Forums > Site Announcements > Site Adjustments

This is a (hopefully) quick post to let you know about some modifications I've just finished making on the site, which you may notice and wonder about.

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Modification #1

It is now possible to delay when reviews you submit go live. At the time you submit the review, you can delay its live date by as much as 6 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes. The review will enter the queue as normal, for staff to process it. If the review is approved, it will not go live until the time you have specified and should not be visible anywhere outside of the staff queue. If someone does manage to find the review, its contents (including tagline and rating) should not display.

This change was implemented so that staff can prepare a review to post automatically on their behalf at odd hours of the night/morning, in the event that coverage is prohibited until such a time because of a publisher embargo. In the past, this would sometimes mean we would have a review ready to go, but we had to get some sleep and then we would post the review when we woke up the next day but sometimes that meant our coverage was late to the party.

I have made the functionality available to everyone because I know some people like to get strategic with posting reviews at the last minute for Review of the Week consideration, or they like to post things on a schedule (as with Joe's annual October review fiesta). I don't anticipate that most of us will have any reason to regularly use the feature, but I figure it will be nice to have in place and I have wanted to implement it for some time now. News articles have received the same treatment, in case I want to cover news that is under embargo, though generally in that case I'll just ignore the press release/info altogether.

Modification #2

The front page will now display news articles only when there has been at least one new article submitted within the past 7 days. In that event, it will display the two most recent articles, or more if there has been a string of reviews recently posted (such as during an event like E3 or following a Nintendo Direct).

If there are no sufficiently recent articles, that section of the front page will just go away and instead viewers will see an uninterrupted list of the most recent staff and reader reviews.

I made this change because it seems like I often will go weeks without posting a news article, so it doesn't always make sense to display news prominently. But there also are times when a lot of news happens and I find it interesting or otherwise worth reporting, so I didn't want to just chop the feature. It works very well when needed, after all. This way, I can let you know about cool news and then when that news stops being relevant, it will get out of the way. It's a natural continuation of the change I made a while back, which causes more news and reviews--or less of them--to display depending on the volume of submissions.

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I hope some of you will find these changes useful, and that I have implemented them without producing any errors in the process. I've tested pretty extensively and everything looks to be in order, so now I can go back to working on other stuff around the site. As always, let me know if you have any questions!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

I'm back again, with the third modification in a 24-hour period, like some productive webmaster guy or something.

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Modification #3

Now when you are submitting a review (or a news article, if you're staff), you will get to preview the submission before you send it off to the queue for approval.

The preview page will show you the review approximately as it will appear on the site, so you can catch issues before they go live. For example, if images are improperly centered or if an HTML tag hasn't been properly closed, that should be easy to see and you can make changes on that page, or click back to the previous page and make additional changes there (recommended if you're doing fancy stuff, so you still have a chance to make additional changes if necessary).

The confirmation page is also handy because it will let you know when you have scheduled a review to go live on the site, if you have opted for a delay. This will make it easier still to avoid breaking embargoes. However, that time is approximate and will change depending on how long you linger on the preview page. After all, the delay you implement is calculated only once you finalize your review submission.

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As with the other modifications, I hope this change proves welcome and useful. I think it might, as I've occasionally received requests for such a feature to be implemented over the years...

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

I like the preview page. I always liked it back on GameFAQs.

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!

Excellent. I didn't even remember there being a preview page at GameFAQs, which suggests it wasn't particularly important to me, but I haven't submitted a review there in... quite some time.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2