Lex
Administrator
This thread will serve as a roundup of the changes that have been made and in finalising everything in preparation for the new year so that we can roll into it full steam ahead.
Discussion is ongoing in the site design thread where Obs (The Engineer) - as a newly appointed Site Designer - has been hard at work bringing synergy to the look of the pages and articles on the site.
Our site developer Fangu and owner Yop have been discussing how best to move forward re: test servers, important plugin implementation and a forum upgrade.
Tetsujin as our newly appointed Final Fantasy Editor has been hard at work sourcing general FF news - which we agreed via poll that we would cover - and putting up articles in relation to that. Tets, are you happy to continue doing this? In discussing this with other staff members I saw that the responsibility may be a bit overwhelming and came up with the idea that it might be better to split it down the middle - so someone gets pre-VII and someone gets post-VII news. I realise that this is somewhat imbalanced so if you're happy to continue doing what you've been doing then that's also great, just remember that you can ask others to write newsposts too (including me).
Flintlock - our new community manager - has undertaken his role with gusto (we expected no less) and has created many a thread such as the status of community projects, a 2015 event calendar and overseeing community events, such as the community playthrough. He has also been updating the front page with news of these events.
LicoriceAllSorts - our new Fan Works Editor - has started some interesting discussions that can be used as good fodder for the site and help keep up our activity on the forums.
Shademp is now the Compilation of FFVII Editor and continues to be our biggest FFVII guru providing us with some of the most in-depth and interesting content we have re: Unused text, version differences etc. in FFVII. His coverage of content has never changed, only his title
.
AvecAloes is now a site editor and will help other editors and writers by proofreading and making edits to any mistakes posted on the front site. In addition she has also agreed to take over the responsibility of overseeing the maintenance and simplicity of the site tags and categories.
Dark and Divine, Tres, ForceStealer and Ryu all continue to be site authors and are free to write posts unless they indicate otherwise.
Thank you so much to everybody for stepping up and moving forward with all of this.
Here are a few things we need to address to move on:
There was talk of getting someone as a FF Merchandise Editor. If someone would like to do this (current staff or not), feel free to put yourself forward. If not, I don't think this role is entirely necessary anyway. I have a vague memory of someone saying they wouldn't mind doing it but right now can't remember who it was.
Can everyone please get involved in the discussion about the forum upgrade: this isn't just about tech-related stuff (although that's a big part of it) - upgrading is a chance for us to revamp the forum and we can add new features or lose old ones based on both the software that we choose to go with as well as what everyone here wants from the user experience. It's going to change, how much or how little is going to depend on what people want and what the new software is capable of, whether that be vB5 or something else.
Lastly - and this is really really important - we need someone to take charge of TLS's social media channels. Quite frankly, I suck at keeping the Twitter and the Google+ updated. The Tumblr created by Danseru a long time ago also hasn't seen an update or much activity in a while. The only page with some success is the Facebook which I believe Flint and Pixel have access to, but I don't.
I think the best approach is for someone to step up and take the role of Social Media Manager, and then give people who are willing to contribute access to all of our social media channels. How to move forward with that will be at their discretion, but I've been a social media manager for a business and there are two distinct paths to go down:
First is the minimal approach, where you use software (there's free software) to update each channel at once when a new post is made. This is good for hits but not for community engagement.
The best approach IMO is to have all of these channels open and have a team of people for each channel. This might not be so feasible for us, but the point of social media isn't just to get our articles out there in the intersphere, it's to engage with people. To respond to messages on Facebook posts, to respond to Tweets and/or messages on Google+. Tumblr is more the place where you dump something and hope people reblog it, less about community interaction.
So my ideal solution would be someone to be our Social Media Manager, and that person's role would be to oversee all of this and drop a service to focus on another where appropriate. The most important are the Facebook and the Twitter IMO. Anyone who uses these channels and is willing will be given account access to interact and update when there's a post on the front site. Who does what is up to the people who are on each channel. I'm happy to continue having access to the Twitter but that doesn't mean much when I continuously forget to update it.
Discussion is ongoing in the site design thread where Obs (The Engineer) - as a newly appointed Site Designer - has been hard at work bringing synergy to the look of the pages and articles on the site.
Our site developer Fangu and owner Yop have been discussing how best to move forward re: test servers, important plugin implementation and a forum upgrade.
Tetsujin as our newly appointed Final Fantasy Editor has been hard at work sourcing general FF news - which we agreed via poll that we would cover - and putting up articles in relation to that. Tets, are you happy to continue doing this? In discussing this with other staff members I saw that the responsibility may be a bit overwhelming and came up with the idea that it might be better to split it down the middle - so someone gets pre-VII and someone gets post-VII news. I realise that this is somewhat imbalanced so if you're happy to continue doing what you've been doing then that's also great, just remember that you can ask others to write newsposts too (including me).
Flintlock - our new community manager - has undertaken his role with gusto (we expected no less) and has created many a thread such as the status of community projects, a 2015 event calendar and overseeing community events, such as the community playthrough. He has also been updating the front page with news of these events.
LicoriceAllSorts - our new Fan Works Editor - has started some interesting discussions that can be used as good fodder for the site and help keep up our activity on the forums.
Shademp is now the Compilation of FFVII Editor and continues to be our biggest FFVII guru providing us with some of the most in-depth and interesting content we have re: Unused text, version differences etc. in FFVII. His coverage of content has never changed, only his title
.AvecAloes is now a site editor and will help other editors and writers by proofreading and making edits to any mistakes posted on the front site. In addition she has also agreed to take over the responsibility of overseeing the maintenance and simplicity of the site tags and categories.
Dark and Divine, Tres, ForceStealer and Ryu all continue to be site authors and are free to write posts unless they indicate otherwise.
Thank you so much to everybody for stepping up and moving forward with all of this.
Here are a few things we need to address to move on:
There was talk of getting someone as a FF Merchandise Editor. If someone would like to do this (current staff or not), feel free to put yourself forward. If not, I don't think this role is entirely necessary anyway. I have a vague memory of someone saying they wouldn't mind doing it but right now can't remember who it was.
Can everyone please get involved in the discussion about the forum upgrade: this isn't just about tech-related stuff (although that's a big part of it) - upgrading is a chance for us to revamp the forum and we can add new features or lose old ones based on both the software that we choose to go with as well as what everyone here wants from the user experience. It's going to change, how much or how little is going to depend on what people want and what the new software is capable of, whether that be vB5 or something else.
Lastly - and this is really really important - we need someone to take charge of TLS's social media channels. Quite frankly, I suck at keeping the Twitter and the Google+ updated. The Tumblr created by Danseru a long time ago also hasn't seen an update or much activity in a while. The only page with some success is the Facebook which I believe Flint and Pixel have access to, but I don't.
I think the best approach is for someone to step up and take the role of Social Media Manager, and then give people who are willing to contribute access to all of our social media channels. How to move forward with that will be at their discretion, but I've been a social media manager for a business and there are two distinct paths to go down:
First is the minimal approach, where you use software (there's free software) to update each channel at once when a new post is made. This is good for hits but not for community engagement.
The best approach IMO is to have all of these channels open and have a team of people for each channel. This might not be so feasible for us, but the point of social media isn't just to get our articles out there in the intersphere, it's to engage with people. To respond to messages on Facebook posts, to respond to Tweets and/or messages on Google+. Tumblr is more the place where you dump something and hope people reblog it, less about community interaction.
So my ideal solution would be someone to be our Social Media Manager, and that person's role would be to oversee all of this and drop a service to focus on another where appropriate. The most important are the Facebook and the Twitter IMO. Anyone who uses these channels and is willing will be given account access to interact and update when there's a post on the front site. Who does what is up to the people who are on each channel. I'm happy to continue having access to the Twitter but that doesn't mean much when I continuously forget to update it.
