Customer Highlight – Revue Histoire: Democratizing History

History writing has been an almost-exclusive field reserved for historians and folks of authority. That’s what prompted Augustin Remond to start out Revue Histoire, which translates as History Review.

Revue Histoire is an internet site that gives an area for college kids and enthusiasts to write down about history. It invites people to look at the past through a contemporary and popular lens, educating readers and providing them with the talents to investigate facts and make informed decisions.

For the reason that website’s primary audience is speakers of French, Augustin hosts the web site on Hostinger’s data center in France. This fashion, Revue Histoire offers the perfect performance to its visitors while keeping site management and maintenance easy and intuitive.

For the Reader and the Author

Augustin was a graduate student of History on the University of Angers. With prior website creation experience, he created a project called NoTimeStore together with his classmates at first of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The goal was to share academic content in an accessible way and to maintain busy throughout the lockdown.

As time went by, Augustin’s friends began to go their very own ways, putting the project on pause. But after ending his studies, Augustin decided to revive the positioning since he saw a requirement for history content.

Initially, he didn’t expect much. He just desired to check out his team management skills and challenge the concept only experts should write history pieces. Ultimately, he managed to encourage people to get entangled in history writing.

“The target is to teach readers and help them develop into incorruptible by beautiful but completely false ideas,” he says. “Revue Histoire provides resources about history writing, so people can learn easy methods to write quality history articles.”

The team is open – anyone can apply to be a author or an editor via the web site. This runs in the identical vein because the ‘Democratize Publishing’ principle of WordPress – the platform Augustin used to construct Revue Histoire’s website.

History for Everyone

On the time of writing this text, 23 volunteers contribute to Revue Histoire, with Augustin overseeing the blog and serving as chief editor. One other volunteer helps him to ascertain the spelling.

Once someone joins the team, Augustin explains the principles and methodology in order that they will follow the identical quality standards. This includes familiarizing them with WordPress, search engine marketing, and Revue Histoire’s writing guidelines. Then, he provides feedback on their articles.

All these efforts lead to the web site’s content being rigorously researched, with proper media licensing and bibliographic sources in place.

Most articles are relatively short, around 750 to 1,000 words. It’s because Augustin wants the web site to be a reliable resource for individuals who need to learn something easily and quickly.

Besides, Revue Histoire’s current editors are mostly still learning. Revue Histoire runs on a non-profit basis where everyone volunteers, so Augustin doesn’t need to put an excessive amount of on the production side.

“The concept is to be a community. If you ought to do one article monthly, you do one; if you ought to do more, you do more. I don’t push people – should you join a community like ours, the purpose is solely to participate,” Augustin explains.

He claims WordPress is great for managing user access for collective work like this. The truth is, it’s WordPress’ fully-customizable nature and built-in collaboration tools that made him select this content management system after trying out another platforms.

Optimizing the Present to Preserve the Past

Nowadays, Revue Histoire focuses on 4 lesser-known historical topics: historical songs, women’s history, historic photographs, and abortion laws world wide. The editorial team delivers the content in an easy-to-understand style to draw more readers.

“To bring added value, we synthesize information available online with what can only be present in books. It differentiates us from other history web sites,” explains Augustin.

He also applies search engine marketing strategies to spice up traffic.

“I do keyword research with Semrush. I also use Google tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to trace essential metrics. We typically have greater than 100 clicks a day.”

When asked about Revue Histoire’s major challenges thus far, Augustin recalls when an organization accused him of using licensed images incorrectly.

“We tried to make use of images with Creative Commons licensing as much as possible since it allows sharing for non-profit purposes. But that situation forced me to review all 600 images in the web site, attributing the license and the authors on all the pictures, and delete the photos considered unusable,” Augustin recounts.

In hindsight, Augustin sees that incident as a blessing in disguise, because it made the positioning’s team more aware and mindful of copyright issues.

“It also pushed me to do more copyright research, which made me realize that their request was completely abusive. I stood as much as the accuser, and got every thing straight.”

Future-Ready Solutions for the Website

One other challenge that Revue Histoire had to beat was the positioning’s technical management. With the previous web host, the web site would go down always, and the shopper support wasn’t really all that supportive.

What’s more, server migration took a really very long time. With all this in mind, Augustin was on the lookout for a more intuitive web host until he got here across Hostinger on Instagram.

“Hostinger has saved me plenty of time in technical management. Today, I not experience the problems that I’d’ve before. It was pretty crazy.” Augustin laughs.

Recently, Augustin switched to Hostinger’s recent server in France, optimizing his site’s speed and user experience much more. He also appreciates that the server was built with sustainability in mind – it’s 100% powered by renewable energy.

“I also like how ergonomic hPanel is. The file editor is on the market directly within the dashboard – I don’t need to open an FTP client anymore. It’s all very intuitive. Some tasks only require a couple of clicks,” he adds.

Last but not least, Augustin suggestions his hat to Hostinger’s Customer Success team.

“Each time I had an inquiry or encountered an issue, they responded quickly and resolved it. Even when it takes time, they’re all the time informative,” he says. “I can say that I’m an ultra-satisfied customer.”

Where the Legacy Leads

Augustin has big plans for Revue Histoire. First, he wants to include a web-based bookstore into the positioning. Then, he wants to maneuver toward greater recognition. Revue Histoire has already been referenced by greater publications and Wikipedia as a reliable source.

Within the short term, his goal is to have 10,000 monthly users. After that, he desires to monetize the positioning higher to earn enough to pay people to run it.

Finally, Augustin aspires to create a print magazine.

“I wanted a very-limited paper version of Revue Histoire. But the web site will still be the major attraction because without it, the project is nonexistent.”