Updates and an announcement from LWN

While I find the current website layout quite comfortable and utilitarian, I think the very basic look and feel of the site is probably one of the biggest hurdles you have to gaining more mainstream acceptance from your potential reader base.

Put simply, at first glance it's hard to take the site seriously.

In this day and age of HTML5 and CSS3 a site that looks like it's been rendered with lynx doesn't immediately produce feelings of confidence in the value of the sites contents. It's ridiculous I know, but it's a fact of human nature. Having spent the last 10 years trying to convince customers that something that's free can be as good or better then something that costs an arm and a leg, I know exactly how embedded these kinds of assumptions are.

Certainly I felt some trepidation shelling out when I first signed up, not having a clear idea of the kind of value I'd receive for the money made it hard to pitch to my then-boss too.

Having been a subscriber for a while, I get the most value from the daily mailouts, and occasionally visiting the site for more detail on security alerts, so flashing up the website would make no difference to my experience. But in my opinion, if you want more subs, you gotta make it look pretty.

Luke.

People complain all the time about noise and inanity on Hacker News, just as they complained about Slashdot back in the day. LWN is the refreshing alternative but it has a pretty narrow focus. I'd sure like to read the LWN sensibility applied to Java or node.js or HTML, and the pool of potential subscribers on those kind of topics could be large ...

I, too, love the minimalist functional layout, and the fact that it works on Firefox no matter how many noscript-style plugins I throw at it. (And it looks good in lynx, too!)

So whatever prettification needs to be done, please don't make anything depend on Javascript, load content from several domains or be excessively heavy (I generally read LWN.net over Tor, and often only get a few Kb/sec).

One idea to get new readers might be to accept Bitcoin. Bitcoin users are always looking for some way to spend their coins, and many of them are sitting on large piles of them, since they were involved with the system before it had any actual value. The BTC world is a small community, but they tend to be pretty technologically savvy and I suspect there could be a large overlap between them and LWN.net readers.

I think congratulations are in order for taking the bold step of hiring two new editors. I am looking forward to Michael's contributions and I join you in hoping that expanding your coverage of the embedded world will not only please your existing readers but also attract new subscribers.

On promoting the site - some of the standard things such as Facebook Like button, Google +1, 'Tweet this' etc would help a lot I think. Really just an evolution of the Post a Link feature, and could be hidden under a 'Share this article' so it's not too visually intrusive.

A design refresh of the site would be good, personally I quite like the minimal approach but it doesn't look very attractive - unless someone knows your site already, it looks like a hobby site.

For the "landing page" for new visitors (not subscribers), i.e. default home page, it would be sensible to have some testimonials or awards so that someone who knows nothing about LWN has some "social proof" that it's a great site. A quote from Linus or other luminaries perhaps?

Linux is far more popular now than a few years back, so it should be possible to get more subscribers with a bit more focus on promotion, without changing the tone of LWN.

Maybe you could appeal to the LWN community for free/discounted help from a professional web designer/developer? I'm sure there are some out who understand the LWN ethos and could help.

I remember the day well, when i read the "end of the road" post. I really didn't like it. LWN was (and still is!) the-one-place-to-go when I wanted some up to date information on what's going on in the Linux world without all the buzzwords and marketing mamobjambo. Now, 10 years later, I am glad LWN still exists and provides this great service to the open source community. I wouldn't mind to have some more information on the internal status of LWN, because for me LWN is a vital source of information which I like and support. If anything like the problems 10 years ago should happen again, I would very much appreciate to know it soon enough to be able to do something about it.

That said, I want to thank everyone working at and for LWN. You are doing each and everyone of your readers (and even those who aren't) a big service. We like you and what you do!

I also want to thank everyone who supported LWN all those years. Without you, LWN would have become history long long ago.

Yay to more kernel stuff.

After a quick read of the comments before me, I join the group favoring the current simplistic, information-oriented approach. So far for the look and feel everything is fine to me.

As for the colours I always disable them in my browser for all pages imposing my choice over the page designer's. In Firefox this achieved through Preferences --> Colors --> use system colors and disabling "allow pages to use their own colors. Like most newspapers, blogs and other real content-aimed webs LWN does not hide anything from me (as background images for example) and therefore respects my choices.

A possible improvement: work in the search area, or rather the indexes. I find the kernel page index absolutely fantastic and I would suggest creating similar indexes for distributions, development, grumpy-editors, etc.

As for ways to increasing income I think that we, subscribers, should do more pub among our colleagues, LUG's and environments. My university library had had once a group subscription but it was cancelled since it was "no longer considered essential and our budget reduction would not admit it". I don't know what the price was (the negotiation happend levels above my local librarian could know) but maybe I can propose my lab to relaunch the process (at least in a local scene for our 15-20 people).

Congrats Michael (I also have your TLPI book on my shelf) for making it as a new editor and thanks LWN for allowing him to work together with Nathan (whose articles are also quite enjoyable as well)!!.

It should be possible to create a substantially more professional look just using CSS and HTML. This does not conflict with 'minimalist' as some people seem to think; in fact a professional look is usually minimalist. I would describe the current look as minimalist and endearingly klunky.

Facebook and G+ like buttons should be considered - they are standard and I assume quite effective. The supercookie tracking is definitely a concern, and if you want to go there it is probably worthwhile checking you will not alienate the present readership. I would support it though.

You may also want to consider the various ponds available to you. I know nothing about kernel programming, and am a free software / web collaboration enthousiast (i.e. a small fish from a bigger pond). I appreciate the occasional kernel article if there is an interesting angle to C programming, but in general I appreciate other articles just as much if not more. You could (further) experiment with articles on various topics (much as you already do). You probably have statistics on page hits already, however, they might mostly reflect on your current paying readership rather than the prospective readership lurking out there. Again, 'like' buttons could help you there if they allow new visitors a bit deeper access than non-subscribers.

I can't be the only person who gave out an involuntary "yeah!" on hearing that Michael is becoming an editor here. His work is excellent and unlike so many others he actually cares about decent documentation and does something (substantial) about it.

So, welcome! May your LWNing be long.

Congrats to LWN for this.

Can I hope to get the Desktop section back now that you have two more writers? :)

Explain why LWN.net exists. Give us something to believe in -- a motto, a slogan, a campaign that we can align ourselves with.

You've got passion for Linux, free software, and for explaining it clearly, and we can feel it in as we read your content. Why do you do it? Why do you love it?

Add the "why" somewhere on the main landing page of the site. Include it in the "LWN.net FAQ", which might also be called the "About" page (it looks like the section "Who writes this stuff?" should be updated).

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Source for the idea: Simon Sinek's "Start With Why", summarized here: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_in...

Let us know what we can do to help. LWN is one of the most valuable sites on the net as far as I'm concerned.

A few suggestions:

1. Yes, by all means, the site's look is *severely* outdated. And yes, by all means, do use JavaScript/CSS and all the rest. And for the nostalgic crowd, provide a setting to see the site as it is now, without JavaScript. For a site which monetizes through subscription, there really needs to be something a lot more sexy than this for it to be looking like it's worth spending money on these days. (I mean no offense, I'm just saying it as I think a new visitor would see it.)

2. Provide a way to read through similar content in a more aggregated fashion. LWN often features follow-up articles on the same topic, yet I actually have to follow through the in-article links to the back stories. Surely there's a way to organize-this in a more book-like fashion where I can click through a TOC or something like that.

3. And yes, social media integration is a must these days. This goes with #1; i.e. there are a few things that news/content sites are expected to provide these days.

Karim

You should seriously consider a kickstarter campaign. There's a lot of money in them thar hills, and it's good for spreading the word as well. There have been kickstarter campaigns for everything from "our van is busted and we can't get to our next gig" to "we want to relaunch our podcast with higher production values" and lots more besides.

I like the somewhat old fashioned simple design. However something which would be nice to have is an epub or mobi Version for ebook readers.

I must admit, that I did not try this yet, but converting the all-in-on-page+printable version using calibre will probably be sufficient.

Sven

Why do I get the feeling all the people wanting to update the look of the site are trying to sell something?

Who knew so many web designers read LWN.

I believe the set of people who would subscribe to LWN but don't because of the way it looks is empty.

I wouldn't mind paying for an Android app that enables me to read/mark articles I have read and prefer to 'consume' LWN while commuting. The app shouldn't be too complicated as long as it is efficient in tracking what I haven't read yet.

If there is a demand for this maybe this can bring in some extra money from existing readers, especially if someone would contribute it ;-)

Although $14/mo seems a bit steep to me, I'd be happy to pay $10/mo. As far as I can tell, though, there's no easy way to do that.

I've been going through The Linux Programming Interface (for about a year now, still not fully done!) and Kerrisk is a great technical writer. I'm looking forward to anything he has to contribute about software development (though I'm not a kernel hacker and never will be) and embedded interests.

Admittedly I've been slow to renew in recent years when my subscription has expired because it's starting to feel like "same old stuff" syndrome and I occasionally have doubts as to how much I actually need it. This seems to be a positive development though and if it pans out I'll renew quicker next time.

In case it didn't go without saying: welcome, Michael Kerrisk!

As someone who is slowly migrating from Linux to FreeBSD in the shape of FreeNAS and PCBSD, I would love to see more BSD coverage (yes, I know the site is called Linux WN). Right now it is basically just release announcements. Even when I was just using Linux I would have loved to learn more about other parts of the FOSS world.

Jon, I think if you were to 1) changed the site font to a sans-serif, and 2) the theme color from beige (?) to, say, light blue (not a green, avoid looking like slashdot), you'd get that enough of a 'fresh' look to make people notice without cluttering the http exchange with nested flashy-cssy stuffs... :D

Really, it don't take much to excite folk...

Ugh, I guess I'm amongst the minority of people who think that the interface looks just fine the way it is. I will occasionally visit it in links2, and it's nice that it's so snappy and minimalist.

By the way, I realized that I'd probably buy swag from LWN if it were available. That led me to google this cafepress store: http://www.cafepress.com/lwn_net#link-productCategory-110

If that's official LWN stuff, I'd suggest linking to it from the menu. Selling t-shirts and such seems to work really well for various webcomic artists.

I just upgraded and extended my subscription. I only became a paying member a couple of years back when you mentioned you had to increase fees and I realised I was just freeloading on your work.

My biggest wish is that you publish more content, certainly it is a much bigger issue than the page design. Hopefully with more editors you can.

I'm curious as to the mix of people who read this site. I'm a Java developer who moonlights as a Linux / Postgres administrator. Maybe you could ask people what sort of articles they would like to read and then put the results to the vote?

Congratulations on the move, I know how hard it is to run a business.

I've been reading this site without subscription for years, and the bad conscience is slowly getting to me. If you had added a more convenient way to pay for a subscription, like Google Checkout or Amazon, I would have been a subscriber already. You might want to cater more to your more lazy readers...

A Google +1 button for articles would be nice, for those of us who has already sold our privacy to Google for freebies. I'm sure other people would appreciate a way to turn it off (or default off), though.