GotFrag Hardware - Status Update
When we first launched the GotFrag hardware site, it was to little fanfare - our forums were more dead than Painkiller. After the first few articles from our original staff, we started bringing regulars, but not at any sort of staggering rate. Once I sacked most of the original writers except Shoes, and hired DigitalStu, things really took off. In the last three months we have had our hits go up 50% at a steady rate. Assuming current trends continue, in two months we'll have eclipsed the goal we set for ourselves in order to make us look attractive to major product producers (see issue #1).

Our forums have been extremely active, and it seems that nearly anyone on the GotFrag community that is looking into getting a new computer is first posting the potential specifications on our general hardware forum for comments. This is great; it's what we originally hoped would happen when we launched the site. Beyond that, our technical support, video, and headset forums are going strong as well. The community is really starting to thrive there so if you're a first time reader from the main GotFrag site, check it out.

On the staff side of things, everything is pumping on all cylinders. Thomas “shoes” Gribble and Stuart “DigitalStu” Grubbs deserve special recognition. Shoes wrote the 12-page mousepad article in less than two days along with taking the pictures. He also is our go-to guy for HTML formatting on the site, having to make every single article that goes onto our site pretty. He does quite a bit of work, and deserves more credit for how the site is running than I do. Then there is Stu. Stu doesn't write a whole lot of articles, but it's what he does behind the scenes that counts. He spent almost 3 straight days, days that he had off between working 40 hour weeks and going to school, to get Plantronics, Sennheiser, Icemat, Logitech, Microsoft, SteelSeries, Saitek, Razer, and all our other product vendors to send us products to review. This was no easy feat, considering the majority of them had never even heard of us before he contacted them. Right now he's hard at work getting the big boys to start sending us stuff, but it will be a whole lot easier for him with larger traffic numbers on his side. The bottom line is, the more you visit us, the better the content is going to be.

From here on out, we will do the best we can to meet every single reasonable demand that you make of us, and we will work our hardest to earn your traffic and to meet our goal, a goal we have set to provide you, the viewer, with better content.

Finally I'd like to thank everyone who is currently reading this article. Several top members of GotFrag staff had major reservations about starting a dedicated hardware site for GotFrag, and thanks to every one of you, those fears have been soothed away. We've cleared the first major hurdle, which was community acceptance. Our next hurdle is getting on the press A-list of every single video card, RAM, CPU, HD, and PSU manufacturer to provide you with great reviews. After that goal is achieved, the sky is the limit. Thanks again for your solid support, and look forward to all you've expected from us in the future.

Thank you for your support,

Christian "ZeGermans" Koebel

A final note from DigitalStu
Many of you might have noticed that this was posted, taken down, revised and reposted. There are several reasons for this and I would like to address those now. As public relations manager for the hardware site it is my job to make sure that everything posted remains fair to all and that it represents GotFrag in a positive manner. With the previous posting of this letter I had failed in my duty to do so. At this time, I would like to apologize on behalf of the Hardware staff and GotFrag to Soft Trading for our previous statement claiming that they had refused to send us a SteelPad QcK. The fact is that they never refused to send us a QcK because we never asked. However, when we did ask them to send product for the round up in December, they did include a QcK+. Our false statement was not only unfair to Soft Trading, but it was also unfair to our community.

As to why the QcK+ was not included in the mouse pad roundup in the first place. We had to choose two products from each company, a hard pad and a soft pad, to compare against the others. It is our job to represent each company fairly while not jeopardizing the review when writing an article of that nature, and we felt we were maintaining that balance by leaving the QcK+ out.

After taking a second look at the Letter from the Editor, it was deemed unbecoming of a professional staff. We apologize to our loyal readers and community for this misstatement and our inappropriate behavior. We have taken measures to insure it does not happen again. This unfortunate circumstance has led to the following decisions and actions:

-A revision to the previous Letter from the Editor has been made.
-Both a public and private apology were written to Soft Trading
-The one and only, Anomoly will be overseeing the hardware site as of Friday, January 20th.
-Everything must be approved by Shoes, ZeGermans, Anomoly, and Myself before it will be published.
-An addendum to the mouse pad round up will be made which will include a review of the SteelPad QcK+

These changes are being made to better our site and community and to further its growth. It is important that you all understand that no staff member has been reprimanded, punished, fired, or in any way demoted. Everyone will continue to function at the same level as they had previously. Again, I would like to thank all of you because without you we would not be at the level of success we have reached. We make changes and decisions to build upon and create more opportunity for growth and success in the future. Without your suggestions and feedback these changes and decisions would not come to light.

Sincerely,

Stu Grubbs
GotFrag Hardware Public Relations