Written by Citizen Alpha Friday, 26 February 2010 00:44

The new site’s now in full swing and I wanted to make a post to showcase some of the key differences between the new site and the old one.  I hope the new layout and platform will help push CCN into a more entertaining direction and kicks start things a bit around here.  I know the forums are starting fresh and that may be a little disheartening for some folks, but all of your accounts have been pulled over so login’s are the same.  Overall I think you guys are going to like what I put together and here are a few key points that deserve a little attention.

Less of more

I cut back on a lot of frivolous clutter around the site.  There were a lot of elements of the site that were done just because I could.  They didn’t really receive much love or attention from me, and then eventually everyone.  As my experience with site design grows I’ve kind of learned what works and what doesn’t work but I do plan on calculating deploying these feature sets with a bit more scrutiny and once they’re out in the wild, maintaining them a bit better.  One of my main goals with the new site is to look at it and think: this looks clean.

Feed me content

A fast way to make a site go stale is to stop posting content.  It hurts your search engine rankings and your traffic wanes quickly.  I’ve put in place a news feed with an aggregated stream of some gaming news sites that I frequent.  I know you all probably have your news readers and favorite sites but with this in place I’ll help my search engine rankings and interweave CCN’s original content into that of the feeds.  As sources are added to the feed you’re going to see content you’re not all that familiar with.  This is all automatic so I just kind of dictate the sorting and source.

Move over Google

Speaking of search, I’ve really beefed up the in site search.  A large volume of content is pouring into the site from the feeds and I’ll be producing my own I wanted to have a nice search function available to sort through what you’re interested in.  There’s a nice AJAX enabled search bar located at the top left of every page that gives nice clean results for items your looking for.

Dare I say sexy?

Not only is there an increased functionality but a lot of thought was given to the usability and appearance of the site.  Extensive use of JQuery, Lytebox, and CSS have really provided a SEO and beautiful site.  Soon I’ll be incorporating Flash into the mix in a tasteful manner where applicable.  I really wanted a site I could point people to and be proud of.

It’s just easier

Writing is one of those things I genuinely enjoy doing.  I may not be the best writer but I do a pretty decent job most of the time.  The previous content management system’s content creation editor made formatting a fucking nightmare.  It used straight up BB codes and it was just a complete mess when you tried working with it.  I created a custom editor here at CCN for myself and any other writer I might pick up in the future that is an absolute joy to work in.  I can quickly and easily achieve advanced formatting effects, upload graphics, and edit my work on the fly.

All of this combined means it’ll be easier for me to write new content and easier for you guys to interact with me and each other.  Let me know what you guys think, what you don’t like and what you’d like to see.

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