Host Move, Status Update, New Features
By proph3t Feb 25, 2007 · 0 Comments
As some of you may or may not have noticed, GameGum was down for a little while yesterday afternoon for "Maintenance". In our continual growth we were ready to upgrade the server a little, and yesterday was the day to move. We are now hosted on MediaTemple, and, at least on my end, I can tell the difference.
Update on GameGum/ToonGum
Alright, well we have a lot of new stuff fixed:
- The forums get a minor redesign with some new bling, a few design tweaks for simplicity, and a thread posting bug fixed. Oh, and no more signatures (we like to keep things bloat-free, and signatures seem to be mostly frivolous and space-consuming features).
- Setting your avatar should work very well now and just like submitting a game icon. In other words, we fixed it (and it will auto-resize).
- Inviting friends will be added and integrated with GumPoints.
- Homepage visual re-sort and overall design tweaks just to polish our new layout.
- A "Featured Game" box has been created and partially implemented but a few development decisions need to be made before we decide whether to/how to implement it. Hopefully it will be there.
- ToonGum will be up and running and using the same new design/backend as GameGum from here on out.
- Game pages redesigned! Depending on if we get the AJAX chat done in time for this release they may or may not be entirely redesigned. If not, they will still be sporting a new "Game Badge", a super polished "Embed Game", a new design for "Related Games" ala the Classics on the homepage now, and more visual tweaks.
- New Embed! Using jQuery and a very nice plugin, the embed should be functioning wonderfully on both IE, Firefox, and any other moderately modern browser. The difference is amazing, this embed is fast.
- New logged in "userbar". Whereas the old one was similar to the login area, this one moves into the header, keeping the page compact and yet retaining all the important features from before.
All of this is basically completed at this point. We are now finishing some minor fixes and features, and ensuring bugs are squashed. Depending on whether we include the chat, it should be launched in a few days. If chat is included, it could be a week.
Some new ideas we are looking at trying after this launch
- Contests. We want to give away some money and get some community excitement. Look out for these soon.
- OpenID. It's the new hotness and we like it.
- An API. Of course for flash developers, enabling some cool interactions with GameGum.
- Chat. If not in this coming release, definitely in the next.
