SOFREP had an outstanding first week as a subscription website. We’re learning, making mistakes, and doing some good work, all at the same time. Here’s a wrap on some of what we’ve experienced this past week.
One of the most important pieces of a subscription website is a working registration form, and we found out the hard way yesterday that when the form is broken, people can’t join. We are happy to report that we fixed this issue and folks are now able to subscribe to SOFREP.com.
Speaking of registrations, we discovered a simply outstanding bug in which our new membership system doesn’t recognize previous Team Room members when the try to re-join. There isn’t a quick or easy fix to this (should be, but isn’t) so we are responding to emails as they come in and trying to do a daily review of joins against our inactive members list. It’s a huge inconvenience to folks and we apologize for it. We’re working hard to improve it.
Commenting. Wow, that’s been fun! We’ve had some issues with SSL and Livefyre and we were able to resolve those on Sunday night. Today we’re doing a comment synchronization, and those of you who have opted for email alerts for comment replies, well, you’re going to get a those emails today. All. At. Once. We apologize.
We also experienced a wonderful surprise this morning when our newsletter system misinterpreted a slight coding error on our part and sent 6 emails to each of our subscribers at 4am. WTF, over! We sent out an apology this afternoon and people have been generally pretty kind about it, saying things like:
“Thanks, I just thought you wanted to get my attention…”
“RGR, Not a problem at all.”
Not a problem. I get a boatload of emails anyway. Keep up the great work, De Oppresso Liber!”
SOFREP had an outstanding first week as a subscription website. We’re learning, making mistakes, and doing some good work, all at the same time. Here’s a wrap on some of what we’ve experienced this past week.
One of the most important pieces of a subscription website is a working registration form, and we found out the hard way yesterday that when the form is broken, people can’t join. We are happy to report that we fixed this issue and folks are now able to subscribe to SOFREP.com.
Speaking of registrations, we discovered a simply outstanding bug in which our new membership system doesn’t recognize previous Team Room members when the try to re-join. There isn’t a quick or easy fix to this (should be, but isn’t) so we are responding to emails as they come in and trying to do a daily review of joins against our inactive members list. It’s a huge inconvenience to folks and we apologize for it. We’re working hard to improve it.
Commenting. Wow, that’s been fun! We’ve had some issues with SSL and Livefyre and we were able to resolve those on Sunday night. Today we’re doing a comment synchronization, and those of you who have opted for email alerts for comment replies, well, you’re going to get a those emails today. All. At. Once. We apologize.
We also experienced a wonderful surprise this morning when our newsletter system misinterpreted a slight coding error on our part and sent 6 emails to each of our subscribers at 4am. WTF, over! We sent out an apology this afternoon and people have been generally pretty kind about it, saying things like:
“Thanks, I just thought you wanted to get my attention…”
“RGR, Not a problem at all.”
Not a problem. I get a boatload of emails anyway. Keep up the great work, De Oppresso Liber!”
“Yes it went a little ape shit but no problem. Keep on keeping on. Thanks.”
“Yes, but I’m not bothered LOL. Luuurrve you guys! “
“There are too many of these emails… is there a weekly newsletter option?” (Great idea and it’s on the way!)
“I’m sure that if you check with the NSA folks, they will know who did it.” (Oh shit…)
“I was a bit surprised to see that many emails from SOFREP in my mailbox this morning. It was a brief “oh shit, what did I do now?” moment. But it never entered my mind that you guys would pull some marketing crap, SOFREP just wouldn’t do that.”
and
“Your good my man! I figured something went wrong. I actually got a kick out of it lol! I need to get on the site more, sorry I don’t get on much I love the emails because it’s a quick brief of what’s going on. Thank you for all you do for sofrep and thank you sofrep for all you do for this world, nation, The military and LE community!”
And of course, some of you are letting us know how you feel by unsubscribing, and who can blame you! We’ll fix this tonight.
We’ve had a lot of feedback from you and folks on Facebook about our switch to the subscription model. We love to hear your feedback, whether positive or negative. SOFREP has the greatest readers on the planet, you are NOT afraid to stand up and be heard, and we wouldn’t expect less from you. SOUND OFF!
And then on Douchebag Central, we received a sweet note from Dennis down in the 619, who, with great intelligence and eloquence, writes:
“but go ahead…like i said…its America. You have your right to do this…its just such a twinkie-smuggling, queer-as-hell, cheaply done, dog-sucking way of doing it…you’ve become used car salesman or porn site owners in your efforts here…”
Nice. We’ll have the full email and a response in our Letters to the Editor for that one later. Look for it.
(Featured Image Courtesy: DVIDS. A 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) Maritime Raid Force Marine conducts double bag static line parachute operations from a KC-130J Super Hercules assigned to Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron (VMGR) 352, over Djibouti, Aug. 10, 2013. The 26th MEU is a Marine Air-Ground Task Force forward-deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility aboard the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group serving as a sea-based, expeditionary crisis response force capable of conducting amphibious operations across the full range of military operations. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Christopher Q. Stone, 26th MEU Combat Camera/Released)
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