Steve,
I feel that there is a need of a direct link to the discussion page from each article.
For example: The current display is:
Ideas for SQLServerCentral.comBy: Steve Jones
It can be:
Ideas for SQLServerCentral.comBy: Steve Jones Join Discussion
It would be useful, as we will be reading the article once-twice-thrice... but most of the time we will be interested in the posts made by readers. This change will directly allow us to go the discussion page.
Here's an example, visit http://www.simple-talk.com/default.aspx
This (somewhat new) SQL site is pretty cool from the aspect of design... and the articles and 'How To' items are very well written. Read one of Robyn Page's articles for example. I believe this site is based out of the UK.
On the volume of info a site provides, I think this it easy to overdo. That is, some include so much info that you're simply overwhelmed. I really like the 'need help' questions on your site - I have gleaned a lot of useful info from those.
I think it would be useful to put up some mock layouts before making changes, more doable now since you have a team supporting you! I think a general clean up is worth doing, but not sure there is a killer feature that is missing - but how would I know??
On advertising, if you really want to do a service for the community, level the playing field. Because SSC has always been pay per ad rather than per per click, it has always skewed towards the bigger players. We (us three musketeers) tried to make opportunities for the smaller vendors (especially the one person startups) but we had to weigh that against revenue needs. You don't have that limitation any longer and I think you can do some good with it. Competition in the SQL tool space is good for all of us, but it's hard to compete if you can't afford ads. Show us ALL the tools in the SQL space, or at least the ones willing to pay some minimal ad rate to weed out the ones that aren't serious. Ads are a lot more interesting if there is variety, so if you combined running ads from more vendors with a policy that they have to change ads every 3 months I dont think some ads would be bad.
And here's one more I always wanted to do but is exactly counter to the ad supported model - show side by side comparisons of products. Reviews tend to be more product intro's and they have their place, but it would be really interesting to see feature comparisons (full in depth testing probably out of reach?).
Gosh, of all the database sites I like your layout the best. Content is frequently good (not always a given in the MSSQL Server world.
More than anything, I'd like more high quality content. But since you asked about design, look toward making a higher volume of archives easy to find things in.
As for content, I know you rely on your readers for that and I wish I had the time to do "What Microsoft Didn't Tell You about Installing Version 9 on X64..." (Short answer is that once you ARE running, 8 dual core Operterons with 64 Gig memory and iSCSI arrays are awesome powerwise: but you may end up reinstalling from the OS up about a dozen times before you learn all the ways you can screw it up)
Problem on content is: the good people are busy!
