A View From V2.

Ok, so as some of you may know, for the past two months myself and Owen have been working behind the scenes to launch a magazine that will run along side both the forum and the V2 Journal. The idea of the magazine is to reach out to a wider audience while bringing in some new readers, and generating funds which go towards the running of these sites.

The magazine will cover sports that we don't feature on the journal, it will be released at the end of the month and give a general round up of your favorite sports.

Take a look here, it is well worth subscribing to. http://joom.ag/2ZUX

Looks very good lads; top effort!   

Magazine looks very good, dunno who this Chris Wilkinson lad is though!

I did think...'i swear that's not his surname' lol! How you spell it ill get it edited now..oh also..you got a twitter account/email I can put down on the writers page.

I couldn't see it in there and it's okay if there isn't one for me but do i have a paragraph in "Meet the V2 team".

Nope Mikey! Just your name - and if you can message me an email address/twitter ill stick that in. Each month from here on out we will do a 'writers' feature & introduce you all that way!

Oh okay i just wondered thats all, i don't mind at all.

I will message you.

Impressive stuff, well done lads

hampo171 wrote:Ok, so as some of you may know, for the past two months myself and Owen have been working behind the scenes to launch a magazine that will run along side both the forum and the V2 Journal. The idea of the magazine is to reach out to a wider audience while bringing in some new readers, and generating funds which go towards the running of these sites.

The magazine will cover sports that we don't feature on the journal, it will be released at the end of the month and give a general round up of your favorite sports.

Take a look here, it is well worth subscribing to. http://joom.ag/2ZUX

Looks as if the only sports covered are journal covered sports. Did you get my PM with the olympic hockey preview?

Cricket, darts, rugby and snooker all in the magazine this month mate. UFC is set to feature next month as well.

I did mate, meant to reply but have been crazy busy the last few days, drop Owen a PM. He's putting together the content.

CFC Nick - as Paul mentioned we did have a few sports which aren't prevalent on the journal this month.

Can only put in content which we can get writers for! The good news is that as we move forward we will be increasing and improving the content.

Next month will have UFC Previews, a rundown guide of the F1 teams & season ahead, Tennis previews for upcoming masters. A look ahead & bookies tips for Cheltenham Festival as well as wrestling content and some more added content to football and boxing.

If you would like Ice Hockey to feature then please feel free to drop me a message on here as to what you'd like to do etc and we can take it from there.

The thing is Owen I have been writing and recording podcasts but it seems nobody wants to know. There's only two things from me on the journal and both are massively out of date.

I know there's not a hockey audience on here but it's about expanding right?

I've sent you a PM with a couple of links.

Nick I've sent you a PM regarding the situation, it is all in hand

Cheers mate

No offense lads but this looks Poopie. I mean this with utmost respect but it truly is dreadful in terms of design. The colours, the picture and the formatting is all wrong. I work in Digital Marketing and I can honestly say this has amateur written all over it. If you're going to do this, then may I recommend getting a standalone domain from someone like GoDaddy or Domain Monster for about £5 a year and going along with a Wordpress themed magazine layout? Buying the design will only cost about £30 - http://www.premiumwp.com/best-news-and-magazine-style-premium-wordpress-theme-gallery/ so although I know you don't make money from this, the outlay if you're looking for professionalism will be well worth it.

I just have massive issues with the white text, the fonts and such - I think a much better job could be done and it'll only cost less than £40 to do it. Wordpress is easy to work and you can even - if the site gets a high enough PR/Domain authority get companies that wish to link from your site (gives you money)

The font and things can be and will changed going forward. We learnt to use this, very unfriendly, software in under two months. In actual fact the later articles that were added look a lot better, however due to time constraints we didn't have time to go through the whole thing and reformat everything.

If you would like to offer your services then feel free.

More than happy to help out - the content and pictures (providing you have permission to use them of course as I've heard of horror stories taking from Google Images)

As I said, the domain hosting and website won't cost much if you wanted to go down that route.

This will be available on mobile devices in the next few hours

http://joom.ag/2ZUX

The current software; as hampo alluded to was a pain to get the hang of and isn't particularly user friendly...given we have now had practice on it hopefully it comes a long in the next edition. Given we are signed up to it for a month or so now it's pointless and a waste of money switching over to something else....though obviously could change down the line

Whilst £40 quid may not sound a lot; it is when people are having to put their own money into it. Given we have the running costs of the Journal, website, magazine and podcasts it does mount up. Lest we forget we don't charge for the podcast either so revenue is only sourced from subscribers...otherwise it's our own back pockets.

Also what your suggesting doesn't sound like a magazine...more a stand alone web address with a blog?! That kind of goes against the point of it being a magazine does it not?

Any help is always appreciated...feel free to list exactly what you think needs changing (colour, picture, format) etc isn't too helpful given you've not actually suggested any alternatives or ideas on how it could look better.

Also I would like to say that this is being done in people's free time alongside full time jobs; as well as the running of twitter accounts, articles for the journal and the podcasts. So time constraints do have to be considered and it's a little galling when people give criticism or comment but don't actually ever come through when it comes to us coming on the boards and asking for help or questions for guests etc etc!

Chill Owen, I've messaged Hampo with some advice. The idea of an online magazine is infact a blog. The magazine format doesn't work online, trust me - the bounce rate in analytics for those who have tried and the formatting issues confirm it.

I've recommended sticking to one font - calibri or open sans or something pretty basic. Using exotic fonts within a flash application is always dancing with the devil. The colour scheme needs to be a palette rather than a mish-mash of basic colours. I've noticed that the font colour clashes witth the background pictures in a number of pages - this shouldbe avoided for ease on the eye. THis can be solved by re-centering the picture or formatting the way the text appears. In terms of the layout, A4 is not the best way to give the information, this completely negates the online element of the information offered.

More than happy to offer advice mate, not intending to sound disrespectful here. Just want to help

He just sent the PM to me mate; apologies for being so blunt.

Very easy to get frustrated when you've spent so much free time trying to do stuff and people in general comment and don't actually come through with anything constructive. Thanks for the feedback and advice though.

I'm hoping now I have a grasp on it the 2nd time round may be better; though i'd be interested in hearing more about the idea of running with something else completely...i myself & am sure Paul too hadn't realised that e-magazines have been so written off within the industry...

I have experience with Wordpress having done my own online blog on it before so definitely think this is something we could look at further down the line. Though it does restrict us on how we can make money as it isn't something which we could then charge for...or that's my understanding anyway?

JabMachineMK2 wrote:Chill Owen, I've messaged Hampo with some advice. The idea of an online magazine is infact a blog. The magazine format doesn't work online, trust me - the bounce rate in analytics for those who have tried and the formatting issues confirm it.

I've recommended sticking to one font - calibri or open sans or something pretty basic. Using exotic fonts within a flash application is always dancing with the devil. The colour scheme needs to be a palette rather than a mish-mash of basic colours. I've noticed that the font colour clashes witth the background pictures in a number of pages - this shouldbe avoided for ease on the eye. THis can be solved by re-centering the picture or formatting the way the text appears. In terms of the layout, A4 is not the best way to give the information, this completely negates the online element of the information offered.

More than happy to offer advice mate, not intending to sound disrespectful here. Just want to help

I'm sure your comments are much appreciated, so thank you.   

Moving away from the formatting, how good is it in terms of content and suchlike?

If you can create a blog discussing sports in such a way that Google decide you're authoritative enough for a good page rank (2+ ideally) you'll receive requests from businesses wanting you to link to them, links now can cost anything upwards of £100. Sometimes they'll have the wrong approach and ask you link build to their sales pages which will end up with them being hammered for manipulating the algorithm, but if you're linking to their content - so discussing something about boxing grassroots on the magazine which then links to their blog post about what equipment to buy when starting out boxing - its actually a relevant link and does enhance the user journey.

Just an idea, you could forego that but its how most e-zines end up going because they're approached en-mass. The trick is to weed out the bad links from the good ones. good companies will pay you in content by being a guest writer but without being outwardly pushy about their product sales.

owen10ozzy wrote:I did think...'i swear that's not his surname' lol! How you spell it ill get it edited now..oh also..you got a twitter account/email I can put down on the writers page.

I always comment then forget! "Wilkerson" but its not worth any undue editing. Ive long given up caring, one day I'll get refused service as Mr Wilkinson but its my given name to any fast food outlet I may have the temerity to call (twitter is The_Wilkerson too)

Can anybody submit articles for the magazine, or do we just post them in the forums and if they're liked you'll ask permission?

PM me and owen what you're thinking of writing about Derby and we'll have a chat about it

Hey does the ADMIN account work by any chance, as in can you message it?

Not sure who it is, drop me a pm mate and I'll post it in the admins section.