We’ve been down this road before but…
Beernews.org quietly turned 3 years old on March 1st. Over that brief time, it has become one of the primary authorities for beer information on the internet. I don’t think that the current look and layout of the site reflects that though. Anyone starting up a new blog on WordPress or some other platform would have a more professional looking site than this one right out of the box. So I’ve been hard at work over the past year or so to make things better here.
Why the name change?
Is it Beernews, BeerNews, Beernews.org, BeerNews.org? I’ve seen them all. The term, “beer news,” is really too commonly used to be a brand, too, so it was only a matter of time. The site will still focus on being a news service but the name Beerpulse is more representative of my long-term vision and the exciting shift in the industry that I’m covering piece by piece everyday. And hell, I’ll have a dot com now.
What is the vision for Beerpulse?
The gist of it is that it will be more of the same but more organized. When I say more of the same, I mean I’m going from 4-5 daily posts to anywhere from 100-300 daily posts/snippets/summaries. It will be more of a “hub” than a blog for beer news going forward. I’ll still be providing original content and linking to other blogs from the main page as I normally do. The huge increase in content will come with an option to subscribe to particular breweries and beers that you are interested in as well.
Because we’re pushing WordPress (the technology behind Beernews.org) to the limits, we’re going to have a beta testing period before making the site live for everyone.
How do I get in on the beta?
The beta testing period is not yet open though you can sign up for it at Beerpulse.com. If you’ve already signed up for the newsletter at some point, enter your email address & zip code again to get an invite code (even though you’re already on the list).
Those who signed up for the newsletter very early on and those who invite people using their invite code will get into the beta program first.
The site will eventually be live this spring but the only way into beta will be signing up. If you have any issues, please contact me using the email address in the upper left here.
Good luck! If I see any opportunities to help (and am able), I’ll definitely kick in. Here’s crossing my fingers for some solid coverage of both coasts and the spaces between!
100-300 snippets, eh? What’s in store for those of us that follow via RSS feed – 100-300 snippets per day seems like a whole, whole lot. Will we be getting it in some sort of digest form?
RSS feed will be switched to just excerpts or titles & will be a feed of just the ‘top’ posts. I’m doing that to encourage people to use the new features on the web site. For those who are on the go or using mobile devices, the hope is to offer a similar experience on mobile platforms (iOS & Android) later on. Until then, I’m not sure what we’ll be doing for mobile.
Sounds awesome! Keep up the good work!
Adam! That’s awesome, sounds like it has been a long time in the making.. can’t wait!
Chad
It may be too far along, but keep the white background. You make it look classy and professional. I can only look at beer websites with black backgrounds for so long per day.
@Kevin You got it.
One thing I would love to see is for you to become a clearinghouse not just for beer releases, but all beer related news article. From sources like, Time, NYT, Slate, the WSJ, Chicago Tribune, ect. and maybe some of the smaller beer publications I’m unaware of. Anyway, keep up the good work.
Hmm, not sure about becoming a clearinghouse so to speak but I hope to do something like that eventually. Unfortunately, it’s hard to make much progress when my developer is in the hospital which happened literally the day after I announced that a new site is coming. What timing.
Original Content? I thought you just copy and pasted press releases.
There have been a lot of press releases lately for sure but there’s a lot of original stuff too. The recent Redhook, Allagash, Great Divide and Goose Island articles come to mind. The reason that my site crashed last Monday is because I was first in the world to have the GI story posted.
Have you planned out how to do this with minimal SEO problems? Right now your homepage has a pagerank of 5, it would be awful to lose that. Remember 301 redirects are your friend.
Yeah it’s something that I am thinking about & gives me some pause. I think the Pagerank will be ok in the longterm but yeah, may be bumpy in the short term.