I had a small chat with Super3 about revamping peercoin.net, which I’ve provided the transcript for below. If this revamp is going to be happening, we should discuss what we want to see incorporated into the new site. Here is the list of things I wanted to see…
1. A more peercoin-like color theme. The current use of teal doesn’t work. We need to use colors like those used on our subreddit, dark, light and green.
2. The Peercoin logo should not be hidden in the background. It should be in plain view not obstructed by anything. Our logo is the most important symbol on the page.
3. We need our social media icons moved back to the top right corner of the home page. This placement is very important, because it allows for maximum exposure without the need to scroll down the page. Since our icons have been moved further down the page, I’ve seen a drastic reduction in the amount of likes on our Facebook page. These social media pages are important because we can use them to keep people in the loop.
4. A Peercoin newsletter signup form. Check the chat log below for more info on this.
5. Better content organization. Check this conversation between Super3 and iheartcryptocoin for ideas on this. I’ve heard it said before that we need a CMS (Content Management System) as well.
6. A news blog should be implemented, in addition to our Facebook and Twitter accounts. I could possible manage this blog, since I control our Facebook account already.
7. A FAQ (Fequently Asked Questions) page should be created so that we can answer lots of usual questions. We have a small section right now on the home page, but several answers don’t sound like they were written to address the question being asked, for example the question about checkpoints. The quote from Sunny doesn’t sound like it fits there. These answers just need to be rewritten.
8. A more organized page dedicated to storing and displaying our marketing tools for people to use, rather than relying on forum threads: logos, business cards, merchant badges, ad banners, presentations, etc…
9. Not sure on this one, but a Twitter and Facebook feed. Maybe not on our home page, but on the page with our news blog.
10. Things to keep: the text logo and slogan in the upper left corner of the home page, our market cap indicator
I’m sure there’s plenty more things that can be implemented, so I’ll leave the rest up to you guys. What else should be included? Here is the transcript of our chat as well…
Sentinelrv: Super, are you still there?
super3: yup still here
super3: whats new?
Sentinelrv: I know you mentioned that you had just graduated and would have more time now right?
Sentinelrv: But I see you’re heavily involved with Storj.
Sentinelrv: I just wanted to know if you want us to take the lead on the web design front or if we should wait for you.
Sentinelrv: I’m not sure if you have plans for it already.
Sentinelrv: Like any kind of redesign plans or reorganization?
super3: yeah, its going to be another month or so before im fully free
super3: yeah the peercoin website needs to be redesigned to be more action based
Sentinelrv: I know you previously talked about that in PM’s.
Sentinelrv: Is there anything we can do to help while you’re still busy or no?
Sentinelrv: I just know that our marketing video might be done by then.
Sentinelrv: And lots of new people will probably be visiting the website because of it.
Sentinelrv: Maybe if you had something in mind you could post a thread with all the details and we could see what we could do.
super3: well you guys have access to the repo so you can push whatever changes you like
Sentinelrv: Yeah, but I don’t think anyone want to change anything unless they know what your future plans are for it.
super3: i plan to have my main designer revamp the whole peercoin website at some point, but he still has a bunch of storj stuff to do
super3: http://i.imgur.com/spD2eOq.png
super3: need to reduce the peercoin.net site down to the essential
Sentinelrv: We could probably fix smaller things because we had access, but any larger changes should probably be in alignment with what you had planned.
super3: people only care about downloads, mining, resources, minting, whitepaper in that order
super3: everything else is fluff
Sentinelrv: Are you sure people aren’t checking the news because we don’t update it? We don’t have a blog either.
super3: yeah we need quite a few things
super3: see http://storj.io
Sentinelrv: I know you had a quick sketch which included a lot more things on the home page. Is this the reason why, because the home page is the most trafficked area?
super3: peercoin needs to be up to that level
super3: well the homepage needs to point the users to where we actually want them to go
super3: i only got that stuff done because i hired a web dev, might have to do that for peercoin as well
Sentinelrv: If you wanted to do that now (hire someone else) rather than later and you need more funding, it’s possible we could try to raise some funds for you. Just let us know.
super3: already have access to some funds laying around for peer4commit
super3: should organize those first before looking for more funds
super3: ideally id like to have a person or two on my team dedicated to mostly peercoin
super3: i can align the goals of peercoin and storj to get 2x
super3: so we both could use a android wallet just make it so that the code is interchangable etc.
Sentinelrv: And again, if you need something, like for us advertise for people to help you, people that could be on your Peercoin website team, just let us know what you need.
super3: alright ill give it some thought and put up a solution
Sentinelrv: We can advertise this through social media, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter until we find somebody that meets your standards.
Sentinelrv: I’m not sure if you agree, but I’d said before that when it is revamped, I’d like to see more Peercoin-like colors used, rather than the teal we use now. I was thinking more like our subreddit, with the dark, light and green colors.
super3: yeah the branding needs work
super3: oh finding the people is easy for me, just need to be able to reward/pay them
Sentinelrv: Ok, good. Yeah, just post a thread and let us know what your plan is once you think it through. Lots of people are waiting for this I think. It would also sho some movement from us. It appears from the outside that we’re stagnant and might have something to do with the recent price drop, coupled with other things.
super3: yeah plenty of community but not much movement
super3: ill try to organize my wallets by the end of this week and start moving some stuff forward
Sentinelrv: If you had a better way to integrate the volunteer form as well, that would be great. http://www.volunpeer.org/
super3: ok
Sentinelrv: Right now I have to manually take people’s email addresses from the Google spreadsheet and move them over to our Mailchimp account.
Sentinelrv: They don’t get to confirm with their email that they wanted to be added to a mailing list.
Sentinelrv: There has to be a better way to set this up I think.
Sentinelrv: Anyway, thanks for the chat. Looking forward to hearing something on this soon, thanks! 
Cybnate: Thanks guys, hope we get this moving again soon
super3: yeah you should just do that through a mailchimp signup
super3: like we have on http://storj.io
Sentinelrv: The problem with that is that we don’t get to ask any of the other questions on the forum, which gives us a lot of info on volunpeers for use later. Unless we just had two forms?
Sentinelrv: What their interests are, experience, etc…
Sentinelrv: Check http://www.volunpeer.org/ to see what I mean. Lots of useful info for us.
Sentinelrv: But I can’t insert a mailchimp form on there to collect the email address as well. It just goes to a spreadsheet, which I have to copy over to Mailchimp manually.
super3: then have the mailchimp separate
super3: have people signup for the newsletter on the website
super3: and/or automate it through mailchimps apis
Sentinelrv: Maybe once somebody signs up for the newsletter on peercoin.net, they automatically get taken to a confirmation page with the Google form integrated where they can add more info if they want.
Sentinelrv: Optional info, not required to sign up for the newsletter.
river333: yeah newsletter should be separate from volunpeers. don’t want to annoy people if they are not interested in being a volunpeer but just want news
Sentinelrv: I’ve been busy recently, so no volunpeer email lately. But when I do send them out, I include news at the end of the email. What I could do is switch it around. Make the email mainly about the news and add in an optional volunpeer task if they wish to help out. Would that be better?
river333: yes that sounds ok
Sentinelrv: Great, that sounds like a solution then. Sign up for newsletter on peercoin.net, hittting submit takes you to a confirmation page with an optional form if you’d like to become a volunpeer. Everyone gets the same email though, mainly news with an optional task added in at the end. The optional volunpeer form is just so we can collect more details if they’d like to be further involved.
