I'm pleased to announce that this spring the GPWA will be blasting off to the future with GPWA version 4.0!
We are in the midst of making major changes that will benefit all our members and make this community an even better and more useful place. Scroll down to see an overview of some of the features planned for GPWA 4.0.
GPWA 4.0 Blasting Off!
Next Generation Forum Software
A major new version of vBulletin (the software we use to power the GPWA forums) was recently released. We have successfully installed this major upgrade in our test environment and will be rolling it out on the public GPWA website in the relatively near future. Information about the vision behind the new vBulletin Publishing Suite the GPWA will be using is available in the blog post by vBulletin titled Our Vision for vBulletin.. There are many new functions and features available in the new version of vBulletin, and our upgrade will consist of rolling out the new version and then making enhancements to the GPWA website taking advantage of new features provided.
Integrated Search Engine
We have a lot of content on the GPWA website, and there will be even more content in the future. Today we provide several disparate search facilities. One for the forum, one for portals and one for affiliate programs. And much of our content, such as news articles, is not searchable at all. We will be releasing a powerful integrated search facility that will search through all of the content on the GPWA website and return available information wherever it is located. And within the forums we will also be introducing the boolean search capabilities now available with vBulletin.
New Webmaster Research Tools
We're going to be making available to members a number of tools helpful to webmasters with a special focus on information helpful from an SEO perspective. And we will also integrate metrics from some of those tools directly into the information we provide to members about their websites.
More Educational Resouces and Videos
We are going to organize and structure the educational resources we have to be more accessible, and we're going to significantly expand the educational resources available on the GPWA website. Let me give a couple examples. There are many good articles in the GPWA Times magazine, but right now they are only available in the print version of the magazine or online in large pdf files of the whole magazine. That content will be pulled out by article and organized on the website by topic. And on another front, Casino City recently acquired the exclusive rights to the most complete and comprehensive set of articles available covering the history of online gaming (nearly 10,000 of them), and these archives will become available to GPWA members free of charge. Previously this content was available exclusively on a paid subscriber basis and involved a subscription fee of hundreds of dollars a year.
Simplier and more sophisticated
It has been nearly four years since the GPWA website was overhauled, and it is time for a complete state-of-the-art redesign. And the redesign won't just be to make it prettier. The site will be more sophisticated in ways that will make it easier to use. For example, we will recognize who you are, your geographic location, and your native language, and do a better job of presenting information tailored to you on that basis. And we'll do things like let you specify you want to go directly to the forums when you visit the site if that is your desire, and also let you control some aspects of the look and feel of the site (such as your color peference in the forum).
Community Affiliate Program Ratings
We are building a simple-to-use facility to enable webmasters to much more easily say what they think and see what fellow webmasters think of particular programs.
Powerful Affiliate Program Matching System
We have a good affiliate program matching tool hidden in the site and we're going to take it to the next level. The tool will be expanded, and become more sophisticated and elegant in the way it presents information.
Exclusive Commission Deals and Promotions
We are going to do a much better job of highlighting for members the special deals and promotions offered by sponsor affiliate programs to our members.
We have a lot of work ahead (and more than just the things listed here). So spring will be a busy time for us as we roll out these features over the coming months. But come this summer, the GPWA will be a whole new place.
Michael