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About Me: I knew at an early age that I wanted to make a career out of writing about games, and now I have. You'll find most of my stuff right here on HonestGamers, of course, but don't be surprised if my name pops up elsewhere. Living out my dream keeps me very busy, and I wouldn't have it any other way! |
I'm preparing a news story to make it official throughout the site, but I drew the name of the raffle ticket winner (and four alternates, in case he can't provide a suitable address for shipment). The winner is...
bsulpher
Congratulations to all who participated, and congratulations especially to bsulpher!
The site server seems to be having a rough time of things right now. I've done everything I can to rectify the issue on this end. I just went through and trimmed out a bunch of fat in the source code.
I've also reorganized how the site ranks games. It will now rank them according to the ratings you assign games. This is an important change that will filter through the site over the next few days as game profiles are loaded by search engines (and you). In the end, it should mean that the recommendations you give games affect what users most readily see as they browse and visit from other locations.
For awhile now (I say when referencing a feature that as a whole has been available on the site less than 48 hours total), your ratings have been compiled and organized in a way that allows the site to display the top-rated games in the database. You just might not have known it.
Now, I've finally finished tweaking code so that the results display in an attractive, interesting fashion. You can see general results here:
http://www.honestgamers.com/systems/ratings.php?action=list
It's worth noting that these results are real-time. The page will display ratings that reflect whatever is in the database at the moment you load it.
The Wii giveaway is coming up soon, and I'm sure you're all as excited as I am.
There's also a new feature on the site that has me very excited. It lets you rate games, as many of you have noticed. To me, that has all sorts of potential to really improve our audience of involved participants, but only if we start out strong.
So far, we seem to be doing precisely that. A lot of you are rating games left and right, and I appreciate that... enough so, in fact, that I'm going to offer a new incentive that is available this weekend only.
As a result of a LOT of coding on my part during the past 24 hours, the site now has two features you might not yet have noticed.
1) While You're Here...
This feature applies to game profiles on the regular site. When a user loads a game profile page, or a review or cheats or any other page that links to a game profile, they'll get the usual info, plus a "While You're Here..." box that recommends another title from the database.
So, I was wondering this evening: what prevents you from being more active on the site?
Right now, we have the Wii giveaway going on, and even that doesn't seem to be doing a lot to encourage the sort of activity I feel the site really deserves. We're improving and people are posting in their blogs more (hi, nash!), but it seems like there's still so far to go.
Is it something the site isn't offering that it really should? Are you just not into games like you once were? Are you new here and not sure how the community will react to your posts? Are you not sure how to even post?
I continue to make substantial site tweaks as the end of 2007 draws ever nearer. I'd like to have almost everything finalized by the time 2008 arrives, since I have big plans then that will likely keep me too busy to do much coding.
Tonight's work is as follows:
1) Forums now display in a broader scope. The left column has been removed so that there's more room for content. That brings the forums morein line with typical forums without sacrificing the critical right column where the latest reviews and other interesting content displays.
Additional Articles:
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