Probably not the best time to ask for this stuff since you guys are at E3, but is there any chance you could put a date/time stamp on the main news page?  It's kind of hard to tell what's new without it.  You could probably throw them in on the individual news posts as well.

Also, it appears that HTML isn't working in the news posts:

http://www.consolegold.com/e3/News/news.php?NewsID=76

That's actually something I wanted to have on the articles when we left, but I just ran out of time to implement it. I agree that I like to see when things were posted as well.

As for that news article - I had that reporter fix it that same morning afte seeing your post. HTML does work - it's just that I gave them all a WYSIWYG editor to enter in their news articles. Someone just litterally typed in the <a href tags into the WYSIWYG so it displayed as text rather than as a link.

Simple mistake.

But thanks for pointing it out, I would have hated to have that showing up all FUBAR like that all day.

Well, this is my first post here at the new Console Gold. I've been a longtime lurker, sometime poster over at the Gone Gold forums. I just have couple suggestions/comments/complaints.

Thanks for speaking up - i do appreciate comments.

First is, having the link to a news article lead to just that one artice seems like you are trying to inflate your page views. Heck, why not have news on the front page like nearly every other news page.

The E3 news thing was an experiment with a custom News system rather than the old one we've been using. The advantage was that it would make updating our site a lot faster which is a nice thing when you're sharing a wireless access point with 100 other people. Putting each article on a unique page was intended to have two benefits

1. It was supposed to allow reporters room to provide a lot more information in the news articles. I.e. Put up a full story rather than just a quick paragraph.

2. It was supposed to make it easier for readers to scan the generic news page and only click on the items that were of interest to them. (i.e. so you wouldn't have to scan over multiple  paragraphs of info about the new MP2 if all you wanted was to get to that Cliffy B Interview.

As for news on the front page. One of the main goals of the redesign that launched several weeks back was to help people see that we're more than just a 'news site'. So that main page is now more of a menu of all that's new or interesting on the site as well as links to all the most recent headlines. We still have a full news page and that will still be given a lot of attention. We just didn't want it to be the only thing people noticed.

Second, the E3 format is horrible. The forum link leading to directly to the E3 forum is annoying at best.

Sorry you didn't like it. I did the best with what graphics I had available at launch time. The thought behind changing the forum link was that during E3 - that would be the forum area where most discussion would be going. Considering how little traffic it got, it seems that was mistake. One we'll learn from and not repeat next year.

Third is the response to a post by ATB about the booth babe subject

I'll leave this for the forum mods to handle. I trust their judgement on how to handle the forum community. I'm just a coder.

Finally, I hope the lack of a Gone Gold link is due to the E3 format and will be there soon. There is a link to Console Gold there, so it seems fitting to return the favor.

I believe that Ron had mentioned that he was looking into this for the forums. But unfortunately I don't know his status on that.

Otherwise, it's good to see CS becoming something more. Good luck to you guys.

Thanks!!!

Okay off to bed for me.

Could you implement a next/previous for the screen shots. I love the thumbnail view, but once I click on one I would like to be able to just hit next to see the rest.

Thanks.  

FYI - I have been doing some experimentation on this. But still haven't found a solution that I'm really happy with. The easiest solution for me would be to handle with a little bit of javascript, but that would mean breakage for people using alternative devices (such as I do when I access the site via my pda/phone) or for people who have disabled JS. I have a few server side-side methods but none that feel elegant yet.

I will make it happen though. Just a matter of time.

She's the brunette at http://www.consolegold.com/e3/Photos/index.php?CategoryID=1&PhotoID=388

We all fell in love with these two last year, and they're back again.

That's right.

You all can hate me now. It's awesome.

I'll be posting info about it on the main site tonight.

DarkEl
Lead Developer
Console Gold

I mean really guys, the latest shots of Diana Kaufman being all pixelated? This is the babe we collectively drool over. I'll admit that the jaw-dropper of her and the blonde from yesterday was great, but that body deserves better care! Do her justice! Do her for justice if the situation warrants! Do her for me! For me!!!!

 :twisted:

Yeah that one is my bad.

My digital camera was out of juice - so I thought I'd try and use my digital video camera to grab some footage. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to save the image any bigger than 320 x 240, and the screenshot system I built resizes all images to 640 x 480 - which is what caused the pixelation.

Anyone got any tips on how to save the video footage at a better resolution as a still image? It's a new Sony HCDR. The software that comes with it is absolutely the most confusing and un-intuitive crap I've ever seen, so I was forced to use Windows Movie Maker.

I probably should have deleted it, but c'mon -- even pixelated that's a great shot - just for the content

Yes they are digital versions but they are supposed to include all of the normal print edition plus enhanced content.

Use this: http://www.magscentral.com/egmdig/egm1e31.htm to get the one year digital sub to Electronic Gaming Monthly.

Use this: http://www.magscentral.com/cgwdig/cgw1k41.htm to get the one year digital sub to Computer Gaming World.

Haven't seen any good print magazine free deals since the free XBN sub ran out a few days ago.[/url]

Super Cool!!!

I got one of those Tablet PC's so these are just as good as the print version for me.

Thanks for the tip!!

DarkEl
Lead Developer
ConsoleGold.com

I'll let Tim and his team tackle GT4.

I'm a driving game snob...if I can't wreck the car into a twisted heap of scrap I'm not interested.  No damage model = No dice for me!

Ditto for me, But I'm even worse. If I can't run over pedestrians I get really, really annoyed.

Sick? Maybe.

But I play games to do things I can't do in real life.

Your new layout is great but I noticed that there is zero left hand margin for text.  It looks like it is jammed up against the side of the screen.  :oops:

Oops there is no left margin in the game info part. The rest is okay.  :oops:  :oops:

Should be taken care of now.

Thanks for the heads up!

DarkEl
Lead Developer
ConsoleGold.com

Hey!  First of all, I think that the new site and the forums look great.  
What sort of machine/OS is this all running on?
What web server?
What database for the forums?

Thanks for the compliment. Here's the short answers.
It's a LAMP box. (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). Personally I would have preferred a different DB with stored procedure support, but can't beat the price of free.I coded the new site in XHTML and used CSS for all presentation elements (so all presentational graphics are seperated from content). It'll make things much easier to deal with going forward. The forums are just a standard install of PHPBB.

Finally, my one and only suggestion:  It would be great to have a link on the forum header back to the main page of consolegold -- not to the main page of the forums, but to the news/info/review page.

. I completly agree, unfortunately I only deal w/ the code on the main site and passed off the forums to Ron. I messaged him a couple times with this request today so i'd expect something to be implemented fairly soon.

Good Luck with the site. Feel free to ask questions anytime.

DarkEl
Lead Developer
ConsoleGold

Just thought of something that I am certain this BBsystem supports, skins. Are you going to create some and then enable them? A friend of mine runs a board with this software and he's got skins so we can each view the board in a manner we choose. Just a thought.

Custom Skins are definetely in the future (and not just for the forums)

--DarkEl

YAYYY!!!

We're done. Couple things got left out for this mornings launch, but it'll keep getting tweaked over the next week.

Now to get an hour of sleep before my real job.

Oh you are a tad early.  We are still uploading...give us about an hour (that'd be uh...4:30am for us) and you should see all the goodies!  Welcome!

You are WAAAYYY too optimistic!!!