and by having a more user friendly site.
And about the different animal. An animal can grow up and become better, but that doesn’t mean that the change means becoming totally different. You can change a whole website without changing your goal/strategy.
E.G. the change from seobook.com wasn’t visible because although the back end changed from typepad (I think?) to Drupal the design stayed totally the same and for a long time I didn’t even know that the back end was changed.
I would definitely vote against a pay for no ads method. As someone said, you’ve no real value to add for such people, and adding that value will tend to fragment the community, IMO.
I think social functions like stuff for digg, delicious, etc are what people were talking about… I don’t use any of those though, so I’m ambivalent about it.
I don’t search via your site. I get here using google reader and if I want to look at an old article, I just use reader for the search.
Also, I didn’t get an email about my shirt… I’m sure you just overlooked me, so I’ll be patient ;o)
Your site works fine for me now. I wish I could think of something positive for improvement, but I can’t. Some of the features suggested sound like they could be helpful to some of your users, and I look forward to seeing improvements for them.
One thing that concerns me is the effect of adding more images to your posts. At some point images can become excessive and slow down the loading of pages for me. That would deteriorate my experience on your website. Please be judicious about increasing images.
The service you offer is, for me, a precis, or summary review, of some interesting item. I use it like a teaser or coming attractions in the movies. If I like the teaser, I go to the movie. If I like the item you write about, I go to the source and get the full original scoop in all its details.
I think you’re really good at choosing interesting items and writing clear, concise summaries. Expanding your posts by adding more verbiage or images wouldn’t help me in my own search for information. It would actually slow me down at getting to your source. So, please be careful how you “fix” things.
Following on from what Bill said, it seems worthwhiole to include further images, should you choose to do so, as linked thumbnails.
Martin, you do an awesome job. I love the site.
If you offered an ad free edition, I would contribute as long as it was reasonable. Not for improvement as I agree with Bill completely, but to support the site. This site for me is like leaving the part of my brain that endlessly roves the web in search of cool and useful software, permanantly online and at work. Even on sunday. The only thought I would offer on the subject, is the people that would purchase are also the people that regularly click the ads, so your ad revenues would take a small hit.
If I could ask for anything I thought would make it better for me personally, it would be a mobile version. From time to time I access it with my palm and its tough to read it on the blazer browser.