State of the Bomb

The bottom line is that for legal reasons related to the sale of Whiskey Media properties, GB had to move away from the old Distillery platform to a new one. Considering that this entire current site was built essentially from scratch in under a year, it's actually a pretty big accomplishment, and I assure that top men are working hard every day to make it even better.

The whole redesign is just so... so... unneccesary. It just doesn't improve what went before. That's the problem. It's a sideways step.

Let the engineers handle it, the problems will be fixed when they're fixed.

we have a couple of good features but everything else is broken man

Point number 4 really nails it.

The loss of features and the lack of replacements for those is the biggest problem. This the best looking design yet and at the same time it's the least functional one.

The video player is also the worst one yet but you can use the Youtube player instead. Is that still only for subscribers though? Because that is madness to keep the Youtube player behind the subscription.

I like when I press the back button on my browser and it doesn't remember where I was and I need to scroll all the way down again.

It would totally be a #firstworldproblem if other websites also had this problem....but they don't.

Isn't it ironic that if we got that response from....say EA or something we would have gone on an internet crusade but when it's GB....eh whatever!

i agree with this guy

this

It sort of sucks at the minute. I've found myself watching any non-live content on youtube due to the suckiness of the player.

Things take time. This is twice as important to remember when you're building a new website from scratch.

Also people seem to forget that Dave is a new father now, which is what he's been busy with for the last few weeks.

In my personal experience I've found the video player to be improved. Before I had a lot of issues where it would simply stop for no reason and I would have to reload the webpage, and then I wouldn't be able to start from where I had left off. Now it remembers where I was the last time I stopped watching, which is legitimately pretty great in my opinion.

The thing I like the least is the new image viewer with gifs. It's a nice idea and it does work well for threads with lots of pictures (even if I don't really want to look at stuff with no context), but it's really annoying when you click on a gif - the new viewer takes ages to load it. It also seems random if a gif will play in a forum post or if you need to click on it to play.

We're getting three livestreams. It's fine duder.

I like the video resume function, too. But ironically enough I "use" it mainly after the video simply stopped playing and I had to refresh the page to get i working again.

@kortex: None of us know what goes into the engineering process of Giant Bomb nor any EA products. That's why I try to maintain a it'll be fixed when it's fixed attitude whenever possible.

The fact that the site is running is mind blowing. Like it was already said, they had to move away from the Distillery platform that was built at Whiskey Media because Berman Braun ownes it now.

To build this site from scratch, and in a way that will work with the massive mountain of content on the site is impressive.

Except it was very necessary. It was the most necessary redesign since the site launch, for the reasons Chaser noted above. Giant Bomb and CBSi do not own the rights to the Whiskey Media platform, Berman-Braun do. Therefore the entire site needed to be rebuilt on a new platform. It is very much a sideways step for that reason - the goal of the new site was to replicate the functionality of the old site, built on an entirely new infrastructure.

And to be honest, I'm amazed that the site works as well as it does. Built from the ground up with such a strict time-scale and importing masses of data from an old site into a completely new site, it's a recipe for disaster. But for the most part, the site works fine. There are a bunch of kinks that need to be worked out, that will surely be the priority now that ComicVine is running on the new platform.

Things are actually well if you compare this to twitch.tv. Their site is so slow and broken most of the time. But yeah, giantbomb.com has too many bugs and broken features at the moment, hopefully not for long.

If that's the case. Then why didn't CBSi with all its big bucks not spend a bit more money and really make GB a truly professional site?

I don't mean to rag on anyone who's worked on the site. But it seems a quick chop job. It does the job. But the new site doesn't feel as good as the old.

Honestly, my biggest remaining problem with it is I'm not overly fond of the serif font used on headlines, usernames and the menu. I know there's a few bugs remaining to be squashed (though for what it's worth, they rarely affect me - though I'm probably no longer a typical user), but that's hardly surprising given the enormity of the task in question (rebuilding from scratch). I'm sure the bugs will be dealt with in due course.

Pretty sure they had to do it for legal reasons since CBS didn't own the code for the design of the old site.

Same here. Its been so long that i think i have become indifferent to websites and their issues. But i do understand that these things affect people more than they do me, and hope these concerns that people have are resolved as quickly as possible. Good luck to the engineering team i guess.

Yeah, why hasn't Dave weighed in lately, why aren't some of these minor issues being resolved? It's almost like he had a child and needs to spend time with his family after leaving the website he works for in a very stable state!

A lot of things I dislike, especially how you can't upload a picture in the middle of the post unless you choose it to OCCUPY the page in its full size. Otherwise you have to choose a side to put it on.

I'm getting used to it and don't care enough about a website to complain but this specific site relaunch is tasteless and alienating. The wikis look weird and the forums no longer give a personality to the posters.

I don't think anyone here is saying Dave is an asshole for having a child and spending time with it. Some people would just like to know whats up as after they got the site relatively stable it seems like working out the kinks has come to a very slow crawl.

They're getting settled into the new website.

Weird, I'm on this site all day every day and it seems to work fine for me.

It's a bit fucked in iPad but whatever.

Yeah, I dunno what site you guys are going to.

After that PM messages bug was fixed, it's been pretty much smooth sailing. The text editor is so much better now.

Actually, since they changed servers, I've been able to watch HD videos without lag or interruption. So, I'm happy I can actually watch archived stuff without having to download first. Net plus as far as I'm concerned.

I don't know what you guys are talking about, I love the redesign. It's a million times better than what Tested was when they went from the old whiskey site to their new one.

Now that the engineers have the new version of Comic Vine up and running they'll probably get back to this website and fix a few things, and hopefully improve some stuff that isn't quite broken per se.

I've already noticed some changes and some bugs getting fixed.

Also, we no longer know when posts were last edited. That timestamp now only indicates the original post time.

ACHIEVEMENTS WHERE ARE YOU.

I'm doing my best to withhold judgement as I'm aware of the extenuating legal circumstances with the wiki tech and of how difficult a huge relaunch is.

That being said the bugs don't nearly bother me as much as the missing features do. I seriously hope the communication features are at least boosted back to the level they were on the old site relatively soon.

I want to see achievements come back, but more than that I want people to see my latest status updates. I miss seeing :@video_game_king 's sometimes-witty comments on my wall. And now my wall is just barren.

Yeah the user/community stuff seems to have suffered a downgrade.

@believer258:

To be fair, I haven't written on your wall because I haven't seen anything of it. Stuff like that is far less visible than it was before. But I'd just like images to no longer be horrible. That little box (or, more specifically, its limitations) is the bane of my existence.

There are still technical issues with the site that I experience every day.

For example, nothing ever appears in my inbox, despite my having it set to alert me for things like people at-replying to me.

Aside from a few technical issues here and there, I like it. Well, I don't like that it defaulted to white. That's just racist.

I don't really have any problems with the new design, and it works pretty well. Still, this response is so good.

Like the other mods said, the redesign sort of had to happen, there was no way around it. It is very impressive that they managed to rebuild the site from the ground up over a year, but how impressive that feat is and what the quality of the site is are two different things. At the moment I think I still might prefer the old Giant Bomb, maybe that's largely the nostalgia in me talking, but even a fair way after launch there are still a bunch of bugs and some design issues I'm not so happy with. The mod team has had to deal with a lot of really affecting technical issues, and one kink in the design that still really bothers me is that you can't see lists of your followed users' new blog posts and status updates. I'm sure the engineers are working hard to fix most of these loose ends, but it would be nice if there was more word from them on this. Right now there are just sort of all these issues hanging in the air and I feel like I have no idea what the engineers are actually working on.

I'm just looking forward to the forum feed returning to the front page.

They had to

The video player is framey at full screen and recently the site has been so slow that I can't even download videos or watch them without skipping. I have to watch all videos on youtube, making my membership worthless.

I haven't seen anyone else complaining about this, so perhaps it's just me. Although I have no idea why that would be the case.

I haven't had any issues. In fact, the videos remembering where I left off and the simplicity of the forums are great features.

Dude its fine

This site now requires you to be online in order to use it. That is some CBS bullshit right there. I want my Giant Bomb on the disc and with a proper manual.

Videos run like shit since the relaunch, with the odd exception of live streams. I have to go to the youtube account where they are smooth as silk.

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I like the new site, the only thing I miss is the forum shortcuts on the main page