Yes, yes…I know what you’re thinking. Don’t you guys re-design the website every 6 months? Yeah, I like to tweak things up and try new things every once & awhile. I like to change color schemes since I’m fickle. Now, I’m thinking it’s time to re-format and change up ReadJunk.com completely! This entry is mostly me thinking out loud and I’d love to hear your thoughts, opinions, etc.!
Since I read a lot of blogs these days; I think the way that ReadJunk.com is and operates, it would best be suited as a blog like BrooklynVegan, Pitchfork, Prefix, Stereogum and the other countless music news blogs. The way ReadJunk is currently setup, it would work if it was a website that was offering the news first like Rolling Stone, but since we report a lot of news from press releases, and from other websites; it would fit better in a blog format. Right now the main page has a lot of text links, images that don’t get updated that much and it might turn people off that way. Some people might not think the site gets updated a lot. It also doesn’t help that our RSS feeds are completely awful and never update!
I’m currently looking at lots of websites and trying to get ideas on what would work best for ReadJunk.com. I’m thinking having all the latest news, reviews, interviews, staff blogs, etc. be right on the main page. Having that the main focus on the homepage would probably get people coming back more often? Who knows, every time I think something is going to help the site get more popular, it doesn’t happen. But, I’d probably want to get rid of the buddy icons, as much as I like them; it’s time to move away from that. Plus I never update anymore anyway.
For all the articles, I’d just combine them all into one giant category. If there was something like Advice Column, we’d just put “Advice Column: Title of Page” for the name. It would probably be a lot cleaner and less confusing having all these different subsections within a section. I still like blogging on here so I’d like to at least keep my blog. A lot of people currently don’t blog that much, maybe a newer and better admin & format would correct that? Probably still wouldn’t help. For Interviews, I’d get rid of the image header and just have it be text and have a band photo there. Make it easier for other people besides me to add an interview to the site.
For the reviews, most of them will still probably look the way they currently do. Not sure about that yet. I know I don’t want Straight Dirt Reviews anymore since we never do any for those. If we were going to post a fake review, just have it go with the regular review section. For Snap Judgments, as much as I liked them in READ Magazine; it might be time to part ways with that section. I always forget to write them up, and it’s hard coming up with jokes all the time. The Snaps could stay if we find a new way to present them, but I’m not sure.
I’ve already started creating mockups for the site and already like what I came up with. The page is almost all white, clean, and professional looking. White websites don’t look bad if there are a lot of images and that’s something I’m trying to do more of. The biggest concern I have right now is money. If this new project is a lot to do, it might have to be put on the backburner until we can get the money. I wish our site generated enough traffic so we could sell advertising a lot more to pay for these things. Maybe if we switch our site to a blog format, it would increase traffic and then we’d finally be able to make money off ReadJunk.com. Wishful thinking I know. Maybe we can have a fund raiser for ReadJunk.com or put on a benefit show? Either way, I’m not happy with the site and want to change things up. Let me know what you guys think! |
