The nightmare of balancing development and content
What do readers want?
Do readers want frequent high quality articles or do they want regular, less frequent articles but a more advanced site that's rich in features? Search engines love the former - regular updates give you a good leg-up in the search engine stakes. More content = more possible pages for users to land on = higher chance of people talking about you = higher Pagerank. So initially it seems that churning out regular content is a good method (and the one that I opt for).
However, if I'm speaking from a personal point of view I find that the limited functionality of the site is possibly holding it back but I'm also begrudged to reduce my content-time for features that people probably won't use. Spending days finishing my CMS-style back-end would be time well spent for me but I can't see it improving the user's experience. It would offer a more intuitive back-end experience; allowing me to write articles on the site and not publish them - just move them into a 'backlog' from which I can draw upon when enthusiasm is low.
Therein lies the solution
The solution is to have a backlog of content that you can schedule for future publishing which removes the pressure to develop and write simultaneously. Obviously this means that for a period prior to development you need to write more content than normal and set aside time to schedule it for publishing, which could be problematic. It also requires the backend to have been built which is also somewhat of a tricky topic.
How do you balance your time?
Will users stay on a site that looks ugly or is limited in functionality? Or do they prefer a site that offers regular food for thought? An interesting question that I don't have an answer for at this moment in time but as far as I'm concerned it's better to keep the content flowing otherwise you risk losing regular visitors under the logic that they were converted on the current side.
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