This afternoon, we are starting into a planned change to the structure of our site's URLs. Mike describes the journey in some detail here. No action is needed on your part, but here's what to expect:

Wow – what a year. In April 2011 I was hired as the Director of Advertising Sales & Operations at Suite101, and I wasn’t too sure of what I was getting into. At that point there was already a mad Panda wreaking havoc on the site, and around 80% of the revenue was coming from one source – Google AdSense text advertising.  My mission (which I did choose to accept): to maximize and diversify Suite101’s ad mix, while ensuring ads did not become too intrusive and give the site that lovely spam-flavored quality. As many of you can likely attest, there has been a fair amount of learning through trial and error done throughout the year.
 

As part of our efforts to improve user engagement on Suite101.com (and soon Suite101.de, .net, and .fr) we’ve started working with a new partner, Outbrain.

Within the next few weeks, we’re moving away from writer subdomains. This is a crucial step in providing a more friendly and easier to understand URL structure, more importantly it aligns us with our future platform goals. 

In the past four-and-three-quarters months, we've been quietly gaining momentum on our way to a comprehensive mid-year revamp – a total teardown/rebuild of Suite101 from the bedrock up. Just as importantly, we've also restructured the company and assembled a talented, energetic team.

I wanted to take a moment now, relatively calm little Wednesday, to introduce the group at equilibrium and show something of how we fit together.

We're rapidly getting closer to launching Suite101's new website, but before we do, we'd love to get some hands-on feedback from a few community members. As a reward for your patience and enthusiasm, we're giving three lucky Suite101 members the chance to come to Vancouver and tell it to us like it is.

As one of many changes coming down the pipeline aimed to ease Suite101's transition into something markedly different (and better), we're eliminating the titles of "Feature Writer" and "Topic Editor" in the near future. It's something that would have happened regardless with the launch of the new site, but we want our community to have a clean break from the hierarchy of the current Suite101.

Hi All,

For those who haven't spotted it yet, we've added the aptly named " Suggestion Box" category to the forums. This is a place to comment on what you like, what you miss, or what you think could makes things better. If you come across anything on the site you feel could be improved,  just start up a thread and let us know!  We're looking forward to hearing from you. 

Thanks for reading!  

Stephanie  

The time has come - on March 23rd at 12pm PST we will be turning off access to Suite101 Stats.  

If you want to back up your article page views we have a csv download available on the stats home page.  Simply log into stats, do your search for the period of data you want, then click the "Download Data" link in the top right hand corner (see screenshot here).

Hi All, 

And now to plug some fun-fantastic ways we can connect off Suite101! I've been given the keys to a few groups that were getting a little dusty and could use some more voices and faces! Take a look and see if anything catches your eye. 

Meetup.com

Meetup is a great way to organize get-togethers and any group member can start an event. We've just announced a Suite101 meetup in Vancouver! Take a look -- Lisa and I are getting a little lonely over there. 

It's come time to celebrate and thank our fearless moderator, Victoria Nicks. As we move everyone over to the community site, forum moderation will no longer be put on the shoulders of only one or two community members. There is more on this to come over the next week. For now, let's keep the focus on Vicki. 

Hi, it’s Brad again.  In follow up to my first blog post, here’s a quick (well, what was to be quick) recap of my recent New York ad-venture.

It was a whirlwind trip – but very productive.  Fortunately I got some sleep on the plane ride over, and was lucky that the hotel gave me an early check-in so I could grab an hour of shut-eye in advance of my meetings.  That said – coffee was definitely my friend that day…

Day 1

Coffees 1+2

On the back of Wikileaks extraordinary leaked emails this past weekend, I thought it would be interesting to leak some internal info out to our community and report back on a recent activity. This being the progress specific to a  very controversial project… AKA: “The Purge”. 

I've posted this a few times in random responses in forums, but the questions still seem to be coming up fairly regularly so thought I'd put it in a central spot for all to see.

Ch-ch-ch-changes! Suite101 is going through a period of transition and transformation. You may have noticed " We're Changing" tabs sticking out on the right-hand side of Suite101 and the Community Site.