Welcome to the new RPG Site!
I'm very excited to announce the latest version of RPG Site -- what we affectionally call "Version 4".
As the staff know, we've been kicking this around behind the scenes for a long time. It's been our own personal Final Fantasy Versus XIII. But at long last, we're finally at the point where we can debut it to you, our readers, and we're absolutely thrilled with that. It is by far and away the greatest version of the site that we've ever made.
We've put over a year's worth of work into rethinking every portion of the site -- from the front page to the search page -- and are very excited to finally get it out there. Along with incredibly dedicated and creative staff, we have revamped everything to enhance your experience in every possible way. We hope you like what you see.
One of the best features of this new version of the site and the all new iteration of our fully-custom 'Mist Engine' back-end that keeps it all running is that it's far easier for us to update. I'm not talking about adding news and articles - though that's easier than ever before too - but actually about major updates to the site, adding new sections and features. You can expect plenty of that in the months to come, including deeper media intergration for screenshots, artwork and video, as well as additional features for fans of Live Streams or Podcasts. In the meantime, though, here's a rundown of everything that we've changed:
THE LAYOUT
We quite literally started from scratch on this brand new layout several months ago. Our first instict was to make it responsive, so you can read it just as easily on your phone or tablet as you can on your computer. We also wanted to make sure that the flow was easier to understand. We acknowlege that the flow on the previous version of the site had its pitfalls and endeavoured to clean up all of those pitfalls this time around.
RPG Site is, of course, a content-driven site so it was our main goal to drive our content to you. We've removed as many unnecessary page aspects as we can and came up with what we have here. Simple. Clean . Minimal. And much easier to use.
The design is also fully responsive, meaning whatever type of device you visit it on - from a 1080p monitor to your iPhone or a Wii U GamePad - it should look good. Check out some of the different lovely-looking pages - Reviews, the Reviews List, News, Games, Consoles, the Consoles List - they've all been revamped.
THE HEADER
The header is a huge change here, too. We've gone blue! The previous header was, admittedly, a hodge-podge of links, graphics and overly confusing sources that wasn't always clear. We've taken it all out in favor of a very simple logo with links across the top. Those links are your navigation across the site. Use them to get to your preferred destination, or search the site. The nav will follow you down the page, too, so you'll never be lost.
THE FRONT PAGE
The front page is our landing page and therefore the most important portion of the site. We've stripped it down as much as we can in favor of showing you the news which you expect to see when you hit the site. The top three (large) images you see are our cover stories: the most important stories of the lot. These will change relatively often so we can help you keep up to date with your favorite RPG news.
Below the cover stories is the list of regular news. Here's where you'll see all the RPG news you expect, in chronological order by newest first. Standard fare.
On the sidebar is recent reviews and -- that's it! As I've said we've strived in every way to make things very simple. We hope you'll check out our excellent reviews by the best editorial team in the industry.
THE...EVERYTHING ELSE
I do mean everything else. You'll immediately notice that no page is even remotely similar to what it was before. We've stripped down every single page, cleaned up where appropriate and made sure that we offer the best experience we can provide.
One of the new features coded into the site is the support for more consoles. The end result here is we can now have entries in our consoles for classic machines such as the SNES or Dreamcast, and you can fully expect us to use them. Our game database is currently ported from the old site, so don't expect many entires on the PlayStation 1 page for now, but we're going to expand the database and do some great content based around classic RPGs going forward.
If you're looking for a specific article, search for it or go to a specific list page. If you want some specific game information, check out the games database and search to your heart's content. It's all there for the taking. We hope you'll take it.
THE BACK END
Even the back end has changed. For those of you "in the know", we're now a solely Ruby on Rails shop with a completely custom back-end for what you see here. We like to call it Mist Engine, affectionately so named after the technology that made technology work in the universe of one particularly classic RPG. This makes the site faster, cleaner and much easier to maintain across the board, as mentioned earlier.
THE MEDIA VAULT
Is gone! For now, anyway. We know it could use some love, so we're giving it some love. We have over 10,000 screens, artwork and videos on the site so we want to make sure that sifting through that will not suck. In the mean time, we've made media view-age completely inline. Clicking on an image in an article will pop it up on the page so you can see a more full-size version of it. The Media Vault will return in full with a brand new look and a suite of new features in the coming months.
NEW COMMENT SYSTEM
We've ditched the old comment system in favor of Disqus. What else needs to be said? They're the best.
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There are literally thousands of changes to the site, and this article could go on and on to describe all of them, but we don't want to waste your time and let you carry on yourself. Get stuck in, enjoy it. We hope you like it. Rest assured we have plenty more planned, and this new version of the site will continue to grow and change throughout the year. On behalf of the entire staff, allow me to welcome you to the site. Please enjoy your stay. If you have any questions, feel free to get in contact with us! We'd love to hear from you.
Thanks again for being here and enjoy!
- Mike and the RPG Site team