It’s hard to believe that it’s been four whole years since I launched Protagonize one cold winter night in late December, 2007.
In 2011, we saw the launch of group submissions (and in fact the whole of the groups feature), as well as a number of other smaller improvements spread out throughout the site. Performance enhancements and optimizations were the focus of the fall. Statistics-wise, our community has grown to nearly 20,000 authors, with over 25,000 works published and over 104,000 pages of content written on the site since its inception.
All-in-all, it’s been a quiet but progressive year for Protagonize.
While it may seem that I’ve been keeping with the site overhaul I promised a few months back close to the vest, I’ve actually been working away on it since the summer. It’s a pretty massive overhaul from a visual and user experience standpoint, but it also required a lot of work behind the scenes to make the new interface work with our existing site structure.
Now, the announcement I mentioned a few days back in my holiday post: the new interface will be going into testing with our beta group sometime before January 15th. This is a pretty major step in the process of launching the new look, and I’m glad to know we have an awesome group of ~70 beta testers from among our site’s authors.
This time around, we won’t be accepting any new beta applications, but anyone who purchases a Plus subscription ($50 CAD) prior to the start of beta will be automatically added to the the tester group. Once the beta test officially kicks off, automatic beta membership from Plus subscriptions will end. If you’re in the fence, this will be your last chance to help out the site and get to experience the new interface early!
Note: If you already have beta access, you’re all set to beta test when I flip the switch. I’ll be posting more information about how beta will work once we get closer to mid-January.
With that in mind, here are a few actual screenshots of the new, fully-functional reading interface running on an iPad 2. You can click through each image to see the full-size version. (Some bits are subject to change, as usual. :)
You’ll notice some familiar faces, too, I’m sure. Enjoy!
Please be cautious when dealing with folks you don’t know on the site, and be aware that it’s unlikely that a potential publisher would suddenly contact you without giving you proof of their identity or verifiable credentials of some sort. If anything, they would not be using anonymous or generic email accounts and should be able to provide you with contact information for the firm they represent, along with a legitimate phone number or web site to look them up on.
Sharing Passion
We all like to get riled up by ratings and stress the importance of comments. I’m not here to convince you to change the way you use the site and interact with content. I don’t want to lecture you on the supposed ills of your behaviour. I have plenty of other Ptag posts where I’ve done that already. No, I just want to relate my own experience.
A few days back I was cruising through some of the completed works, looking for something to read. I was craving an ending, y’know? Anyway, I found some stories that looked interesting, gave them a read through, left a few comments and recommended one.
No big deal, right?
The next day I logged in and saw that one of those works was now on the most recommended list. Funny, because it had no recommendations the day before, and my comment was the only one. Suddenly the work had attracted three more comments and two recommendations. Why? I’d like to think that the sudden popularity was all my doing, but I know it wasn’t. Yes, I left that first comment and first recommendation, but I left them for a reason: the author did a great job telling the story!
The Protagonize community rewards those who put time into their writing, as time reflects passion. When you share you passion with others, often times the sharing continues. Sure, not every piece you write will garner a huge audience, and some might slip under the tide of newly posted chapters, stories, and pages. A little persistence goes a long ways and, if you’re here because of your passion for writing, readership shouldn’t be your be-all and end-all.
Then again, seeing those “one new comment was left on your work” notifications at the top of the page are always nice.
So keep on reading and, more importantly, keep on writing!
Image courtesy of Oh Geez! Design on Flickr. Thanks!