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Although once one of the most revered sources of inspiration and design industry news, Stylegala has, suffice to say, gone to hell. Gallery updates have slowly come to a halt, news is littered with useless and tasteless links, and the forum has been overrun by spammers and old owners selling their new endeavors. It’s a freaking mess, and apparently the owner doesn’t know what to do now.

I loved Stylegala for what it once was, but so much has changed that I fear it may be lost to the idle hands of the current owner (no offense, but more steps could be taken in my opinion). So, because no one seems to be stepping up and putting themselves out there, and the people are ready to leave, here’s how we could save Stylegala:

1. Close it down temporarily.

I know that sounds like a bad omen from the start, but there’s only one way to stop the downward spiral: cut it off before it reaches the end. Take the step to put forth your best effort to fixing the site by enabling absolute power to do so. If you work hard enough, and have enough support from the community (I know enough people would step up, myself included), Stylegala won’t be lost to the abyss.

Close the site for 2 months and come back with a more secure and reliable system that people can gather around and lift up. If you do it right and come back with flying colors, you can get the ads back, start earning revenue, and maybe even pass profit sharing to those who regularly contribute to the site. Whatever the case, you’ll come back stronger.

2. While she’s down, get her back up.

And if possible, just start from scratch. Honestly, the best way to fix a struggling site is to rethink it’s entire purpose and architecture. If it were not for the news being regularly updated (even with the all the spam that it was once subject to), the site would be almost completely dead.

Let’s face it, you need to put time and effort into this to make it work. The design and UI suffer, the backend seems limp as bacon, and the site is abused (even by it’s old owner). Rework the backend to solve the problems that plague the current site. Make it better, faster, stronger.

3. Recruit help to keep it fresh.

You’ve got volunteers that want to help write for the site, so why not get them on board? They say they are intimidated by the history of Stylegala, but I think they haven’t been properly motivated to learn from that and move on. Stylegala is at the place that it is today because of it’s stagnant nature.

Am I saying we abandon our beliefs and expectations? Give up hope on the perfect website? No, not at all. On the contrary, I say we recognize sites that strive for the best, but come up short. How can we help them? Constructive criticism, commentary from a caring community, and effort by the admins and contributors.

So get those articles flowing in at a steady pace. While the site is down, stack them up so that you have an arsenal just ready to blast the Internet with when you come back.

4. Cut the fat and don’t look back.

What is Stylegala? Three things come to mind: community news, design showcase, and forum. For the time being, cut the fat that is hardly ever updated and come back to it when you have the time, energy, and stability across the site to properly do so. Don’t give something you care deeply about anything short of your best.

While the site is down for those two months, remove the Bookstore, the Software Store, the Resources, the Features, and whatever else can stand to go to bring back the news, gallery, and forum. Focused bursts will be your key to success.

5. Redesign, realign, or whatever you call it.

Let’s face it, we all love Stylegala’s, well, style, but the site’s visual design has passed it’s prime and needs to be refreshed. The code, the visuals, and the interactions are haphazardly pieced together, and leave little for those featured in the gallery to really look up to.

The site needs to be redesigned (I’m not saying I have the perfect design in mind, but I have one in the works) to promote those three sellable and most important features mentioned above (news, forum, and gallery). From the Google Ads that look like the navigation to form interaction to semantics, Stylegala could use some of that pizzazz that Stylegala’s own readers know and love.

And there you have it: five steps that would get Stylegala back on it’s feet and ready to kick some ass. It seems like a lot of work—that’s because it is. Did you expect anything else?

Copyright © 2008 Mark Otto.