StrafeRight 2008 - A Look Ahead
Well here we are again, at the lock-and-load month known as January...the month where we take inventory of all that happened in the past year and look forward to all of the good things that are in the plans for the current year.
Before I get into 2008, I would like to take a quick peek at a few things that happened in 2007...
The most obvious accomplishment this year was
the launch of StrafeRight v4.0 and the amazing job done by two longtime and well respected members whom I will discuss below. This makeover was long overdue and came to fruition in a ridiculously short amount of time and with no major bugs or issues of note. In the web-design world, that is a miracle!
We also saw a few longtime members move into various positions around the site. These promotions are a necessity as we grow our scope and goal of bringing the best online gaming and news/reviews experience to the members of this site. These aren't paying jobs, but the guys doing them execute as if this was a full-time 9-5'er with benefits!
First off, we saw
Teck take the reigns as the
full time technical administrator of the website early in 2007. In his many capacities, Teck is the one that make sure there's a website to look at when you type in the URL of
StrafeRight. That is a very broad stroke to take and without getting too in-depth with it (and putting us all to sleep), just know that Teck has done an outstanding job of not only keeping up with the normal workload associated with maintaining a website of this size, but he has also done a stellar job of creating some of the fancy add-ons that you see around the site such as the
Power Ranking plug-in. This is all custom code that was learned, coded and integrated in an amount of time that would impress even the most seasoned of programmers...and he did it all while being
a pimp at the same time!
We also saw
Danforth step up to fill the role of
full-time graphics guru. We can have all the fancy coding in the world and all of the great website plug-in ideas to boot, but without a pretty canvas upon which to lay our framework, this site would be nothing but
a bunch of 1's and 0's. Danforth's vision of what
StrafeRight is all about is dead on with the amazing graphics, logo, branding and comedy artwork he has brought to the website and its community. Look for even more awesome image work in the coming year as Dan is going to offer up some transitional changes to the look and feel of the site.
We also saw
Ruxor take the responsibility of
head game server administrator. In this role, Rux is responsible for maintaining our game servers, the various admins who head up those servers, and all community events associated with the game servers. Let me tell you form experience, this is a thankless job...but without it being done effectively and with class, our world would not be the same as it is here at SR.com.
Hats off to Ruxor!
There are so many other folks behind the scenes around here that I'm going to stop right there so as to not forget anyone specifically. Just know that it takes every last person (including YOU!) to make
StrafeRight what it is today...let's not ever change that!
So, on with 2008!
2008 is going to be a great year in a lot of ways. We have always planned on giving back to the community in every way possible given our resources and budgets. This website has never put a single cent into anyone's pockets, yet has always seen that any and all income has gone right back into providing for the community. As with any entity, there are ups and downs to how much can be invested into this website...both from a man-hours standpoint as well as a fiscal one. But rest assured we're going to do everything we can (and more!) in 2008 to give
StrafeRight's members a great place to hang with lots of stuff to do while we're here.
We've already kicked off the year with
the best stinking Power Ranking contest to date...if you haven't seen it yet go look now!
We also plan on finally bringing
StrafeRight's branding and logos into the realm of swag such as T-shirts and hats...and maybe a couple of other cool things. No one has wanted to tag up in real life more than me with some sweet SR.com gear and to know we're heading down that path (finally!) is really exciting.
Game servers...such a hot topic lately. And rightfully so due to how many games have come out in the last few months. We've had some good titles hit us...and some stinkers. But I feel that in the next month or so we should have a good understanding of what games have stood the test of time both online and within the SR community. It has been and always will be our mission to bring you guys a great server to play on with familiar faces and friendly personalities...and in 2008 one of the personal missions I have for myself is getting us a few more games back on
the servers status page.
You can also expect a lot more additions and features to the SR website as we head into 2008. In fact, Teck is just about to release a couple really sweet custom coded plugins for the site that are going to make being a part of the goings on around here even cooler than it is now. I won't give too much away, but I'd like to reiterate again what a great job Teck has done with the beta builds of these new toys for the site...just amazing!
We will also be seeing a nice upgrade to the content management system we use on the site (Vbulletin) from the folks who make the software. With their upgrade will come a few more neat touches to the site that will help you continue to organize your friends, media and accomplishments here all that more easily. They are in the beta stages now (we're testing it ourselves and it works great!) and the upgrade should be coming sometime in the next couple of months if all goes well.
One other aspect of the site that I've been tooling around with in my head is bringing more unique content to everyone. I've been thinking about this for years now and I feel that we finally have what it takes to get people's attention; a beautiful website and a huge community of avid readers and users. With that website-equity in hand, we plan on bringing more interviews, trips to developer's offices (if they'll let us), and more to the site this year.
Our time spent at Alienware's headquarters last year was great and I want to bring more of that to the members of
StrafeRight.
We probably aren't going to be able to get an audience with the likes of Microsoft and Nvidia just yet (but I've tried!), but we sure can reach out to some of the people that make the great games you love so much and see how they respond to letting us ask them a few questions every now and then. Once I can book these interviews I plan on asking you guys to submit many of the questions that we present to them...after all, who knows better than you what you want to hear from the folks inside the gaming industry.
So to summarize 2008, I guess you could say we plan on kicking things up a bit but keeping the course as we always have. That means keeping an eye on the core of what SR is (
community and gaming) but reaching out to bring more of the things that
are of interest to all of you at the same time via various means. We plan on giving as much back to everyone here as we can with regards to content, servers, contests, swag and more.
I can't tell you how proud I am to be affiliated with this website and all of the great people that drop in and say hello. In 2008, it's all about
YOU, the members of
StrafeRight...after all, you
ARE what
StrafeRight is.
Thank you!!
-w00tini!
CS:S admin. PM DennyCrane for assistance. 
