tradedemon
05-02-2009, 08:59 PM
Hi guys,
Sorry to have to do this to you all but I have a few big announcements and some big changes pending on the horizon. Hopefully these will all benefit the site :) so here it goes.
Staff
Since the turn of the new site the staffing situation hasn't exactly been 100% and while it's inevitable that people move on with other parts of their life and leave other parts behind the staffing on sigbar is one area that I'm really looking to redo.
Not only is there a need to replace certain members who have left us but with more sections planned for the future we're going to need more people helping out and taking charge of these newer sections. Hopefully many of these updates won't be a shock but they have to be made. I see these as positive changes that will make the sigbar experience even better.
Stepping Up & Stepping Down
Noobie & tradedemon - Firstly our beloved noobie is having to take some time off and although she's still with us, and hopefully able to return very soon. For now I will be resuming overall site management and ownership duties. It's been a while since I've really been active on this forum so hopefully it will give me a chance to catch up with old and new.
Etha - Etha, a long standing staffer and extremely loyal member to sigbar and some of my other sites has finally been promoted from super mod to a full ranking admin. I'm sure you'll all agree she deserves her new role, please congratulate her on her recent promotion.
KRS25 - KRS a relatively new member but one with no shortage of enthusiasm and ideas has recently been working with me to help fix up the competitions section. He will be joining us as a super moderator and also taking charge of the competitions section from Beezleboss who will be stepping down. KRS25 has some great new ideas for the comps so we'll keep you posted on those changes very soon.
Beezleboss - Due to personal reasons beezleboss who I've personally enjoyed working with is having to step down for health reasons. We wish him a fast recovery and good health for the future.
More To Come - Due to further upcoming changes we will be posting new roles in the coming weeks for which we will be opening the application process. Although we usually recruit by direct contact (i.e. don't take applications) this time round applications will be possible as many of these sections will be new.
New Sections & Post Counts
Resources - One of the largest new sections we've added has to be the graphics resources section. This was requested on many occaissions in the past but due to the whole lets wait for VBulletin it never came about. It's finally been marked up today and I'll be recruiting some staff very shortly to help grow and develop this into a booming and regularly updated area for the site.
Post Counts - As of today some of the more spammier forums will not contribute to your post count. An example includes the forum games section which is filled with short 1-3 word posts. We want a high post count to represent those members who have really participated in the more graphic related forums. We don't want to discourage users to use the casual chat areas but ultimately posts in those threads don't add anything to the graphics dimension of the site.
More Usergroups
To promote further activity and more organisation for the sites future growth, we've decided to add some new usergroups. Again these groups were actually planned some time ago but were put on hold until we moved to VB. I'll list them below to give you a quick overview. Some of these can be earned via participation others via payment and others by strict selection only, so here it goes.
Publishing Team - I've already mentioned this initiative in another post, so check that for full details, but ultimately these guys will help write tutorials, create resource packs and ultimately bring fresh new content to both the forums and main site. If we want to grow bigger and take on some of the more established sites this is an initative that really needs to take off. As of now I have 2 members on the official publishing team (although they haven't officially announced, wait for that announcement soon)
Request Team - Requests have always been a big part of the site and although everyone is free to help out we've always had a few members who go the extra mile in helping requests. We want to reward these members with a special rank and inclusion within the request team.
Not only do they deserve this special rank but it also helps us recognise future talent and possible nominees for future staff recommendations. Most of you will know that many of our admins and veteran super mods all came through the request fulfillment track. So if you're looking to get onto the sigbar staff, this could well be your first step towards inclusion.
Marketing Team - The Marketing team is a new concept and one that is extremely important to the future growth of this site. Not only is it a great opportunity to get involved with web marketing, seo and learning the inside tips and tricks of web promotion but its an area that I value highly.
Roles of the marketing team will include; submitting us to various directories and top sites, finding link partners, bringing on board new members, helping us sell our advertising inventory and most importantly coming up with new funky methods of getting our name out there. Some of the advertising members i have on some of my other forums have previously done stuff like submitting youtube videos with our links in them, running competitions on other forums (sponsored by us of course) and such and such. If you think you could help in this area, you'll get an opportunity to apply soon.
Premium Member - The name says it all, but this membership will only be available via a subscription payment of ($25 per year). We've never accepted donations before but due to its suggestion on a number of occaissions we thought we'd give this a go in the form of a value added donators club.
Donations are great but we don't want your hard earned money for nothing. If you like the site, and want to help it grow you can donate $25 which goes towards the running and growth of the site and it will give you the following benefits and of course the unique user title and rank of Premium member.
- Access to a fast track request services (basically your requests for sigs get serviced before everyone elses)
- Premium members forum (a place where you'll get access to news, updates and certain announcements well before everyone else, and hopefull a cool place to chat for your premium members)
- Not decided yet but hopefully access to some premium resource pages
The above is not 100% finalised yet so you may expect more or slightly different perks in the final version.
Final Words
Theres a lot of cool things coming up and the only aspect that's limiting their deployment is time and (occaissionally money). However despite that I'll be posting some new threads in the coming weeks to get some of the above usergroups and staff recruitment opportunities off the ground.
I'm really excited with the upcoming changes and I hope you guys will be too. With all the delays and setbacks of the sites migration behind us lets hope for an amazing Summer of 2009 :cool:.
Sorry to have to do this to you all but I have a few big announcements and some big changes pending on the horizon. Hopefully these will all benefit the site :) so here it goes.
Staff
Since the turn of the new site the staffing situation hasn't exactly been 100% and while it's inevitable that people move on with other parts of their life and leave other parts behind the staffing on sigbar is one area that I'm really looking to redo.
Not only is there a need to replace certain members who have left us but with more sections planned for the future we're going to need more people helping out and taking charge of these newer sections. Hopefully many of these updates won't be a shock but they have to be made. I see these as positive changes that will make the sigbar experience even better.
Stepping Up & Stepping Down
Noobie & tradedemon - Firstly our beloved noobie is having to take some time off and although she's still with us, and hopefully able to return very soon. For now I will be resuming overall site management and ownership duties. It's been a while since I've really been active on this forum so hopefully it will give me a chance to catch up with old and new.
Etha - Etha, a long standing staffer and extremely loyal member to sigbar and some of my other sites has finally been promoted from super mod to a full ranking admin. I'm sure you'll all agree she deserves her new role, please congratulate her on her recent promotion.
KRS25 - KRS a relatively new member but one with no shortage of enthusiasm and ideas has recently been working with me to help fix up the competitions section. He will be joining us as a super moderator and also taking charge of the competitions section from Beezleboss who will be stepping down. KRS25 has some great new ideas for the comps so we'll keep you posted on those changes very soon.
Beezleboss - Due to personal reasons beezleboss who I've personally enjoyed working with is having to step down for health reasons. We wish him a fast recovery and good health for the future.
More To Come - Due to further upcoming changes we will be posting new roles in the coming weeks for which we will be opening the application process. Although we usually recruit by direct contact (i.e. don't take applications) this time round applications will be possible as many of these sections will be new.
New Sections & Post Counts
Resources - One of the largest new sections we've added has to be the graphics resources section. This was requested on many occaissions in the past but due to the whole lets wait for VBulletin it never came about. It's finally been marked up today and I'll be recruiting some staff very shortly to help grow and develop this into a booming and regularly updated area for the site.
Post Counts - As of today some of the more spammier forums will not contribute to your post count. An example includes the forum games section which is filled with short 1-3 word posts. We want a high post count to represent those members who have really participated in the more graphic related forums. We don't want to discourage users to use the casual chat areas but ultimately posts in those threads don't add anything to the graphics dimension of the site.
More Usergroups
To promote further activity and more organisation for the sites future growth, we've decided to add some new usergroups. Again these groups were actually planned some time ago but were put on hold until we moved to VB. I'll list them below to give you a quick overview. Some of these can be earned via participation others via payment and others by strict selection only, so here it goes.
Publishing Team - I've already mentioned this initiative in another post, so check that for full details, but ultimately these guys will help write tutorials, create resource packs and ultimately bring fresh new content to both the forums and main site. If we want to grow bigger and take on some of the more established sites this is an initative that really needs to take off. As of now I have 2 members on the official publishing team (although they haven't officially announced, wait for that announcement soon)
Request Team - Requests have always been a big part of the site and although everyone is free to help out we've always had a few members who go the extra mile in helping requests. We want to reward these members with a special rank and inclusion within the request team.
Not only do they deserve this special rank but it also helps us recognise future talent and possible nominees for future staff recommendations. Most of you will know that many of our admins and veteran super mods all came through the request fulfillment track. So if you're looking to get onto the sigbar staff, this could well be your first step towards inclusion.
Marketing Team - The Marketing team is a new concept and one that is extremely important to the future growth of this site. Not only is it a great opportunity to get involved with web marketing, seo and learning the inside tips and tricks of web promotion but its an area that I value highly.
Roles of the marketing team will include; submitting us to various directories and top sites, finding link partners, bringing on board new members, helping us sell our advertising inventory and most importantly coming up with new funky methods of getting our name out there. Some of the advertising members i have on some of my other forums have previously done stuff like submitting youtube videos with our links in them, running competitions on other forums (sponsored by us of course) and such and such. If you think you could help in this area, you'll get an opportunity to apply soon.
Premium Member - The name says it all, but this membership will only be available via a subscription payment of ($25 per year). We've never accepted donations before but due to its suggestion on a number of occaissions we thought we'd give this a go in the form of a value added donators club.
Donations are great but we don't want your hard earned money for nothing. If you like the site, and want to help it grow you can donate $25 which goes towards the running and growth of the site and it will give you the following benefits and of course the unique user title and rank of Premium member.
- Access to a fast track request services (basically your requests for sigs get serviced before everyone elses)
- Premium members forum (a place where you'll get access to news, updates and certain announcements well before everyone else, and hopefull a cool place to chat for your premium members)
- Not decided yet but hopefully access to some premium resource pages
The above is not 100% finalised yet so you may expect more or slightly different perks in the final version.
Final Words
Theres a lot of cool things coming up and the only aspect that's limiting their deployment is time and (occaissionally money). However despite that I'll be posting some new threads in the coming weeks to get some of the above usergroups and staff recruitment opportunities off the ground.
I'm really excited with the upcoming changes and I hope you guys will be too. With all the delays and setbacks of the sites migration behind us lets hope for an amazing Summer of 2009 :cool:.