As people will be aware, the new design launched surreptitiously on Thursday 30th June. As part of the launch, I thought I would take the time to explain the changes that are going on with the design, and how it will affect users.
The primary reasoning for the design change is to make a transition from a typical blog format, to that of a news portal. As the observant amongst you have already realised, I have started to include real names for articles that are listed, and this forms part of how we will be continuing to develop this website to become the premier resource for Aston Villa fans.
Blog
The blog itself will be undergoing a change of focus with professional columnists contributing to this section, with other contributors being moved to the Terrace Talk section. The blog will contain those writers who are contributing regularly under real names, and thus will form the back bone of the opinion based articles on the site.
We still welcome contributors to the blog, although spaces are limited given the finite amount of seven days in a week, and the need to reserve match days and their preceding/following days for match previews/reviews. At present, we have writers for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We welcome a contributor for Friday, although this option may be limited if demand is high.
Terrace Talk
One of the primary new features we have implemented is called “Terrace Talk”. Terrace Talk is for people who want to contribute articles on a regular basis, and it allows for many fans to contribute as much as they like. It also means that articles in the blog category are not swamped by posters who want to maintain a daily or more frequent posting schedule.
This section does not follow the same rules and regulations as the “Blog”, in that it allows for people to contribute under pseudonyms rather than real usernames. In keeping with this, articles generated by people will appear under Terrace Talk rather than Blog, although they will still occupy a prominent space on the front page when they are first written.
News
Part of staying on top of the situation with regard to Aston Villa is ensuring that the news is paid attention to. After all, where else can you find out if we are signing Shay Given or selling Stewart Downing? For your convenience we have therefore aggregated content from multiple sources to give you all the news you need at your finger tips. At present, we currently include:
Yahoo/Eurosport
Sky Sports
Official Aston Villa
Guardian.co.uk
Express & Star
The Birmingham Mail
We are constantly looking for other outlets to include, so if you use one not listed, please let us know.
Also, because we adopt ethical rules on news aggregation, any news listed in this section appears on the original site when clicked rather than within Aston Villa Life. This means that we are not taking traffic from the linked sites, but rather we are promoting it as dedicated external content.
Coming soon – Fan Sites
In keeping with the decision to aggregate content, we will be looking to absorb all content from fan sites into a dedicated portal. This section will be launched in the future, but will include the best of all the fan sites across the web.
In keeping with our desire to make Aston Villa Life the premier Aston Villa portal, movements will also be made to merge other blogs with this site. Discussions with several sites are ongoing, and further news will be announced at a time where we are able to announce them.
Like the news section, the fan sites section will also follow ethical guidelines meaning that content is only linked rather than “scraped” as it is termed. This means that we maintain our strong community links by providing traffic to the authors of content rather than attempting to merely copy the articles.
As with the news section, if you have a website you would like included, please drop me an email.
Forum/Chatroom
The forum and chatroom are also available for people to use. Over the coming months, we will be recruiting people to take control of these areas in order to ensure their regular patronage. More details will follow when they are available.
Mobile site
We will also be developing and extending the mobile site over the coming months with a view to make it more useful to fans. At present, the mobile site is in a state of flux, but still works. We have had to make changes to incorporate our new design, and thus have changed the home page for the mobile site to point to the blog rather than a generic front page.
More information will follow once we commence work on the mobile side of things.
Still to come
Whilst we have made a lot of changes in terms of the design aesthetics, we are far from finished in terms of the promotion and development of the site.
Part of the reason why we have adopted a portal style approach for the site going forwards is that we need to include wider ranging functionality beyond that of just a blog, as well as ensuring that we reach out to, and link with, suitable corporate partners for sponsorship and traffic generation.
This means that the site will continue to grow at a steady pace, and thus will focus on the aim of cultivating and maintaining a diverse group of voices amongst the fans.
Also, we will be adopting a dedicated section looking for advertisers, so if you own a local business, or you want to advertise to a diverse and ever increasing demographic of Aston Villa fans, please get in contact.
Of course, my recommendation that you get in touch should you want to contribute to site content, to assist with managing the site, or to provide any other service.
The Author
