The New Shiny Escapist

[Buizel91]

(arc1991)

Might be a good idea to put our names on our posts till this is solved?

 

[Buizel91]

Maybe the Escapist decided they really liked how 4chan operates? I certainly hope not...

(arc1991)

DON'T SAY THAT! >.<

I'm scared now D:

 

[BreakfastMan]

That might be a good idea. We would be able to tell who everyone is. Spread the word people! Signatures for everyone!

Sincerely,
BreakfastMan

 

[Uber Evil]

Weee! Getting the super weird username/date problem too. Ze Hell is going on here? Also, the blank posts at the top of threads say that it was Virgil that was warned. Maybe they are updating the server which keeps track of usernames and join dates or something.

UberEvil

 

[Phlakes]

Glitch in the code? Or fucking time travel? I think in all the time Kross was not feeding the hamsters he was building a time machine.

 

[ChildofGallifrey]

Well, I guess with a total overhaul it's expected to be buggy as hell. Doesn't make it any better, but it's understandable. I'm still having hell finding my way around though. It's much more convoluted than the old site.

ChildofGallifrey

 

[BreakfastMan]

And he took us all back in time with him! :O That devious bastard... He is trying to get us to inadvertently kill ourselves by causing our parents to never meet (well, most of us anyway)! He must be stopped! I recommend an angry mob. With torches. That will teach him...

Sincerely,
BreakfastMan

 

[FateOrFatality]

Everything is back up for me now. Do you guys think that was them changing something, server updates etc., or just an error?

 

[Uber Evil]

Names are back!!! YAY! Dates are correct too. Now to fix the warnings at the tops of pages.

 

[FateOrFatality]

Well I just posted about the problems being fixed, but apparently I was wrong because the first poster of each page still recieves a warning (me this time).

Edit: And now my post has moved down the page and I don't have a warning? Right...

 

[Caffiene]

The names are back for me now, but every page of a thread is still showing a blank post with a warning.

And the blank post at the beginning of a thread doesnt have the same name on it as the second post which contains the OP.

 

[Caffiene]

Huh... and when I just posted then, my post became the broken post at the top of the thread. So it seems like the last post on each page is getting its date messed up, which causes it to move to the top of the page.

 

[Arkynomicon]

The New Shiny Escapist looks like shit. I also see no point with making all sites on the Internet look like Facebook instead of having it's own personality. Facebook design looks like crap anyway. White background with black text is not good on the eyes when watching a screen.

 

[eevangoh]

I try to fight my habits every time a site changes its layout, but with this one I have one major complaint: navigation. Before, whenever I visited Zero Punctuation, all the other shows, podcasts and blogs were neatly positioned under the forums tab; I could skim through them, pick the ones whose latest entries interested me, and click on them. Now, I may too dumb, but I can't seem to find anything like that. The "Video" tab up there just leads to a bunch of material that may not even be the latest release, I fail to see any structure. Please tell me if there's something I'm missing so I don't have to look for both Moviebob shows, Zero Punctuation, No Right Answer and Jimquisition every damn time.

Plus the pages do seem to load a tad longer.

 

[Duskflamer]

As far as the forum posts turning into anonymous people who joined in 1970, that still seems to be happening to me on and off, so no idea what the problem there is

Duskflamer

 

[Duskflamer]

OK, no idea in the world how I got a triple post out of that.

And now it just looks like a bog standard double post. No clue what's going on with these forums right now but they are in no way stable.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

The New Shiny Escapist

Today we're revealing some big changes here on The Escapist, the most noticeable of which is a new look for the website. Culminating the last six months of hard work here behind the scenes, this revision not only creates a more beautiful and readable site, but also includes substantial new underlying technologies. This new tech facilitates easier navigation, more contextually relevant articles, greater social integration, and expanded user customization.



It was nearly three years ago that we made a similarly large change to the site. The layout changes, modularity and programmatic support that came with that redesign allowed us to change and grow the site naturally with the state of the industry, and to do so relatively efficiently. To have made it three years with the same overall design is a great accomplishment in its own right. However, to take us into the next three years and beyond, we must make sure to know where media is headed and what our users want of the site.



Our key mission was to improve and increase usability. Here at The Escapist we offer a huge amount of content that spans a broad range of subjects and formats, posing a substantial challenge for the site to present all of it easily and effectively. As our offerings grew over the course of the last few years, so did the need to more effectively display them. Our editorial team made fantastic strides in curating this content on the front page, updating throughout the day the stories that appeared in the features areas on the front and subsequent pages. But it simply was not proving enough, as our home page grew packed, even cluttered, with great new videos, features and breaking news. We needed better tools to manage these areas, to help users discriminate between types of content, and to let the stories themselves breath and flourish in the design.



So today The Escapist launches fresh and new, expanding on the previous site with a cleaner, more open design with features that will make it easier to find what is new, what is hot, and to explore our enormous archive of favorites. We received a great amount of feedback on the presentation of our content, and we listened. Some highlights of the changes you can see today on the site are:



More Open Design - We have added a lot of "air" to the site overall, whether on the front page or individual content pages.



Available Navigation - To better address finding our wealth of content we have created several new methods of navigating the site.




Dynamic Navigation Bar - We have completely revamped our navigation bar to be fully dynamic, constantly updating with the newest items with automatic user customization.


Sortable Displays - There are now even more sortable lists of content throughout the site, allowing you more fine grain control over list displays to find exactly what you want, whether it be by chronology or popularity .


Section Markers - All feature boxes now clearly display the type of content being shown with a section marker, linked to the appropriate feature section for quick access.


Information Boxes - Using our revamped tagging system, all relevant content clearly presents more information about the game title, franchise, publisher and similar related data so you can easily find more contextually relevant information.




New Content Sections - Also facilitated by changes to tagging, new sections are available to browse, such as the platform-specific pages now linked on the navigation bar.



We are excited to present the new site to you, but this isn't the end of the story of course. We have already received fantastic input from the Publisher's Club and implemented many of their suggestions. We look forward to your comments as you experience the changes and get comfortable with the new site.



We appreciate everything you, the readers, have done to make the site what it is today. This place would not be the same without your voice!



Thanks,
Greg Lincoln,
Vice President of Production


Permalink

Ok, I have been getting a REALLY bad bug that prevents me from reading the first post of any thread, including my own.

 

[disturbed_one]

ok can someone please post a widescreen screenshot of the site. because I think it's really messed up on my side.

 

[LobsterFeng]

Something else I don't like. I can't find a way to browse through all of your posts. Before there was a tab that let you do that, I can't find one now.

Also, any word on what was going on with the forums today?

EDIT: I just realized that the 'forums' tab is what I was looking for. My bad.

 

[shrekfan246]

I try to fight my habits every time a site changes its layout, but with this one I have one major complaint: navigation. Before, whenever I visited Zero Punctuation, all the other shows, podcasts and blogs were neatly positioned under the forums tab; I could skim through them, pick the ones whose latest entries interested me, and click on them. Now, I may too dumb, but I can't seem to find anything like that. The "Video" tab up there just leads to a bunch of material that may not even be the latest release, I fail to see any structure. Please tell me if there's something I'm missing so I don't have to look for both Moviebob shows, Zero Punctuation, No Right Answer and Jimquisition every damn time.

Plus the pages do seem to load a tad longer.

I miss the side-bar too, it was extremely handy and added life to the sides of video pages. In fact, on Friday I almost forgot that two contributors updated their content and, due to being unable to access the site until late on Wednesday night, I had completely forgotten Feed Dump was updated until today. I like to linger on Yahtzee's main page and look at the various new forum posts, instead of lingering on the main page, so missing that side-bar is extremely frustrating because now I can't see when content is updated from almost anywhere on the site.