Thursday, 5 December 2013

The Future for GMorts Chaotica...

When I started this blog it was simply a place for me to post pictures of things I was doing, army lists I was working on or a place for me to put those vastly overcomplicated and only marginally useful 'Mathshammer' things I used to think were a good idea....I had no idea at that point that I would end up in the situation where over a thousand people a day would be looking at it my random ramblings.

Like many bloggers I often get curious about exactly what people are looking at and fortunately blogger is very helpful in this regard. Though I admittedly get the odd hit based on the search parameters 'hot', 'gothic' and 'Jessica Alba' the majority of the people looking at my blog seem to be looking at the battle reports, un-boxings and rather inexplicably seem to be interested in whatever new game system I'm obsessing about at the time. Compiling links to all the Newsletters I post merely to add snotty comments to the start of seemed to be a resource that interested people as well....

This brainstorming session is going terribly...you all seem distracted...
Though primarily this is a 'personal' blog and therefore is here (for the most part) to fulfil my own needs it seems that the things I enjoy writing about coincide neatly with the things you like to read about which is nice to know so I don't see why I should change something that isn't broken. I do however wish to add a few more features, tidy-up the general format and (hopefully) continue to gain new followers at a nice steady rate as the latter is the nice 'ego-boosting' bit that (if they're honest) keeps most bloggers going...

So what's next then?

The 'Introduction to...' tab at the top of the blog will be the home of the links to a series of articles which will start next week giving basis start-up information on a number of game systems.. These will consist of a first part detailing all the relevant information about the system or game and will be a set format that will hopefully tell you all the basics that you'll need such as game type, number of players, cost, set-up time etc. as well as an overview of the game world, background and any relevant information. A second part that will (if applicable) an un-boxing of any starter set for the system being discussed and a third part consisting of a battle report showing the game in action. This third part will be somewhere between a battle report and a tutorial to give you an idea of both how it plays and how some of the basic rules concepts are handled. If the system should need any further elaboration (if there's many different factions that work differently, perhaps) then there may be parts four and onwards but I'll try not to have them ramble on unnecessarily.

This is also an excellent excuse for me to buy a load of new games and play the hell out of them, lol.

The blog itself also needs tidying up as my sidebar is about as organised as my hobby room...by which I mean...not at all, lol. Certain things like the blog archive and link 'cloud' are pretty much mandatory and given the fact that it's my favourite game system the Malifaux crew progress bit will be staying along with the crew gallery though the 40K gallery may go as it's not really relevant any more and I still have the pictures themselves should they ever become needed. There's also a lot of links that need to be sorted out and I'll try and sort them into one tab with links attached to logo's...my html skills are basic at best but I'm sure I can work it out given a bit of time. The useless or broken ones will obviously get dumped.

I also need to consider what I'm going to do about the blog roll. I've never really given this much attention so I need to look into giving it a bit more consideration. Provisionally I may change the blog format to have a sidebar on the left as well and just use that for the blog roll though I would like to divide it into different tabs for blogs specialising in different areas though that might be a bit ambitious as there's already a perfectly good blog network that deals with such things. Also on that subject I'll be back writing for the House of Paincakes blog network next week and that will mean that the gothic, steampunk, cosplay galleries will return to their Wednesday spot with a suitable warning for those viewers who aren't interested in such things.


Further into the future I'd like to also add some hobby galleries accessed via a tab at the top of the blog but I'm not sure how well that idea translates into a blogger format and I've also approached several people about doing some guest articles in order to cover the things that I don't know much about...or just suck at...

Eventually I hope to turn this blog into a hub for all things related to our hobby with features for both those hobbyists looking for something new and those experienced ones alike...as long as they like the things I like that is, lol.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome. Especially if there's anything you really want to see...or not see, I suppose.

2 comments:

  1. Whatever direction you decide to take the blog in, I heartily look forward to seeing it as your articles (yes, even the ones just adding some snark at the front of a newsletter post) are always a highlight as I go through the blogs I'm following :)

    ReplyDelete