After the quite chaotic launch yesterday I'd like to write a couple of lines about the current state of the page, its (partly misunderstood) featureset aswell as ask for your contributions and point out a couple of things I'd like to see implemented in the near future.
So about the launch... it took a while and some may say it was rushed at a too early state; i mostly agree with that. It should have been done a couple of days later and prepared more carefully, but I can't blame anyone since I was one of those who pushed for a release.
Why?
Simply because I felt that the page in its current state (feature wise!) is superior to cf3. By releasing now we (and by "we" I mean "you") will have a far better insight in the development of the page. Yes, there will be bugs, there will be glitches and annoying banalities - but yes you can also follow how the page develops and grows and take a much better influence into the process since you can see developments from an early stage and express your opinions on it.
This is what TosspoT has to say about it:
You don't agree?
Many of you may remember the launch of GamesTV.org "2.0". The whine was huge - hardly any new features, ugly new design, ugly banners and logos, not worth all the trouble. Sounds familiar? We did there what we're now doing here. Rebuild the page from scratch, release when the featureset is just exceeding the one from the livepage and then let the page grow with the community. Can't really remember any updates since gtv2 was released? Think again.
Large portions of what you see there was induced by the community.
Articles - The summary in this is only a couple px in height, but it still uses up the whole "column". The text should flow underneath it and then use all the available width.
So obviously CF4 had a rough start, overloading the server with a couple of bottlenecks followed by session issues and infinite redirect loops - but it's under control! The site is usable, up until now - to me - it feels more responsive than cf3 did since I came home today and everything is running fine.
So enough about this, read on if you want to move on and see what Crossfire 4.0 can and will do for you.
(Little service announcment: if you still have trouble with your session - getting "you need to be logged in" erros and such - clear all cookies with "crossfire.nu" in the domain part, that'll solve it)
So about the launch... it took a while and some may say it was rushed at a too early state; i mostly agree with that. It should have been done a couple of days later and prepared more carefully, but I can't blame anyone since I was one of those who pushed for a release.
Why?
Simply because I felt that the page in its current state (feature wise!) is superior to cf3. By releasing now we (and by "we" I mean "you") will have a far better insight in the development of the page. Yes, there will be bugs, there will be glitches and annoying banalities - but yes you can also follow how the page develops and grows and take a much better influence into the process since you can see developments from an early stage and express your opinions on it.
This is what TosspoT has to say about it:
You don't agree?
Many of you may remember the launch of GamesTV.org "2.0". The whine was huge - hardly any new features, ugly new design, ugly banners and logos, not worth all the trouble. Sounds familiar? We did there what we're now doing here. Rebuild the page from scratch, release when the featureset is just exceeding the one from the livepage and then let the page grow with the community. Can't really remember any updates since gtv2 was released? Think again.
Large portions of what you see there was induced by the community.
Articles - The summary in this is only a couple px in height, but it still uses up the whole "column". The text should flow underneath it and then use all the available width.
So obviously CF4 had a rough start, overloading the server with a couple of bottlenecks followed by session issues and infinite redirect loops - but it's under control! The site is usable, up until now - to me - it feels more responsive than cf3 did since I came home today and everything is running fine.
So enough about this, read on if you want to move on and see what Crossfire 4.0 can and will do for you.
(Little service announcment: if you still have trouble with your session - getting "you need to be logged in" erros and such - clear all cookies with "crossfire.nu" in the domain part, that'll solve it)
Great write-up, though.
As I said, I like the site. The lay-out looks cooler and "fresher" (not sure how to describe it).
There are, ofcourse, some things I'd like to see and there are some things I'd like to see removed, but it's impossible to make everybody happy. Change is a difficult thing for alot of people (hence the new map fails, just an example of the ET-Community) and it will take time for this community to accept the site as it is and/or will be.
I'd just like to say, great work guys and I hope you listen to the community and makes changes/updates where needed :).
There is hope for you :D
Thanks ^^
Only the buttons for interacting with the page could be a bit larger on the mobile, but those are easy and small fixes.
If tags would work within [h!de]-tag, everything would be fine or did I miss something?
I think people shouldn't be confused with half-working features. I still don't quite see how this is gonna work at all. when I follow 20 people I bet my inbox will be spammed to an amount that isn't funny anymore and so far it doesnt seem like I can open a certain page where I see what the people I follow did. notifications just dont seem right to me.
what I was gonna say: people are already confused when things change. we as users dont need to be challenged with features that do not work yet.
Your feedback is appreciated though.
ehm... does that mean I only get notifications when they create something like a news post? or journals? forum threads? so maybe if I was wrong, you see you could maybe go more into details how things work, cause obviously dumb people like me dont understand stuff when reading it once if some parts are just somewhere between the lines, if u know what I mean ;)
I didn't mean to just complain, I think I am one of the few that may be critical, but I try to give some sort of feedback that isnt like "everything sucks, we want cf3 back".
For now it's only content you'll be notified of when someone you follow creates it. Not comments. Yet we're thinking of implementing a possibility to opt-in for comments also. Maybe not high priority though.
Notifications should work as intended, maybe a minor bug here and there, but nothing obvious for sure.
I bet if you give it a try you'll see this site aids your life on Crossfire to such an extent it becomes a much more pleasant environment than the third version :)
Also, we're constantly monitoring feedback & implementing bug fixes and feature requests.
can just imagine someone mad saying duck rather than fuck, would make them even more mad :p
Why was there even a beta launch 2 months ago? just for the lolz? You obviously didn't test most features at all. A six year old kid could have spotted these bugs, you would guess a half decent coder would notice them as well.
I must be an asshole now for pointing out the obvious.
On a serious note, are you paying I2Y, 4drenaline and Excite for their work?
Of course I still didn't get used to this new layout, but I'm sure it's a matter of days.
I really like the design, simple & very recent.... it's quite difficult to get one with such large community sites that have a lot of features.
well done to everyone who have worked on the project!