Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By G-BLEW
Boss Man  Boss Man
#1910225
I thought it was worth providing a bit of background and a few pointers about the new website and the way we are now working, but first a very brief history as it adds useful context…

Until Covid came along we were happy producing 13 paper issues every year with a couple of specials thrown in from time to time (Learn to Fly, Helicopters etc.)

Then lockdown effectively closed the high street and retail outlets at airports, and magazine sales for pretty much all publishers fell off a cliff.

We took a decision to go fully digital, and moved quickly to put FLYER on issuu.com a site that hosts page turning PDF magazines. We increased video output, launched the Livestream, created The FLYER Club and uploaded an issue of FLYER every four weeks.

It became obvious that we would not return to a four-weekly printed magazine, and that meant that while we were enjoying some of the benefits of digital, we were also being constrained by the limitations of paper, even if it was being delivered in a digital format.

The new website removes those limitations and allows us to do things very differently. Traditionally a magazine team will create content over a month and then deliver all of that content in one go. Inevitably some of it is then out of date, and all of it is being sat on for purely production reasons. We now create content continually, and deliver new content every day, hence the tag line ‘Great content daily’. There’s just no reason not to deliver content as soon as it has been created.

Read FLYER on any device. Over 56% of people access the website on a mobile device. Page turning PDF solutions deliver a poor experience on mobile with extensive scrolling required to read through a feature, so we created a fully responsive website that delivers our content in a way that makes reading it easy whether on mobile, tablet or desktop.

Effectively, the magazine is delivered to you as we produce it. You’ll still find everything that was there before like flight tests, flying adventures, columns, news etc. but you’ll no longer have to wait four weeks for it to be delivered in one lump, you can read it as soon as it is ready, plus the site is fully searchable (we’ve also uploaded the last couple of year’s worth of content with more to come).

For some examples, take a look at some of the following categories

Flight Tests https://flyer.co.uk/category/flight-test/
Flying Adventures https://flyer.co.uk/category/flyingadventure/

Columns:
Mark Hales https://flyer.co.uk/column-category/full-throttle/
Dave Hirschman https://flyer.co.uk/column-category/unusual-attitude/
Ian Seager https://flyer.co.uk/column-category/squawks/

You can explore much much more by clicking the three bar hamburger menu (top left)

We also realise that some people will want to read our content when they have no internet access, so at the end of a four week period we will collate and generate a vertically scrolling PDF containing much of the month’s content. This will be available to download and read off-line, although we believe that our great content is best enjoyed online (regardless of device).

You might be asking (I certainly have) how this is all going to be paid for? As you will see from the site we have created a three-tier membership structure.

Basic - this is free. It will enable you to read the news, some special features and up to three other features per month once the paywall is switched on. It will give you access to these forums (although we will be introducing some member only areas). We will also do our best to persuade you to upgrade your membership.

Reader - this costs £30 per year and in addition to the Basic benefits it will give access to all of our content when the paywall is switched on. This level is ideal for people who perhaps live outside the UK, or people who are not interested in the member benefits.

Club Member - this will cost £52 per year, (the introductory offer of £30 per year ends in two weeks) . It will give you access to all of our content, all member only forum areas and all member benefits including the free landings, discounts and exclusive webinars and events. We think that’s great value at just £1 per week

If you are not a member you can join here https://flyer.co.uk/membership

To summarise, the site is much much more than a forum, it’s where we will deliver all of our content, hence our mantra ‘Great content daily’ .

Whether you are a member or not, you can sample all of our content for free for the next couple of weeks, but speaking candidly, to continue to deliver content, and to do even more, we need your support, so if you are not already a member, or if you are a basic member, please head over to our membership page and join the club.

Thanks

Ian
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By Ian Flyer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1910294
So, as I see it, we have to keep returning to the web site and try to discern what is new amongst all the articles shown - some of which are years old (not always obvious if you only visit the web site occasionally).
I often read the magazine while travelling, without good / any internet access. I really don’t care that a flight test or a trip report is a month old when I read it - it was probably written months ago anyway.
‘News’ items could still be placed on the web site earlier if you feel the need.
So I’ll wait and see what the ‘4 week roll up’ version looks like before deciding whether to continue.
I fully understand that you want to cut costs, but producing a monthly on-line magazines doesn’t appear to be such a problem to many other publishers.
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By G-BLEW
Boss Man  Boss Man
#1910326
[usermention=12487]@Ian Flyer[/usermention]

It's not about cutting costs, it's about a sustainable model and changes in the way people read content/magazines.

You are right, publishers do not struggle to produce monthly magazines. We've been doing it in one form or another on FLYER since 1994, and a few of us did it for years before that too.

If a publisher has a print and digital magazine, the most common way to do it digitally it is via a page turner. If that publisher does not have a print magazine, then a page tuner brings all of the limitations that come with a paper magazine. Our plan with this website is that it will enable us to deliver all of the great content without those limitations (which are considerable)

In terms of 'old' content - much of it is still valid worth reading if you haven't read it before. It would have been a lot quicker, easier and cheaper not to reformat everything here, but we felt that having it uploaded and fully searchable would be very powerful.

The home pages will generally display the latest material first, unless we have manually re-ordered for some reason. Once things have settled down, we'll take a look and see what we nede to change/tweak.

Thanks

Ian
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1910339
G-BLEW wrote:

> If a publisher has a print and digital magazine, the most common way to do
> it digitally it is via a page turner. If that publisher does not have a
> print magazine, then a page tuner brings all of the limitations that come
> with a paper magazine. Our plan with this website is that it will enable us
> to deliver all of the great content without those limitations (which are
> considerable)

FWIW, I hate those page turners. They look flashy for the first 10 seconds, but I find them a complete PITA to actually read from, and I'd rather scroll through a PDF in an ordinary reader.

I'm so glad you didn't go that way. A proper navigable web site is far better, although I would also use the offline version sometimes too.

Visible publication dates on the articles without having to open them first would be good though.
johnm, G-BLEW, Grelly and 1 others liked this
#1910373
Full subscriber - can't say I read the last 4 E Mags - too much of a faff.

Prefer paper for the Throne Room - always in date order... Sport Aviation, LAA LAA Comic and Flyer were careful stacked and digested.

Will start looking on the Mac when I have finished annoying people on the Forum :pirat:
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By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1910402
TopCat wrote:

> FWIW, I hate those page turners. They look flashy for the first 10 seconds, but I
> find them a complete PITA to actually read from, and I'd rather scroll through a PDF
> in an ordinary reader.
> I'm so glad you didn't go that way.

+1 to that.

> Visible publication dates on the articles without having to open them first would be
> good though.

I think something akin to the "Active Topics" view that the forum has would work well for me - i.e. what's new since I was last here. That's always my starting point on the forum. At the moment I'm feeling a little bit lost, where do I start?, what do I read next?, how do I not miss something?, etc (nb: This isn't a major issue, just highlighting an opportunity to make it better)
User avatar
By Ian Flyer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1910409
Thank you for the reply, Ian.

I see that the ‘June issue’ is now out. It would have been nice to have received a notification, as a subscriber. I suppose I can keep checking, but why?

You are correct that the formatting is rather rubbish. Is there any reason why it cannot be improved and made to look like a magazine?

If it’s not all about cost saving, is there a good reason why I’m being asked to pay 73% more for an inferior product?

As said, I’m really not bothered about being able to search an individual web site for ‘the latest news’ - I can get that all over the internet. I read Flyer for entertainment and an enjoyable read. You appear to be intent on removing that experience.

I remain to be convinced.

The June free landings (microlight sites with short runways) does little to change that view. (Before the usual suspects reply, I couldn’t care less that you never use free landings and would happily pay double the landing fee).
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User avatar
By G-BLEW
Boss Man  Boss Man
#1910447
[usermention=12487]@Ian Flyer[/usermention]

- There would have been/should have been an email announcing the June issue PDF, if you ping me your email address, I'll check on Monday to see if there's any reason you didn't receive the notification. We really don't set out to make things difficult.
- I didn't say the format is rather rubbish. It doesn't work if you take a digital format like this website and try to make it look like a magazine (word counts for example are different and not fixed)
- Once the firewall is in place you can read all of the content for £30 a year. If you want the club benefits too, then it's £52 a year (currently only £30 for the next year). The magazine was £4.95 per issue, so £64.35 a year.
- I am biased, but personally I think what's being offered now is superior rather than inferior
- The latest news will be at the top of the news page, so no need to search
- Over half of our readers are currently reading on a mobile device, and that experience is significantly better on a responsive website than it could ever be on a pdf, page turner or otherwise.
- In terms of cost saving - running this website is more expensive than running a page turning pdf
- Not all landing fees will be good for everyone if you take a snapshot - but looked at over a few months/year there should be something for everyone.

We believe that we've got a great website and a great offer - there will be some tweaks over the coming weeks, but generally this is the way that FLYER will be delivering what we think is great content.

Please give it a go, if it doesn't work for you, we're always happy to refund pro-rata any remaining membership.

Thanks

Ian
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By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1910457
[usermention=16][color=#AA0000]@G-BLEW[/color][/usermention]
Just a thought - but have you considered posting links to new articles in the forum?
Or even just additionally post what you send out as the weekly email summary to the forum?
I'm sure someone could write a little bot to do that automatically.
That way for those of us who tend to go to 'Active Topics' as our first point of call would see both new magazine and forum content in one place.
Ironically, I'm probably more likely to see the stuff you send in email if it was a new post in the forum than as an email. The email invariably arrives when I'm doing something else, and will be buried in 25 other emails within a few hours. Whereas when I visit Flyer, that's when I'm in the mode to digest new things about Flyer.
User avatar
By G-BLEW
Boss Man  Boss Man
#1910461
[usermention=18637]@Earl Grey[/usermention]
There are no plans for the magazine to be available on Readly

[usermention=16958]@rikur_[/usermention]
Yes, there are plans to automate forum posts with each new piece of content (link and intro rather than everything) - there will also be several short newsletters with links, and for those on FB or Twitter, updates there too.

Thanks

Ian
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By Earl Grey
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1910519
G-BLEW wrote:

> There are no plans for the magazine to be available on Readly

Ah well..guess I wont be reading it very often then. There may not be many of us but I do think you are doing Readly subscribers a disservice.

EG