JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
We have not made any serious changes to the website since we relaunched it in October of 2009, so I felt it was time for a makeover.
The hope is before June 1st, the new look will be in place. Here are some of the highlights:
-A resource 'alley' on the home page as well as the message board pages. On the home page, this will be along the far left side..it will have links to future schedules, Iowa FB, MBB, WBB and Wrestling stats and results, archives, etc...then a load of links related to college football, history, stats, Big Ten stats, etc...we are talking 50+ links that will always be at your fingertips...that alley will be replicated on the message boards more towards the right side...same set of links.
-RSS feeds for Iowa and Big Ten sports...these items will be their own page and the link will be in the header of the home page and message boards. Basically, I have gone out and tracked down the RSS feeds of the Iowa websites whose content I believe to be relevant to our visitors. It will be aggregated in one simple and easy place. This is something I have wanted to do since the winter, when the folks who developed our app pulled content from this site into the app...that was when I went out and picked up a couple hawkeye related urls to eventually brand these RSS pages. We'll have one for Big Ten content, too...these pages will pull stories in real time..as well as having twitter feeds from select Hawkeye writers and bloggers, and the same for the Big Ten. All of the content we display on this page will come from free sites.
-HN Video Module: We will be doing regular video productions this fall, and there will be a video module where you can watch the latest commentaries, player interviews, etc, on the home page
-The forums will be mostly unchanged, save for the forum landing page to be on this page:
Forums - HawkeyeNation Forum
However, you can still bookmark whatever landing page you want and you will see a forum drop down menu that will allow you to view the 'catch all' landing page that pulls the latest posts from all forums, the way it is now.
The forums will also be more narrow, but only slightly. I did this redesign to scale and based it off of a 1280 pixel width laptop view...the forums will be 980 pixels wide, or about 160 pixels narrower than they are right now...or about 12.5% more narrow. Not a huge difference. This is going to be due to the aforementioned resource alley...so the decrease in forum width was to accommodate more features for the end user and enhancing that experience.
The Recruiting Project: We are getting closer. I want to launch this thing on a larger scale, with more websites taking part in it than just HawkeyeNation. I am in the process of reaching out to independent sports websites across the country and working on a project that will 'network' us together in some key areas...this recruiting project is one of them. I am speaking with a company that is going to design it for me...ideally, I'd love to get it launched in November. I will keep you posted on it...the delay in implementing this has everything to do with waiting for the right time. I dont want to release it just for this site and have some company rip it off and roll it out on a mass scale. I think this is going to be a great user experience, which means significant traffic, which means some folks would love to 'emulate it' to put it nicely...if I do it on a small scale, they'll win. I don't want to hand this concept over to someone else..so it will be released exactly when it was supposed to be released
Like everything else associated with this site, it will be free.
Advertising: Ads allow me to operate this site, pay for the monthly overhead (which is in the four figures) and help pay a few family bills. I want this site to remain 100% and that is going to be possible for the foreseeable future, thanks to your patronage and the ads that generate the revenues. We will be moving the vertical ads to the right side of the page, which will be an improvement. We are a left to right reading culture, so the vertical ads will not seem as intrusive due to the change in location. We will be bringing back the Digital Sports Venture video player, but it too will be on the right hand side. It will remain as long as the revenues it produces are crucial to my company and as of right now they are.
There will be a couple horizontal ads at the top, but fewer than there are now. We will have a toolbar at the bottom of each page that is static, meaning it stays put..that is where our local sponsors will be. I put a lot of thought and research into these aspects, read several studies to make sure we combined as much content on the left side of the page and closer to the top, which we have done, and moved the ads to the right.
I am also hopeful that over the course of the next 12 months, I will be able to hire some staff. Storminspank has done a great job of helping me, and he's done it for no personal gain. So he'll certainly be one of the folks that gets a first crack. I have a few others in mind but that is down the road a bit more. I will keep you posted.
I tell you these things so you understand why the ads are here...I am not content with where the site is right now. I want for the traffic to double in the next 24 months. That can't happen without investments on my end towards infrastructure and personnel. I am making infrastructure investments now and will be doing that all year...then come the personnel investments.
On the whole, there will be fewer ads per page than there are right now.
Thanks for reading this and thank you for your support of this site.
If you have an suggestions, criticisms, etc, feel free to send me a private message or an email at my address below.
The hope is before June 1st, the new look will be in place. Here are some of the highlights:
-A resource 'alley' on the home page as well as the message board pages. On the home page, this will be along the far left side..it will have links to future schedules, Iowa FB, MBB, WBB and Wrestling stats and results, archives, etc...then a load of links related to college football, history, stats, Big Ten stats, etc...we are talking 50+ links that will always be at your fingertips...that alley will be replicated on the message boards more towards the right side...same set of links.
-RSS feeds for Iowa and Big Ten sports...these items will be their own page and the link will be in the header of the home page and message boards. Basically, I have gone out and tracked down the RSS feeds of the Iowa websites whose content I believe to be relevant to our visitors. It will be aggregated in one simple and easy place. This is something I have wanted to do since the winter, when the folks who developed our app pulled content from this site into the app...that was when I went out and picked up a couple hawkeye related urls to eventually brand these RSS pages. We'll have one for Big Ten content, too...these pages will pull stories in real time..as well as having twitter feeds from select Hawkeye writers and bloggers, and the same for the Big Ten. All of the content we display on this page will come from free sites.
-HN Video Module: We will be doing regular video productions this fall, and there will be a video module where you can watch the latest commentaries, player interviews, etc, on the home page
-The forums will be mostly unchanged, save for the forum landing page to be on this page:
Forums - HawkeyeNation Forum
However, you can still bookmark whatever landing page you want and you will see a forum drop down menu that will allow you to view the 'catch all' landing page that pulls the latest posts from all forums, the way it is now.
The forums will also be more narrow, but only slightly. I did this redesign to scale and based it off of a 1280 pixel width laptop view...the forums will be 980 pixels wide, or about 160 pixels narrower than they are right now...or about 12.5% more narrow. Not a huge difference. This is going to be due to the aforementioned resource alley...so the decrease in forum width was to accommodate more features for the end user and enhancing that experience.
The Recruiting Project: We are getting closer. I want to launch this thing on a larger scale, with more websites taking part in it than just HawkeyeNation. I am in the process of reaching out to independent sports websites across the country and working on a project that will 'network' us together in some key areas...this recruiting project is one of them. I am speaking with a company that is going to design it for me...ideally, I'd love to get it launched in November. I will keep you posted on it...the delay in implementing this has everything to do with waiting for the right time. I dont want to release it just for this site and have some company rip it off and roll it out on a mass scale. I think this is going to be a great user experience, which means significant traffic, which means some folks would love to 'emulate it' to put it nicely...if I do it on a small scale, they'll win. I don't want to hand this concept over to someone else..so it will be released exactly when it was supposed to be released
Like everything else associated with this site, it will be free.Advertising: Ads allow me to operate this site, pay for the monthly overhead (which is in the four figures) and help pay a few family bills. I want this site to remain 100% and that is going to be possible for the foreseeable future, thanks to your patronage and the ads that generate the revenues. We will be moving the vertical ads to the right side of the page, which will be an improvement. We are a left to right reading culture, so the vertical ads will not seem as intrusive due to the change in location. We will be bringing back the Digital Sports Venture video player, but it too will be on the right hand side. It will remain as long as the revenues it produces are crucial to my company and as of right now they are.
There will be a couple horizontal ads at the top, but fewer than there are now. We will have a toolbar at the bottom of each page that is static, meaning it stays put..that is where our local sponsors will be. I put a lot of thought and research into these aspects, read several studies to make sure we combined as much content on the left side of the page and closer to the top, which we have done, and moved the ads to the right.
I am also hopeful that over the course of the next 12 months, I will be able to hire some staff. Storminspank has done a great job of helping me, and he's done it for no personal gain. So he'll certainly be one of the folks that gets a first crack. I have a few others in mind but that is down the road a bit more. I will keep you posted.
I tell you these things so you understand why the ads are here...I am not content with where the site is right now. I want for the traffic to double in the next 24 months. That can't happen without investments on my end towards infrastructure and personnel. I am making infrastructure investments now and will be doing that all year...then come the personnel investments.
On the whole, there will be fewer ads per page than there are right now.
Thanks for reading this and thank you for your support of this site.
If you have an suggestions, criticisms, etc, feel free to send me a private message or an email at my address below.
