Earlier this year, we helped Stephen launch his awesome magazine, The Rumpus. In an interview with the LA Times book blog Jacket Copy, Stephen talks about the aggressive way we got started.

If I were giving a seminar on how to start a website, which would be ridiculous, I would talk about the importance of launching a site this way. We were gathering content as we worked out our design. Because of that the content pushed the design, not the other way around. The Rumpus is a content-driven magazine. We will never have more people working on technology or design than we will writers and editors.

Anyway, the worst thing you could do, I now realize, would be to launch a site without content. You would have to completely redesign it, which would have been out of our budget.

It was actually Ben Brown's idea. He's at XOXCO and is responsible for the design and back end of the site and he's kind of a genius. He was the one who told me to start gathering content right away rather than waiting for the site to launch.

Stephen is right. We absolutely believe that the best way to launch a website - any website - is to start posting content online, even if the "final" design and functionality is weeks away. Like any activity, it takes a while to build up the muscle memory of actually doing before you can get good at something. The "beta" period we had with The Rumpus allowed the magazine to gather an early audience while it was still learning how to be a magazine, and we were able to "launch" with a site filled to the brim with good stuff to read.

Read the full interview here

Posted 2 years ago by Ben Brown. Topics include stephenelliot therumpus press launching