Hey everyone,

After discussing this with G, we've decided to post this and ask you what you think. Everyone knows that Flexbeta is a technology news website and that larger sites like slashdot, digg, and news.com have taken over pretty much all of the market share. Because of this, our traffic to the site has been decreasing as time goes by. What we're proposing to fix this problem:

Change Flexbeta's purpose. Instead of all general tech news, make it more specific on only a handful of topics such as: Operating Systems, Programming (web and software), and Computer Techinical Help. (others could be included, please post more ideas)

Change Flexbeta's look. We all know that there is a new template coming. With this fresh start, Flexbeta can start from scratch (to a point). A new Flexbeta, a new look.

Add functionalty. Blogs, E-mail, FAQ databases. Slip stream all that into one perfectly built site.

Closer community. With less topics on the forums, there can be less confusion as to were someone posts, if a person gets flamed, etc. The forums could bring people sharing the same troubles together to figure out a solution. How many posts have you seen unanswered?

Ok, so that's all that I can think of now. Please post your feedback and vote a general yes or no as to the idea (yes, it's a good idea, no, it generally blows).

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,
-Xander

Simplicity is better. Less is more. The more you see, the WC.

I say we make it as simple as possible.

p.s.
I've got a working base engine, but it's far from useful, since all it does is displaying news... all of it... thanks to a stupid break I have inserted somewhere :S

I think we should implement the new flexbeta design, giving it just a makeover and take it from there!

If you guys wanted to have a special x amount of bux for an email name@flexbeta for anyone that wanted to purchase one, it could help out in costs for the site also. Just a thought.

It's really not a money thing, actually. We just want to see Flexbeta thrive again.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

If Flexbeta wants more traffic Flextorrent could be integrated like torrentspy...maybe

i like that idea! i think maybe flexbeta should reflect on its name a little more and be a beta site... news, reviews, previews, etc. on software in their beta stages. Vista for example, which Flex already does a good job with reporting on

Sounds like a good idea, as long as the community is behind it theres no reason it won't work

Top top top tip...dont do it until its done and tested and works, if you start to slowly build up the new site it will look a bit strange to new visitors and might put them off



IDEA/AGREE: Integrate latest flexbeta news onto flextorrents, and make heavy links back to flexbeta?

personally i think we have gotten away from betas and that drive we had years ago ... we're more like ..slashdot or warp2search ...no real focus on anything... We need our drive back

Those ideas sound really cool. And it would help Flex concentrate on partivular things too. It would be a cool idea if the main page gave options to use different skins. Not neccesserily different designs, different colour schemes is what I mean. Anyway it's just a suggestion. Flex probably doesn't need it.

One really cool thing to get hits and views to your site is offer simple syndication for other websites

i.e. offer a piece of javascript that will show the last 10 or so news articles on flexbeta on someones website, if its easy people are likely to use it -> better page rank -> more hits -> more popular!

That should be done easy with the RSS I think...

Not necessarily RSS, but I mean someone adds a few lines of code to their website and the last 5/10 news items appear on their site

The idea being people see it, click to read more, see how good flex is and stay here!

Bring back the beta softwares. When I signned up here, I was attracted to the vast amount of beta softwares being available and discuss.

That's how I found this site in the first place. it was back when it was really hard to find a beta for windows media player 10, I found it here. So I got interested in reading the articles and as time went by I joined as I felt like commenting on the articles

That's something that needs to be done fast imo... Bring the beta back in flexbeta...

I hear yah guys. Keep em pumping. I notice many of you guys saying the same thing, beta software.

didn't i tell ya, G?

I like the way our forums are, whenever someone new posts they are usually greeting and encouraged to stick around once their question is answered. I think that our news should be a greater priority, which will be done with the layout change. The one concern I have is that when you go to our main page right now you don't see news until you scroll down. News should be the first thing they see and then they should notice we have a forum, etc.

Something like BetaNews.com ?

exactly. lol i was just talking about that....... lol

beta software ROCKS! would be a great idea =)

Yeh, people would love to try out things before it was made public. And Flexbeta could be the place they heard about it. It would cause them to stay for more.

Well it really all comes down to what people want from the forum.
I joined FB primarily because the user base felt personal. At the time I liked the news articles and the fact that we could have discussions on them. We also started having TOTD and discussions on hardware, etc. That's the kind of stuff I like to see from tech sites.
And I liked that there were tech discussions and question/problems were answered by people I felt I knew somewhat, and that I could offer advice assistance in that aspect.

Unfortunately now its as if all that has gone.....and FB seems to be striving to be more like the 'other' sites. We don't have real discussions on anything really, anymore. We haven't discussed new hardware/software in forever. We haven't talked about new tech trends emerging (802.11n, the death of 939 pin, what's coming up?). And we haven't had any in-depth beta discussions, just the round of the mill vista and wmp11 faq/official thread, etc.....and the news, God, the news articles are 'cut and paste' and link to betanews, the inquirer, and other 'every person who's into computers visits this site' sites; if I don't visit FB FIRST then by the time I get here, I'm reading stale news, and it just never used to be like this.

Don't know exactly what changed but something did. Before we get more complex and such, maybe we should go back to our roots and replant. And decide what kind of site it is....is it beta related only? news related only? reviews/discussions only? or jack-of-all trades master of none?

I agree everyone loves a good beta... even leaked ones =D

I think we also need more reviewing of this software, as well as just released versions of it. As I request in my last news-posts on the frontpage btw.

Having the RSS module work 100% would be nice.

do i hear a whip noise?

great feedback people!

@Neoprimal: about the forums, to me it's personal too

Current error is from a non-encoded ampersand in the article

Change & to & I can fix this error if you want, easy as 1 line of code htmlspecialchars()

Thats right, im cracking the whip. Get back to work! LOL.

If you need any help just let me know.

I've never taken a close look at the RSS module... hmmm... neither do I have a clue on how I can do that... since I can't figure out where it lives....

@Sphere track down where the article is submitted, then just before it inserts the data into the database convert all symbols to html safe entities e.g. &

what I'D like to see:

1 - refocus our attention of what we founded the site on
2 - cut the bots/ads and junk out ..its in the way more than it is helpful
3 - design MUST be clean and slick .. ex: take a look at aeroxp, and other boards which have the information organized and not so much like warp2search and slashdot

Remove the whole of the left panel on the front page. It is a repetition of links.

"Same here"

also, use something like an automated tech news feed like freshnews.org or techmeme.com

NO don't use other sites news article feeds, news articles should be either written BY us or posted on the site by us

Maybe you should try to have a greater conritubtion to news articles from members, and encourage news posting of anything beta related

Unfortunately that opens the door to spammers "damn shame"

But surely if you have a seperate forum/form for people to submit news posts, then staff just copy/paste to the front page any good articles, and the remainder could be purged daily removing any chance of spam

I say it to aid the news posts in finding articles and writing them to provide more content for the front page which is ultimately what will draw visitors in

How is the site gonna stay up and running without any funding from the ads? Sure it might be a small amount, but hey atleast it helps.

I agree. I think one panel is more than enough.

I dont like the idea of having less on the forums. They are big, but thats not a bad thing. The only thing that I really dont like about the site is the dang Bot thats at the end of every post.

Yes and no, flexy is my main site for news instead of searching on many others it gives it all to me which is great. But I suppose their are other sites.

Paul

As I understand it, the bot is there to get more revenue for the site. In that case, it should bother no one

For user submitted news I think it should all go to a queue where no one sees it except mods, admins, and news posters who then approve it for the homepage.

The Bot is alright.

paleck - thats what I was trying to say!

O, yea. I think that that would be a good system.

Whoa, step away for a few days and look what I miss!

Here are my thoughts...

1.) New design - it's lookin great and will add a lot once it's in place.

2.) Yes, we're doing too much right now. I've never come to Flex for breaking news, it's just not what I feel is the main focus of this site, but some news stories are nice to see and keeps the main page interesting. I think the focus of our news should be beta software though. When you think about it, most of the times Flex has been Slashdotted or posted on another news site (such as Digg) it's for: New info on betas or in depth articles on new or beta software (screen shots of beta software really pull people here).

3.) I love our forums and community, it's the number one reason I'm here every day. I think that with the reduced traffic we've seen the forums have become a bit quiet since there aren't as many people asking questions. That being said, the other reason Flex is my fav. place to be is because you can actually ask questions and discuss things with friendly, knowledgable people. With sites like Digg and /. most of the members that post are annoying and don't contribute anything to the discussion. I'd honestly hate it if I ever showed up to Flex and read an article or thread to see the first response being anything like the following: "First Post!", "FP!", or "FP!?!". The forums make this site, it's important we restructure them and make them easier for new members.

4.) I've always thought the main focus of Flex's forums are: beta discussion, OS and software help/troubleshooting, hardware help/troubleshooting. That being said, I think the following forum topics could be condensed to something like this (not trying to bash who likes these forums, just my 2c):
EDIT:
OK, wow....that post got much longer then I anticipated, but I think restructuring the forums and cutting out the fluff will help new members get a hold on our community, which will help us grow. Since my post got kind of long and hard to read I'm attaching a PDF and DOC with an easier to read layout of what I'm thinking for the forums. Again, only a suggestion and feel free to make changes (it's why I attached the DOC instead of just PDF) and suggestions.

I agree about beta news but I'm worried that members won't agree and leave me site because of it. I suggest that we do something like /. and have different sections for different news. That way you can make everyone happy and plus you don't have to shove it all on one page.