One aspect of particular importance to the team has been the method of delivering information to the participants. We've seen online campaigns which publish fifteen screens (ie. all on one scroll-tastic page) of background material, preferably in some hard-to-read colour combination, for a background update; we were quite determined not to. Also, we felt it was important to archive all material in a way that would be easy to track, and inviting to new participants coming in during the course of the campaign.
Running an online campaign off an established forum had one great advantage in this respect: We already had an established site for communications, we could use several channels offered by that site (Altdorf Press & Elector's Forum boards), and we could easily add our own. Participants had all their campaign needs within a few clicks of their forum home. Establishing faction forums was a no-brainer. We would have liked to have kept the Campaign News forum hidden because it really didn't serve much of a purpose on the W-E site: It was only used to put messages on the campaign website, but we found that regular members couldn't read them if the source board was hidden.
Our first real communication to the public came in the shape of our four Newsletters. I personally consider these some of the best products of the entire project, being unmatched by any other online campaign I've seen in terms of quality of content, artwork and layout. We deliberately chose a functional visual theme; plain black-on-white text for any substantial body, in comfortable fonts, interspaced with artwork, and set between interesting borders. This kept texts easy to read, but still quite in-character.
The Website carried much the same visual theme and layout philosophy. It also served as the repository for all published material, as well as user-submitted work. We did, however, neglect to put any kind of tracker on it, so we have no idea how many of you used the site for anything else than checking up on the map and control rates. Any comments, questions or suggestions you might have about the site would be very much appreciated!
We did seem to have some trouble getting word out beyond the campaign forum; it seems not many people pay attention to the Warhammer-Empire.com homepage (indeed, admin records suggest that most people instead have the forum page set in "Favorites") or the Altdorf Press board. One point of debate is always the merit of sticky threads: Do they actually draw more traffic than a regular post? Considering these difficulties, it is likely we missed out on a number of participants (or rather, they missed out on the campaign) simply because they didn't know what was going on. Obviously, the four month hiatus didn't help much here either.
On the whole, however, I do think that word travelled well enough inside the campaign, with people being quite well aware of changing conditions, etc. The key to this, I believe, was the fact that the most important information was always available at every location; whether you were at the Campaign forum, Battle Report forum, or Campaign Website, you were never more than a click or two away from the current round's information, the last results/journal, and the map.
--GH
