Added by Jeff on Sept. 17, 2008
122 comments
Hey everyone, if you're reading this, then congratulations, you've figured out how to navigate our new homepage! We've made a pile of changes around here today to hone things up a bit and to add some important new features that we think you'll dig.
For starters, the homepage has been redesigned and we now have real Top Ten popularity lists for each page category. Take a look and see what the most visited pages are this month, or see where you can make a huge difference with your wiki editing skills by scanning our "popular pages that need help" lists. Those are pages that have people looking at them, but could use more attention.
The homepage is also bit better at showcasing the things we do around here. As we've been writing more and more stories, it's been easier for good stuff to get lost in the shuffle. Now we'll be able to show you three videos and manually point you at four different things from the top of the site, ensuring that it's harder to miss what we're doing.
That's also one of the guiding factors behind the update to our
video page. Did you know that all of the How To Build A Bomb videos we did before the site launched had become completely impossible to find? Now, the list of videos on our viewer page is paginated, letting you scroll back to yesteryear, when gum was a penny and I was pathetically editing video on my own.
The thing I'm most excited about is our new
Guides section. This section will let you read or write strategy guides about games, big or small. We've rolled in some good copyright management stuff for those of you who want to make sure you keep control of your own content, and I think it totally modernizes the form. Watch this handy video about guide creation for more details!
We've also released a white version of the site for those of you who prefer black text on white backgrounds. Brad is such a person, and personally, I think he's insane. Dark sites look better! But I'm willing to meet everyone in the middle on this, I guess. The A/A box up at the top of every page will let you swap back and forth at will. Try it out, but be careful--the white background might blow out your damn eyes.
Lastly, and certainly not least, some of these page redesigns also have placements for advertising. You won't see any ads just yet, but the site is now fully prepared to handle them when the time comes. Actually, that time is coming quite soon, as we recently closed our first ad deal, and it will bring in more than enough money to cover the entire expense of our upcoming Tokyo Game Show coverage. My initial gut reaction is to downplay any talk of advertising, but many of you have been writing comments and posting things saying things along the lines of "how are you people paying for all this?" Or "can I give you money?" Ads have, obviously, been a part of our plan all along.
If you're anything like me, advertising probably makes you very skittish. It may please you to know that we're spending a lot of time thinking about better ways to handle advertising that allow us to bring in the cash we need to keep the lights on without flashing a zillion noisy ads at you on every single page. We'll have more to say on this in the future, as part of our plan is to be as up-front with you as possible with this stuff. And that's a two-way street. If our ads start really rubbing you the wrong way, I want you to be able to voice your opinion on that. We'll definitely be listening.
Additionally, a lot of you wrote in and asked about the T-shirts that we showed off in our
Too Human thing. We are actively discussing different types of merchandise that go well beyond a simple T-shirt with the site logo on them. Now is the time for your input, so if there's anything you want to see from us on that end, speak up and we'll take it into consideration.
Thanks for using Giant Bomb, and I hope you're just as excited about these changes as we are. The coolest part is that these changes are actually just the tip of the iceberg.
Filed under :
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
Boxers? You bet.
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
Merchandise: Of course, the regular T-shirt with just the site logo on them is something I would want, as well as a T-shirt with Luchadeer on it. Other ideas I can think of: A shirt of the caricatures from the bombcast page. Maybe even separate shirts for each caricature (certain reviews). Perhaps a separate t-shirt of all of Ryan, Jeff, Brad and Vinny's review caricutures on one shirt.
Anyway, keep up the great work guys, can't wait for merchandise! :D
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
I like it....looks all nice.
on Sept. 17, 2008
I found you.
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
on Sept. 17, 2008
If you're on a laptop you can turn the brightness down and still read black on white text. Previously on the Bomb I had to crank up the brightness all the time to read the reversed type.
And I have no problem with ads as long as they are not those huge Flash things that suck the bandwidth out or those stupid ads that expand on a mouseover or float across the page. A few static ads would not be annoying.
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