GN 4.0 Discussion

[Mako]

the popular thing is intended for discussions that are actually happening; so if a story is a month old but still receiving activity, it will show up there, in reverse chronology from most recent (user) posts to oldest. i don't see the usefulness of viewing the popularity through filters as you describe from a user point of view; maybe as an admin wanting to peruse traffic/user data in planning for future coverage...

I know it wouldn't be too useful... Like I said, it would just be cool to see the top stories over the time frames I listed. Stuff like that interests me. lol

...maybe having a system similar to what Mako described using the rating system might be useful. That is, an option to see the highest rated articles over the past day/3 days/week/etc. This would allow for what would effectively be a reader-driven "Top Stories" section.

This would actually work better than "by comments" if people used the rating system correctly. What if we had popular "by comments" and "by rating"? Either way, I like the idea!

Really? Thought it was always 20... Ahwell, fixed!

Is there a specific reason we can't have it set at 20? More page views per ad or something along those lines? The more articles per page the better imo. Of course I have auto pager anyways, but still.

[cortjezter]

Really? Thought it was always 20... Ahwell, fixed!

Is there a specific reason we can't have it set at 20? More page views per ad or something along those lines? The more articles per page the better imo. Of course I have auto pager anyways, but still.

a) people here already hate change... or at least anything 1 pixel different
b) the better reasons are that it's how our current pages are set up to work with our ad sponsors, and
c) because while most people have broadband, not everyone does, or has good broadband. that combined with the mix of stories can sometimes have a ton of videos/players loading, even with the current 10 story/page setup. even if just half of those had an embedded video in them, it is likely to cause major slowdown for people just trying to view the page. double the page length, and you are much more likely to get 5 (or more) stories with video or other flash content (in addition to some of the ads).

it's not that we want to make things less convenient. heck, i'm sure some people would love if we'd have 100 or 1,000 stories per page (2/3 of a day and 1 week worth of posts, respectively), but we just have to draw the line somewhere, and strike a good balance between all of the factors.

[t27duck]

Alrighty, I think I've set it up so a happy medium can be reached.

Clicking on the Popular Tab yields this:

Below the sub nav will be links to switch between
- Stories by active comments where comments are > 10
- Stories by the user rating where +'s >= -'s AND +'s > 0 AND the story is no more than 7 days old
- By default, "by active comments" is selected


This should satisfy everyone as you now can get the "Best of Both Worlds" as far as your viewing options go. ^_^
Therefore, I shall forever refer to the "Popular" tab as "The Hannah Montana View"

I hope you all are proud of yourselves.

[stealthpengu]

any chance you can turn the search to a normal search bar at the top, and give the advanced features if you didn't find what you want?

[Popple]

New tagline CONFIRMED-- GoNintendo 4.0: As good as Hannah Montana

Now what are you waiting for?

[cortjezter]

Now what are you waiting for?

...for her to turn 18, but that's already happened.

any other twisted innuendo we can use?

[t27duck]

any chance you can turn the search to a normal search bar at the top, and give the advanced features if you didn't find what you want?

Don't know if I see the benefit of that. Can you expand?

[sebliminal]

I am not sure if you are still accepting feedback on this and if you actually care about feedback from "this guy that just registered here" but I will give it a go, I only have two things to mention anyway:

* The first page's top is annoyingly overpopulated with information rather than content.
* If you scroll down you face three different fades of grey: the darker one in both sides, the normal one between the sides and the white of the content space and the light grey in both sides of the content. That's the case with the current version of the website but for a reason I can't define, it's not that annoying to my eyes. In comparison, the same thing in v4 gives me a feeling of..."paleness", if you understand what I mean. (to be honest, I wouldn't.. All nighters + english not being your 1st language = what just happened)

Hope I helped, even a bit!

[cortjezter]

* information
* grey

of course we're still accepting. thanks for your points.

i don't see a differentiation between "information" and "content". they're kind of the same thing. our original content (thumbnails) bar is one major focus for this update of the site. that will definitely be staying. the community information is only on the very first page of the blog, not subsequent or story pages. if you don't care about that stuff or being part of the community, you don't have much to ignore; just a few pixels. between the current site and the proposed beta, we're actually trimming unused space (the banner) to make better use of that real estate. the implied issue here seems to be one of wasted space, but in actuality, it's much more efficient.

the design is pretty much what it is, and as you admit, it's nearly identical to the current site, and that is absolutely intentional. we know internet folk hate anything changing. unfortunately for you, you'll just have to get used to it. the majority of people seem up on it though.

[t27duck]

Trust me from experience. Don't try fighting the grey. It's a loosing battle with cort.

[DonnyDarko420]

I think it's awesome. You guys did a great job and I'm excited to see the adjustments and tweaks you make. This is going to be an exciting change and I can't wait for the launch!

I kind of like the idea of a weekly GoNintendo poll, and like mentioned, would give RMC and the 'cast crew some new content for the podcast. They can discuss the question, give the official end results, and each give their answer (I'm sure stuff podcast related is probably up to RMC, but maybe you could run it by him).

The 'original content' bar is awesome and I actually like the new, sleeker GN banner. The story filters are great and I'm excited to see how the rating system pans out when everything goes live.

All and all, I don't really have anything negative to say. You guys are professionals.

[Styster]

MUCH much better than that old redesign from before... I still get nightmares thinking about that one...

[Chanty]

First impression:

OH WOOOW!

Love it! And ~finally~ a mobile version!

[cortjezter]

MUCH much better than that old redesign from before... I still get nightmares thinking about that one...

haha... point taken. although you might be frightened to learn that almost ALL of what that redesign was doing has been eventually ported into the site. this new design almost completely closes the gap!

[cortjezter]

just wanted to share that we are nearly finished with things on our end and planning to launch in the near future.

please check it out and let us know if you find any glaring problems/omissions/etc.
easier to address things now than scramble after launching!

[delebreaub]

Unless I missed something, a link to the mobile site would be a good thing to add on to the site. Some devices are not detected to have to bring you to the mobile version so a simple link would be nice.

Otherwise, very nice. Can't wait until this weekend!

[t27duck]

Unless I missed something, a link to the mobile site would be a good thing to add on to the site. Some devices are not detected to have to bring you to the mobile version so a simple link would be nice.

Otherwise, very nice. Can't wait until this weekend!

Might not be a bad idea really.

Someone remind me post-launch to look into that quickie addition.

The current plan is to just give out the mobile site and people can bookmark it on their mobile devices. It does/will have detection to kick out non-mobile browsers, but there are currently no plans to auto-forward users from the main site to mobile if they're on a phone.

[Mako]

It's finally time, eh? Hope everything goes as planned. Was looking forward to this update for the past 7 months.

[cortjezter]

It's finally time, eh? Hope everything goes as planned. Was looking forward to this update for the past 7 months.

we're with you there, buddy. at least the delays let us finish and polish off a few more things!

[Hasfarr]

In one day...

[Mako]

Questions/ Suggestions:

I know it was said before that we could still do custom banners, but how exactly? Won't the add always be in the way?

The "online tag" should be above the profile pic, not below it.

I think we should be able to actually "view" the stories in the board instead of having to go to the main site to view them and then back to the boards to post comments and read all the feedback. If that is possible; it is too much back and forth imo.

[cortjezter]

i'm not sure about putting the stories here; that would be a question of technical possibility for t27.

other than that, we would probably have to insert ads into the forums to match our contracts with advertisers on the blog side.

curious about that online tag. when did that change?

as for banners, we have a lot of flexibility. people can skin the whole site, just the banner area, just the logo on top of the banner, or any combination. yes, the ad will always be there, but we do have more options for anyone who wants to make things!

[t27duck]

Like cort said, if we were to put story content in the forum thread, then we'd have to start putting ads on the forum.

And the "online" sticker is part of the phpbb theme which has been debated to death.

[Garfitor]

Not sure if this is the proper place to put this, but I noticed two "features" while browsing that you might want to look into. First of all, from the forum page, clicking the Chat Room button takes you to a 404 not found. It works fine from the news site though. Also, probably less important, but if you hover your cursor over the community pull-down tab, move it away really fast, and then hover it over the tab again, it starts bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. Not a big deal, as it's kinda hard to even pull off, but I just thought I'd let you know. Cheers!

[RedToad64]

Hello everyone. I have been reading the website since around December 2007. Today I finally joined as a member.

So far the website re-design looks pretty nice, but some things bother me. I made a picture showing some fixes that should be made to the template. Keep in mind I made this fairly fast in MS Paint, but here it is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/65631443@N ... otostream/