Portagame: Becoming Relevant Again
Portagame.com has always had a soft spot in my heart. In the early days, I poured my heart and soul into this site and built it up to be a fairly successful portal for the portable gaming world. I loved to blog about new hardware, and loved to search for news related to my favorite past time.
Then a cross country move, a new job with a lot more responsibility and a pregnancy have all but kissed my free time goodbye. I actually ended up selling Portagame.com to another owner and remained on board to do the occasional editing. Well, that didn’t really work out as planned. No new writers were brought in as I was hoping and no new content was placed by myself either.
Well, it’s time for a kick in the pants.
I’ve personally hired someone to help me trick this place up. They won’t do content but they will do the design and software. I’m struggling to figure out whether I should continue using b2evolution as my software, or scrap all the archived data we built over the years (which is still getting a TON of traffic – about 1 to 2K uniques per day, not bad for a dead site) and start something new with a Drupal type CMS. Or we might just switch to another standard like Wordpress. Either way, we are going to switch it up. Our goal is to be relevant.
I’ll also be looking for writers in the near future as well. Paid and non-paid, whether through hard cash-money, AdSense impressions, or free reach-arounds, writers will get paid.
The current owner will remain owner of the domain and copyrights. I will retain editorial control of the site, but the advertisements and revenue that doesn’t go to pay writers will go to the owner.
And, I am hoping to develop a community. For those that recall, in the early early days of Portagame, we had a kickass forum. Our host at the time wasn’t able to run the forum because it had too much traffic and was too processor intensive, so we had to close it down. I’m sure this is one of the biggest mistakes of my life (should have found a new host, but this was through a friend), but live and let learn, right?
So, my goal is to make Portagame relevant. Again. I’m going to reach out to my industry contacts and PR firms and let them know when writers are ready for any news they send their way. I’ll be going back to my inside sources (some of which have remained good friends) and let them know that Portagame is stoking the fire once again. There are some BIG things happening in the handheld industry RIGHT NOW and out of our love for all things portable, we want to be there when it does.
Peace and love,
The once silent Jason.
Comments
Yay! A portagame remix! Hmmm. The only reason I started comming to this site is because it was the only game related site that wasn’t blocked by my highschool’s internet filter. Fun times. This place is actually kind of cool.
I still stop by every once in a while to see what’s new and in search of cool random things that the “big game sites” don’t feature.
Hmmm… Writers? Can I be a writer? That sounds like it’d be fun! I just got this new laptop and I’m totally motivated to write stuff!
Dude.. DON’T HIRE ppl.. Your site is perfect just the way it is – It doesn’t need a remake, it doesn’t need flashy crap “to look like eveyone else” It is 100% fine the way it is.
I do agree you need activity here. I found this place about 1 year ago, and loved it since. I wouldn’t think you’d need to pay ppl to do editing/reviews/blogs, but that’s up to you I suppose. But certainly don’t pay some fools to come in and ‘revamp’ things.. And though I don’t know whether your current package is a pain to edit, again, why change and lose all that history?
Just my $.02 cents
Rooster
I don’t agree. There are some major changes needing to be made. Placements of ads? (It’s messy.) How about the fact that this site covers all portable gaming, yet the header only features a PSP graphic? Hmmm… Yes activity is needed, and though there might be “the usuals” that visit the site, in order to attract new visitors and keep old ones visiting frequently, this place needs to be aesthetically pleasing, it needs to be updated often with relevant/captivating/interesting information/articles, it’s needs to stand apart, and such is achieved by following the trends… Looking bad is not a good way to be different. Let’s be different, but in a good way, hmm?
Nah – you’re both right. Portagame needs the bling but also needs to keep its unique feel.
We’re not doing the flash route, nor will we have the standard “Master Cheif / Sonic / Mario / Samus / WoW” graphical header. We’re just working on cleaning up the image.
I really like the idea of making the place a forum with articles on the front page.
Oh, BTW – the PSP header graphic changes when you select the different areas. But most people only stick to the main page.
Also – a feature that I need for the new system would be an email notification whenever anyone makes a comment. Sorry to let these sit without replying soon.
Okay, I see. You’re right. (How silly of me.) I usually stick to the main page, seeing as there really isn’t a difference… The seperate pages just section off the different catagories of information, that’s all. Doesn’t seem all that usefull when I think about it. Still, PSP as the main header…
E-mail notification is nice. For the important stuff, I like to know when somebody has replied to something I put my heart into. The simple format of the site is cool, but you have to admit, the other sites do look cool.
No need to hire anybody. There are hundreds of thousands of people willing to do stuff for free (such as myself, though I might not be “qualified”…) just for the experience/fun of it all. Of course, if I or anyone else doesn’t meet your requirements/tastes, it’s easy to say so and deal accordingly
Is it just me, or is it weird that we’re the only ones discussing this issue? Maybe we’re the only ones who care, but still… It’s just werid to me that nobody else had responded to such an important update… Maybe we should be discussing this elsewhere?…
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guess who’s back
looks like i’ve only written three articles for this site… about psp’s. i’ve been busy for quite a while, but i still come here on occasion…