Letter From the Publisher: Issue 18
Welcome to the 18th issue of Food & Spirits Magazine. As always, we’ve got some great articles and photos that you are sure to enjoy. Many of your favorite writers are back and we’ve also made a few additions to the staff that will certainly enhance the quality and selection of articles you have to peruse.
Along with this issue, we will also be relaunching our website, fsmomaha.com, at the same time, something that we’ve been wanting to do for a while now. We are hoping that the relaunch of a new and improved website will persuade more people to come and take a look. In order for the website to withstand the number of visitors and to provide an excellent connection to everyone involved, we’ve been advised to look at the 5 most common performance bottlenecks, (https://www.apicasystems.com/blog/5-common-performance-bottlenecks/) that we may come across during the launch of our website, and why consistent load testing should be conducted to ensure this doesn’t happen. We want it to be the best we can make it, and if this will help us, then that is what we should do. With that being said, we are all pretty excited about the new website for a number of reasons; 1) It marks the culmination of a lot of work by many, many talented people; 2) it gives us a chance to better connect with our readers by making all of our content available in an entirely different medium. In the same way we can better connect with our readers, we can also be more of a driving force for our advertisers by getting more eyes on the great things they have to offer; and 3) it marks a big transition for me personally to finally embrace this thing they call the ‘interwebs’ in a professional capacity (rather than just ‘researching’ my last date and searching for the best lo mein recipe or delivery option).
I want to elaborate a bit more on each of these:
Many talented people made this happen
70 authors’ and 23 photographers’ work make up the content of our new website. That’s over 300 articles, 500,000 words and 340 photos just for you to indulge in. It’s an impressive display of the creative talent to be found in Omaha. There is no other website in Omaha that can offer you so much locally produced content on food and spirits.
To my chagrin, and because I am perpetually caught in the moment, I had forgotten many of the articles and contributors that graced the pages of our early issues. It was a humbling and flattering experience for me to be reminded of them all and how much we are all indebted to them for giving us such great, local articles to read. All of that is not even mentioning our web designer, Rob Ruiz from Bizzle Designs, who has also busted his rear to bring the website to this point. Trust me when I say having too much can be just as big a problem as not having enough. He’s been aces in handling it all. We have no idea how web designers do it all, we really don’t. They’re so talented in making websites refined and user-friendly and, for that, we can’t value them highly enough. Demand for these skills is higher than ever and so now might be the ideal time to get into this as a profession, for those interested in doing so. Having a portfolio is essential as a web or UX designer; here is some information on how to create an effective portfolio – https://slickplan.com/blog/how-to-create-a-ux-design-portfolio. Hopefully, this will help people find more success in this chosen career path.
A better chance to connect with our readers and advertisers
Not only is all of our content available on fsmomaha.com, but it’s also enabled for multiple formats, including mobile. You’ll also find all of our digital editions available for viewing and download. There are also links to our Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr pages as well (and probably whatever they come up with next). That gives us loads of opportunities to give you fresh, local content in more ways, and lets our advertisers get the word out about the great things they have to offer to more people. We’ll also be able to offer our print subscriptions in a much more convenient way, and introduce new things as well (like video – hint, hint).
A big transition
I’ve been using the web personally from the beginning (Al Gore and I were two of the first), but admittedly, it’s taken a while for me to find the way I felt most comfortable working with it professionally. Having worked with print for nearly 20 years, I knew print wasn’t ‘dead’ (like everyone said eight years ago), but I also recognized it was going to change what I would be doing for the rest of my life. It’s a fine line to walk that gives readers and advertisers more opportunities, while also finding a way to pay for it all (as nice as Rob is, he doesn’t work for free). We’ll always be looking to evolve our ideas and innovate, but with this relaunch, I think we’ve found a way to make the online world work for all of us.
So check it out, read it and enjoy. At the end of the day, myself, the writers, photographers and designers, we all do this because we’re passionate about producing great work, building the local food and spirits community, and informing the public about the great things happening in that industry and in our area.
And we want to know what you think. Let us know how we’ve done – we’re always listening.
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