I'm glad you agree with a few of the points and can see where I'm coming from haha! Just a couple of things that I think need clearing up:
- News being on both the site and forum: Would this basically be the same as the old RSS feed thing which copied articles posted on the main site to a section on the forum?
- Was the 'Ediotti' interview heavily advertised? Was there a CNB made for it etc and a big of promotion? Getting a staff interview is quite a big thing and so driving people to that article should have been high priority. I don't believe that article asked for comments/opinions etc or had any other content than question/answer.
- The Competitions thing is good. Do you do them in News Articles themselves too via that way? In terms of using the comment feature etc, or at least making sure the actual instructions etc are in the article? If so how recently?
- Featured news articles and use of the CNB would be really beneficial in my view. We used to have like 'Hot News' articles which we would really make a fuss of.
- I think the overall look of articles is something which needs looking at as I've noticed a lot of differences in terms of structure. Like I kinda like the red bolded part at the bottom of articles, but if you do that I think you need to stick to it, and some don't have it at all, or have a different colour etc and it looks weird.
Just looking at November very quickly (not reading these in detail):
http://prntscr.com/2bef8o - spacing issues (needs a space after the first line) and encourages people to comment on the forum which is good but not on the actual article.
http://prntscr.com/2befmk - the layout of the image looks extremely messy, its way too large and takes up the whole page- there should be a restriction on this. No bolding at all in the article.
http://prntscr.com/2befw0 - small spacing issue on the bottom article (probs due to site messing up but should be able to edit it.
http://prntscr.com/2beg8v - a little short and plain. I have to say though that the other rare value ones are lovely in terms of layout so thats already improved.
http://prntscr.com/2begld - this is a better layout although perhaps the image could be somewhere else
http://prntscr.com/2begsu - top article- no bolding, no red bolded section, links do not work within the article (even when u click them) image a bit boring
http://prntscr.com/2beh57 - general structure
http://prntscr.com/2beh7w - image should be in a better place, no bolding, no red, no opening paragraph in bold- inconsistent with other articles on the page.
http://prntscr.com/2behf7 - image looks like it was created on a toaster rather than a computer, no red
http://prntscr.com/2behoz - no image at all, little basic
http://prntscr.com/2behwr - spacing/images
http://prntscr.com/2bei3s - red or blue bolded base line
http://prntscr.com/2bekai - couple of little mistakes, 'subsribe' etc
Didn't really read much into them but they are just things which stand out in general.
and I know what you mean Sam, and I thought your idea of PMing previous staff to return was a good one and did work! Whilst I'm here I want to say well done and thankyou to @-:Undertaker:-; as your Weekly Rare Values articles are always a super interesting read and it's clear you put a lot of time and effort into writing them! Something unique which other fansites don't do which is fab!