Welcome, readers new and old, to Tap-Repeatedly.com! As our long-time visitors know, this site is the new name and home for the beloved FourFatChicks.com. We’ve kept everything you love about the place and improved plenty more. Please make yourselves at home, check out the swanky new forums, and enjoy!
CONGRATS! Love the new look, love the new name, love it all.
Supah. I’m going to tell all my friends. That should take about 10 seconds.
Wow, what a great new look, I just love it. It is clean and neat, not cluttered. Well done, I’ll be back.
Looks great!
Site looks great guys. Love that you kept the tradition alive!
That whole conversation with yourself announcing the new site completely freaked me out. :p
I’m meh about a site change, sites change, yay?
But in any case, could you, if you feel it’s appropriate, check the RSS settings so we can see full posts in the RSS feed? 🙂 At the moment it is some horrible first-50-words thing or something…looks terrible, it’s pretty unreadable if there is a intended paragraph break too. 🙁
Or use the “more” tag and set it up that way, so there can be a starting paragraph then “click to read more” – ala Rock Paper Shotgun (although I prefer the “everything in the RSS feed so it’s easier to read” method myself).
Otherwise neat name I guess, nice layout, although there was something rather charming in the old name and the very old previous site layout, heh.
Andrew – your wish is my command. I have set the RSS feeds up the way you like them, and that way they shall stay unless other people complain.
The original site, original name, and old new site all had charm, and everyone on this staff had a real connection to it. I’ve written for FFC for almost eight years, so this wasn’t a decision that was made lightly.
The decision was made, however, because sometimes things need a fresh breath of life blown into them while still respecting and honoring the traditions from which they came. Tap-Repeatedly is going to re-energize the whole operation, and I hope everyone winds up enjoying it as much as they enjoyed the classic FFC.
I love the elegance of the new site’s organization. Now I won’t have to endure you yelling at me for failing to find the hidden “log in” button. Your words hurt me. Stupid words.
Matt,
Quality rears its oft unseen head. The site looks great! Kudos for you. JB
I hope everyone makes the transition smoothly. Now I just have to update my bookmarks.
First, congrats to the entire staff of Tap-Repeatedly! I am so happy to find my way there. May this site continue the colorful atmosphere that has once made FFC so great!
I like to ask Steerpike and others about the motivation for such drastic change. I could not imagine this to be an easy decision. Outside of this community, it means that the site has to start all over again, and popularity of the site (particularly with search engines) may suffer for a long while (because of a new domain name). I notice that FFC has recently lost its position on Metacritic (and Gamerankings, to some extent), though many may not care. Also, the brand that have existed for so many years at FFC will be entirely lost, let alone the hard work that your predecessors have gone into creating the site’s brand many years ago.
I am very interested in hearing more about this. My feedback is not meant to be criticism; it is just a thought that came to mind immediately when I first saw the announcement.
Thanks for the change to the RSS feed 😀 not that I won’t comment from time to time as I do, but it makes it easier to read great pieces of writing 🙂
Hi John,
The decision was not easy, and it stemmed from several reasons – some good, some not so good. Chiefly it had to do with our desire to reinvigorate a great place that everyone loved. FFC was doing fine, but we felt that a shot of energy would strengthen it further, and a name change was the sort of shot that would allow for a new jolt without damaging or detracting from anything that had come before.
For what it’s worth, the decision to change the name of the site was mine, and I take responsibility for it. We’re very democratic here, staff-wise; the name itself was a group decision, and it was very important to me that we not lose anything, tangible or intangible, that FFC had should we make this change.
Our delisting from Metacritic and GameRankings is the result of a slowdown in publication of reviews, and something I intend to reverse in the coming year. As to reduction in search popularity, that will hurt us in the short term, but I’m confident it’ll go away organically, since we still retain the same outstanding writers with the same attitude problem, and we are actively seeking additional contributors.
I am interested in building a site that is more about opinions and criticism than about reviews; one that discusses games and other entertainment intellectually. Four Fat Chicks, which I had been with as a writer since 2002, did a lot of that. Hopefully Tap-Repeatedly will continue the great tradition.
Jen and Orb created FFC and ran it perfectly. Had Jen not grown weary of the incredible amount of work and thanklessness involved in her role – something for which I can hardly blame her after eight years – that site would remain exactly as it was. We owe everything to them. MrLipid and I decided to take stewardship of the site not out of a drive to change it, but out of a desire to retain and empower a place that has meant so much to hundreds of staff and readers over the years. It mattered to us, and we hope it goes on mattering to others.
Surprisingly, everyone has been very supportive of the name change. I was expecting a little more pushback, both internally and among site visitors. I assume this hasn’t happened because everyone is terrified of me, and of my retribution should they cross me. This is gratifying, as I have long preferred to rule through fear.
Despite that, I certainly hope no one hesitates to share their opinions on the change, whether those opinions are positive or not. We’d love to hear from you, either here on this comments thread or at our lovely new unhackable forums.
Congratulations to all of Tap-Repeatedly’s great staff and writers. I love the name and the look. The reviews are always highly readable. I liked the humor and quirkiness of ‘Four Fat Chicks’, but I thought it might be perceived as sexist and demeaning. This is a clever name, easy to remember and I hope attracts many new readers.