Blog Update: The New Chess.com Home Page And Chess Today

Hi everyone, I wanted to reach out about the updates to our content pages and how they impact blogs and discuss any questions you might have.

As I think you know by now, we released a customizable home page on Chess.com AND it is the default page when users log in on Chess.com: https://www.chess.com/news/view/make-home-your-own-with-the-new-custom-home-page

The home page allows users to craft their own experience which for the vast majority of users, means putting playing chess front and center. This has been a huge success from our perspective as we have great feedback and see that more people are playing games than ever before.

That said, this does mean that content (now at chess.com/today) is less visible than before. News, articles, blogs, and videos all get less visibility than they used to. This is true for our official pieces and for all blogs. I can say that I've observed about half as many reads on my personal blogs as before. Here is where blogs are currently showing up:

• chess.com/today - Although this is no longer the default landing page, there is still lots of traffic, and users do find blogs here. Blogs published in the last 48 hours rotate in this slot.
• chess.com/home - Users who enable the "Activity" panel on the customizable home page will still see blogs.
• notifications - Users who follow either you OR your blog will be notified when you post.
• Chess.com profiles - Bloggers now have a badge that links to their blog on their chess.com/profile page.
• chess.com/blogs - Although not a heavy source of traffic, top blogs do show here.

Additionally, I want to mention that many of our most successful bloggers heavily promote themselves outside of Chess.com: on Twitter (use #chesscommunity), Facebook, various groups and clubs, etc. This is of course a great way to grow your following, and we are happy to help where possible, for example, with retweets of selected blogs on Twitter.

I hope this helps, and I'd love to discuss any questions you have and hear ideas for how we can support your blogs better after this change.