Sometimes, in the life of a web site, you need to start fresh. The thing is, you can’t just delete everything and truly start like new. Well, you can, but that isn’t exactly the best course of action since it would greatly hurt ranking in search engines and already existing back links to content. That’s ignoring when you genuinely do like what content you already made and don’t want to let that information, and all the time spent creating it, become a waste.
Still, you want to start “new” and want to symbolically acknowlesdge such, at the very least, while you begin to change things around. This is the point I’m at now — on the cusp of changing Xadara just a bit, all the while having no desire to erase what I’ve done before, a situation which, of all random things, reminds me of Konami in 2002 and the Dance Dance Revolution game series.
Let me explain.
From late 1998 until 2002 Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution game series had 8 main releases in arcades, several “side” releases, and just as many home releases. It was an incredibly lively series, and with it’s 8th main release in 2002, “Dance Dance Revolution Extreme” Konami put an interesting message on some of the art which was added to the machines in arcades.
The text reads, in wonderful “engrish” style:
“We are starting over! D.D.R. Generation Next. Thanx! for all DanceDanceRevolution players”
Yeah, odd, I know, but what it meant was this was a “new beginning” for the series symbolically. One could call it a fresh start, except for the fact that the game actually contained a large selection of content from previous games, some of which had not been available for a few years. I don’t know where Konami was actually intending to go with this, but the idea of changing in such a way, by bringing back the past, was interesting to me.
Oddly, this would wind up being a time when Konami would suddely stop releasing arcade version of the game (no new releases would happen until 2006) with home versions seeming to be the focus. While this aspect isn’t part of my reason for making this comparison, I still found it somewhat funny.
In any case, Konami seems to have wanted to “start over” by going back to the series roots and I feel that’s what I too should do — go back to my roots.
It’s fitting I would draw this comparison as DDR is actually a key aspect of why this site exists, having been created to act as a place for DDR related content I once created, and for online discussion about the games and other subjects. It’s almost as if things have come full circle, I guess.
So, with that little story told, you may be able to see where I’m going with all of this. I’m taking this site back to its roots, in a way, and going forward with many things I never did but had wanted to do since I began working on this site more regularly. Much of it is stuff I’ve mentioned recently that I’m wanting to focus on and I think it will be fun to “switch gears” for a while.
Virtually all of the old content will remain. Changes will happen in how things are arranged and presented and of course I’m going to bring some new things to the table, but overall I’m certain this will improve things in the long run.
More to come, as always.