The site's front page has been updated again

As you should have noticed if you recently visited the site's front page, things have been tweaked a bit. The goal behind the adjustments is to make sure new reviews aren't buried under a cascade of news posts, in the event that I or someone else feel inclined to write them, while also ensuring news articles have a chance to find an audience here on the site, to draw additional users to the site, and so forth.

On the front page, reviews and news articles are now displayed separately, across three sections. The top section displays the very newest staff and reader reviews, still merged in a single category. The middle section displays the most recent news posts. The bottom session adds a number of additional reviews, ensuring it remains clear that reviews are still a priority on the site. To make it easier to tell at a glance whether a review was posted as a reader review or a staff/freelance contribution, I have updated the page so that staff/freelance reviews have a blue designation while standard reader reviews retain the light gray color.

Perhaps the most important upgrade--and certainly the most tedious to implement--is the dynamic nature of each of the three sections I mentioned. They are set up so that they can grow to accommodate a rush of contributions, but otherwise will shrink to a more standard size if contributions aren't coming in as fast as they sometimes do. Specifically:

The top section will by default display the two newest reviews on the site, even if no new reviews have been contributed for a week or more (though I hope that doesn't happen). If more than 2 reviews have been contributed in the last 3 days, the section will stretch to display up to 10 reviews from that time frame.

The middle section will by default display the three newest news articles. If more than 3 articles have been posted in the last 2 days, it will stretch to display up to 10 news articles. This is because some days have a lot of news (particularly around busy events such as E3), but other days have next to nothing. News is most vital while it's still hot, so to speak, so I didn't want the section stretching to show news that was posted more than two days prior.

Finally, the bottom section will by default display an additional 5 reviews by default, on top of the 2-10 reviews that display near the very top of the site. If there are enough reviews that have been contributed during the past two weeks, the bottom section will stretch to display as many as 25 reviews from that extended period.

This means the site can now display as many as 35 reviews and 10 news stories on the front page all at one time, but that it will only present that much content when said content is highly relevant. Visitors still have handy options throughout the page if they want to browse more reviews and search with filters applied.

I am pleased with the results of this adjustment, and I hope you will find that it keeps your content on the front page even if the site sees a flurry of activity. I also hope you'll be able to avoid missing out on interesting content if you're away from the site for a few days. I considered a few solutions to try and address the sporadic nature of contributions on the site, but ultimately this was the solution I found that didn't require a bunch of tweaking to pages across the site (which could have produced a number of new issues and may also have caused the site to look worse on mobile devices, which roughly half of our visitors now use to access the site).

I'm tired now, but I tested fairly extensively and I think the page works as it should. Let me know if you run into any weird issues, as always, and keep on enjoying the site. Thanks!

Nice work, dude!

Yes, this is much nicer. I don't like it when my reviews get buried under other peoples' work because they're being more productive than I am, let alone news or stuff of that nature!

Looks excellent! My congratulations for nigh-instantly adapting to feedback despite that unfortunate family health matter you've been through. I can't think of any other site that looks out for its members like this.

I like it. It's very well organized and doesn't take away from the news section.

Very nice. The fact that the sections grow and shrink depending on the need makes it more dynamic.

Cool. This will cut down on how often we'll have to check that link for potential reviews we may have missed.

This managed to significantly update the home page whilst doing no damage to the pretty unique spirit of this site.
It's clever and sincerely democratic (in its handling evenly staff and contributor reviews) at once — no unremarkable feat.

Thanks. I'm glad you like it! I used to make big changes around the site pretty often, as I shuffled features and tried new approaches, and that was a running joke. But I've found most of the features I like, and ways to implement them so that if they don't get attention for a while, it shouldn't overwhelm content people are producing that deserves to be featured front and center. Ensuring that the site remains relatively unique in the industry is important to me, and so is presenting content in a way that makes it easy to find. I feel like the site's current design mostly accomplishes all of that, which is why it's unlikely there will be any significant changes while I'm in control. I seem to have mostly gotten that out of my system.