Mon, Feb 02, 2009 | 22:15 GMT

VG247 – Welcome to our second year and your new site!

vg247-logo-new

Happy birthday to us. VG247, “Britain’s leading videogaming news site,” according to the press release we just put out, is one year old. We launched on February 1, 2008, and had a fantastic first year.

To celebrate, we’ve done some stuff.

First things first. Our biggest anniversary news is that we’ve hired a full-time American journalist. Stephany Nunneley joins us today as our Associate Editor, US. We’re very excited by Steph coming on board, and believe her joining the staff will make a big difference to both the depth and daily time-span of our content. She was previously a news editor on Ziff Davis’s Gaming Today and a contributor to 1UP.

Secondly, we’ve redesigned the whole site and rebranded it as VG247, as you’ve probably noticed. We’re known web-wide as VG247 and the new URL’s more succinct. Immediacy ‘r’ us. The videogaming247.com address now forwards to the new domain.

As part of the relaunch, we’ve added a bunch of new stuff to make the VG247 “experience” more rounded. Here’s what’s changed:

  • New design – Martin’s done himself proud with the site’s new look. He also designed the original VG247, but decided to drop his famed rounded box corners for year two. We don’t question. He gets really angry.
  • We’ve added a forum – See. We listened. The “board” experiment didn’t really work, so we’ve added a “proper” forum for you. It’s what Shatner would have wanted. Go and use it. Remember, as with the comments threads, there’s no moderation and no one gets banned. We will remove spam – if you want to advertise on the site, look at this – and we’ll delete posts if we receive specific legal threats. But that’s it. We want you to live the hippy internet dream.
  • There’s a forum box on the homepage – This worked well for the comments threads, so we’ve added a recent activity box for the forum on the main editorial page. Keeps you nice and updated, isn’t it.
  • New “hot” features – Any stories we tag as hot will now get a “hot” headline in the news feed. We know it can be difficult keeping up with the news, so hopefully this’ll make skimming a little easier.
  • Digest – The Digest button on the top left gives you every headline from the last day. Again, this should make keeping up with things easier for you.
  • Social bookmarking stuff – Mart’s added a new share box at the bottom of every article that should include every social bookmarking link you’ll ever need. We hope.
  • We’ve dropped the “tag cloud” – No one liked it. No one used it. It’s been eliminated. We’ve added some links at the bottom of the page templates, but that should be it for “links” in boxes for now.
  • Staff page – As Christina Aguilera once said, we are beautiful in every single way. Here’s the proof.

That’s it for now. We sincerely hope you like the new look, and please bear in mind this is all work in progress; expect plenty more refinement as we go along. Thanks for reading, and here’s to year two!

139 comment-trail-alt Posted in: VG247
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139 comments

Older Comments

#101

XDamage
03/02/09, 5:17 am

Congratulations on the remake! Of all the remade sites I’ve seen this year, this is the nicest without a doubt. And I’ve got to hand it to the writers. During the first year this site has existed you’ve always been objective, and may actually call yourselves journalists! That’s a rare thing in the world of gamesites and blogs.

Anyways, keep up the good work in 09 and beyond! And thanks to Pat for taking the initiative to make it all happen.

#102

Patrick Garratt
03/02/09, 6:09 am

Thanks, dude. Glad you like it :D

#103

Malfet
03/02/09, 6:18 am

Found this site a week ago, cheked it every day after. Great info source! Glad you doing all right, keep this stuff up %-)

#104

endgame
03/02/09, 8:02 am

sweet. keep up the gd work! ;)

#105

Tonka
03/02/09, 8:18 am

Nice rework. Well done! My one and only gripe is that the Titles of the news in Latest Comments don’t stand out as much.

#106

Blerk
03/02/09, 8:23 am

I agree with Tonka, it is harder to make that panel out.

Can’t we edit comments any more? And where’s the full ‘latest comments’ page gone?

#107

Patrick Garratt
03/02/09, 8:27 am

There’s a latest comments page on the top nav bar, but it’s broken at the moment. It’s on the list. Mart’s going to look at inline editing today.

#108

Blerk
03/02/09, 8:29 am

Ah, there it is! I’m as blind as a meths-fuelled tramp!

#109

BraveArse
03/02/09, 8:32 am

I’m liking it – had a little bit of panic last night as I check the site with an OCD-like regularity, nice to see a subtle redesign approach, looks comfortably familiar with some nice changes and tweaks,

Top job…

#110

Robo_1
03/02/09, 8:49 am

Nice work guys, it all looks fresh yet familiar.

#111

evilashchris
03/02/09, 9:39 am

I can’t believe it’s been two years actually!

Seems like only yesterday..

#112

Blerk
03/02/09, 9:45 am

It’s not been two years, it’s been one. This is year two. :-D

#113

Newbie101
03/02/09, 10:16 am

Which ones Blerk on the staff page? I thought he writes too?!

#114

Blerk
03/02/09, 10:25 am

I only write caustic comments. Sadly there is neither fame nor fortune to be made in this line of work.

#115

evilashchris
03/02/09, 10:38 am

Ah ah, that makes more sense Blerk, I thought maybe I’d been alien abducted or something.

#116

Blerk
03/02/09, 10:42 am

Well, I can’t guarantee that you haven’t. Is your bum sore?

#117

evilashchris
03/02/09, 11:14 am

Yes. ;_;

#118

mart
03/02/09, 11:47 am

The comments have always had boxes around them Blerk, you mentalist.

#119

dirigiblebill
03/02/09, 11:53 am

Check out them greys. Niiiiiice.

Congrats Pat, Mike, Nathan, Stephany and Martin on a great first year.

#120

Blerk
03/02/09, 11:54 am

I… er.. what? :-?

I don’t remember them ever looking like this.

Is it the numbers that are new, then? Maybe that’s why the boxes suddenly look odd.

#121

mart
03/02/09, 12:11 pm

It’s the numbers yeah.

#122

Blerk
03/02/09, 12:15 pm

In that case I retract my previous gripe. And will log a new ‘I don’t like the numbers’ one. :-D

#123

Johnny Cullen
03/02/09, 12:47 pm

Bah.

Comment in Moderation.

:(

#124

Patrick Garratt
03/02/09, 12:50 pm

Approved.

#125

Tonka
03/02/09, 1:25 pm

I would personally (IMHO) prefere if the powers that be decided, in their infinite wisdom, that the Title of a news thread should precede who wrote the comment in the Latest Comments box.

Please.

#126

mart
03/02/09, 1:43 pm

The numbers are staying. It makes sense because of the paged comments. They don’t make quite enough sense yet though, since they start at 1 at the top of each new page, but I think we can fix that.

#127

Mike
03/02/09, 1:48 pm

Can you change the logo, the sidebars, the format, and the comments completely?

Just to see what it would be like, like?

#128

Blerk
03/02/09, 1:51 pm

It wouldn’t be so bad if the numbers were inside the box rather than outside. I think.

Actually, I like how the forum differentiates different posts with the alternating colours. That looks much neater and more modern than the “box around the text”.

Can you change Mike for a hot lady?

#129

mart
03/02/09, 2:04 pm

The comments are staying as they are, and you’re going to have to get over it :)

#130

Blerk
03/02/09, 2:05 pm

What about Mike?

#131

mart
03/02/09, 2:05 pm

I’ll see what I can do about Mike.

#132

Blerk
03/02/09, 2:06 pm

Excellent!

#133

Johnny Cullen
03/02/09, 7:28 pm

Hey Pat, did you get the email I sent to you last night?

#134

Patrick Garratt
03/02/09, 8:05 pm

I did, yeah. Will reply later. Been very busy :)

#135

lovemoose
03/02/09, 8:48 pm

Bit late to the party (dead laptop) but congrats everyone. Nice Work.

#136

scratchy69
04/02/09, 9:43 pm

If you launched on Feb 1st 2008, how come you’ve got posts up from earlier than that? I check these things you know Pat.

#137

Cort
06/02/09, 2:01 am

Too many comments to check if this has been mentioned already….

Great redesign, but do you know that it no longer works properly with the PS3 browser?

#138

Michael O'Connor
06/02/09, 2:04 am

“Great redesign, but do you know that it no longer works properly with the PS3 browser?”

Yes, they know. They’re not planning to fix it as far as I know.

As a webmaster myself of numerous websites, I can tell you that traffic from internet enabled consoles makes up, on average, less than 1% of most sites traffic.

#139

Cort
06/02/09, 2:05 am

PS Worthing? I grew up in Lancing! AKA South Central LAncing…..

Older Comments

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