Welcome To Mark's SNG Planet Blog!

First Post - Some Big Changes At SNG Planet

Welcome to my new blog! Just a single entry here at the moment – explaining the the changes to SNG Planet we just put up. In around 1 week this particular page will transform into the regular blog of Mark, your host, writer, poker fan and owner / manager of the Planet Corporation and its many associated sites.

Let me start with the reason for all of the changes, brand new look and new content. After this I’ll give you a flavor of some of the things in the pipeline!

While the ‘old’ version of SNG Planet has been growing in popularity, language coverage and number of articles – the original design did not ever envisage the huge number of readers and sheer amount of information we enjoy today. In effect the old site had become of a patchwork of associated content… with more patches being stuck on each week!

So, in early September of this year I took a big decision, a decision which has taken the 4 people who work here at Planet HQ more than 2 months of focused hard work to complete… We redesigned the entire site from the bottom-up, making it more readable, easier to navigate, more attractive to view and we also reformatted and refreshed every single page of the almost 1000 pages of content with up to date information too… quite a task - and one that is still in progress in many ways!!

Here are a just a few of the changes you can enjoy right now, after this some of the extras currently in the pipeline will be covered.

- We now have SNG Planet in French:  This is a full 100 pages of strategy, reviews and information… not just a couple of bonus codes like others might provide! You’ll find the French Homepage here.

- New Look Homepage And Sub-Mains: One of the key pieces of feedback we received on the old site was that they were ‘too cluttered’, with 100’s of choices of things to click. We have now simplified these and highlight the choices / areas which matter, as well as adding new graphics and logos and reducing the number of ‘best articles’ to the most read of all.

- No Side Bar, More In-Article Links: Each article now has more ‘related articles’ at the bottom and links explaining related concepts or information within the text, making it far easier to get around the site

- Search! This is ready in English already, we are working on how to get Russian, Hungarian, Polish, French and Romanian ‘special characters’ supported properly with this before we go live in all languages (should be very soon!)

- Information Updates + Opinions: It is amazing how fast things move in online poker, with articles only 6 months old being ‘aged’ in some cases. Each article has had a check-up, brush-up and – where there were several choices – we have given the ‘SNG Planet Recommendation’ , highlighting our personal and giving readers clear reasons why we chose a particular site, strategy or tool.

- New Content: This includes some new-look ‘beginner guides’ as well as the usual strategy articles and information.

Phew!

Even More Changes Just Around The Corner...

As if this were not already enough… there is a packed pipeline of features and content which we will be building on in the coming weeks. The following list is what we have in plan to be completed before the year-end.

- SNG Planet German: Really looking forward to this one! We have 70 of the 100 pages already translated and will start working on getting them up soon. It takes a while to create the new versions, but we hope to have this ready in around 1 month. We will take a decision on what the next languages should be in the new year, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are all possibilities!

- Archives: We have identified a lot of articles which, while still up to the high standard you would expect from us, are not the most read or most current. We plan on creating an archive, which will still be accessible to readers. This will keep the lists of articles a little shorter while keeping the choices open.

- Blog(s): I am personally looking forward to sharing my thoughts in blog once again (actually kept a personal poker blog for many years before retiring it earlier this year). We will also be introducing a ‘readers blog’ very soon, which all readers of our will be encouraged to contribute to – stay tuned for a contest which will kick this one off.

- Satellites: Some great ideas for our Poker Satellites section – will keep them quiet for now – but stay tuned!

- Web 2.0: I know, I know… the saying is a little clichéd already. However, since the social media side of things are so huge now we really can not ignore it. Our 2.0 efforts will start right here on the blog page before the year-end, and will cover several languages. You can actually follow me on Twitter already www.twitter.com/PlanetMark (I'll follow you too as long as you do not send me 'bonus offers' etc!)

That’s enough for a first blog post – look forward to blogging here regularly real soon (along with comment functionality to collect your valued feedback). In the meantime your thoughts, feedback and ideas are always welcome at support@sngplanet.com – oh and if you have a blog or website then a shout-out about our new design would be greatly appreciated too!

GL at the tables, Mark

PS: Below you will see the 'old blog' in holding format only - my blog will take shape over the next week or two. The best place to start taking a look at the all-new SNG Planet is our Homepage, click the link below to go there right now!

Online Poker Tournament Strategy - The SNG Planet Homepage