The future of Custompc.co.uk

Posted at: Thursday 23rd April 2009 by Alex Watson

A message from Alex Watson, the editor of Custom PC about changes afoot on custompc.co.uk. All good things, as they say...

Last year, Dennis Publishing, the company which owns Custom PC magazine, and its website, bought the website bit-tech.net. Since then, the CPC and bit-tech teams have been working close together to create the best possible magazine and website for PC hardware and technology enthusiasts, modders and gamers.

As part of that strategy we’ve looked long and hard at how we work online, and it doesn’t make much sense to have two similar websites. It dilutes the effort we’re able to put in to each site, both in terms of the content you read and the technology behind the sites. As a result, we’ve chosen to focus in print on Custom PC, and online on bit-tech.

Bit-tech is a far more modern site than custompc.co.uk in terms of the technology which powers it, and it’s also much bigger in terms of its audience. These are two very powerful reasons which mean that in the long-term, bit-tech will be a better read and a better user experience. This means that we’ll be putting all our efforts online into bit-tech.

The first step of this involves opening a set of forums for CPC readers on bit-tech. Bit-Tech already has a very large and active forum, and we won’t duplicate forums that it already has, but where it doesn’t have a forum covering topics that the CPC forums did, one will be created. Due to technical differences between the forum software on custompc.co.uk and bit-tech, it’s not possible for us to transfer user accounts – you will need to sign up for a new account if you don’t already have one. As with custompc.co.uk, it’s free to do.

As a result of this move, the forums on custompc.co.uk are now closed.

The change in how we work online won’t have any negative effects on Custom PC as a print magazine. Custom PC continues to grow in circulation, and the bigger team we now have has enabled us to improve the magazine and to continue bringing the best, most in-depth coverage of PC hardware and technology.

Please click here and join us in our new forums!