Hi and welcome back to Siliconera! As I hinted to in the comments we were doing some redecorating and created a more functional layout. Let me highlight some of the changes in Siliconera 3.0.
Media Radar
We’re launching Siliconera 3.0 with the Media Radar, but it is still a work in progress. Simply explained the Media Radar is a group of five tags: Saturated, Solid, Spotted, Scarce and Sleeper that rates stories based on the likeliness they will be absorbed into mainstream media. In theory this will give unusual content tagged in the Sleeper category a space of its own, additional time to matriculate and make it easier to find. Since Siliconera covers such a broad range of news the Media Radar is designed to make discovering content on the site more accessible regardless of what you are searching for.
Question Mark Block
What’s inside? Click and find out. You never know since it’s random! I’m not going to be updating this every second, but it will change occasionally. It may even have secret surprises like contests, hidden posts or screenshots.
Gaming Map
On the bottom of the page is a world map with select regions. You can click on these categories to filter content to a certain country. Also all stories have a flag on the top portion of the post identifying where the news is coming from. I realized through the comments it was not always clear which region a release date was for, where this article was applicable for, etc. Siliconera covers many regions and this seemed like a simple way to covey necessary information.
I can’t take credit for all of this work or even much of it. Adriana de Barros who owns the Breathewords multimedia studio is the aesthetically gifted designer who crafted the new layout. Meanwhile, Aaron Brazell aka Technosailor aka code magician took care of the back end, programming, and bug testing. Both of them were an immense help for this project and I want to thank them. Really, thanks!!
Now that the dinosaur is out of the cave, I’m curious (and I am pretty sure all the helpers on the project are too) about how you feel about the design. So, please leave a comment!
Oh yeah! We can’t have a site re-launch without some kind of awesome contest right? Here is a look at what we are giving away.
Details coming soon…
Update: I'm listening to all of the concerns about clicking around. I don't know if I should say this in a post, but this is done to track what people are actually reading. While the front page was a nice one stop shop, it was impossible to see what the regular Siliconera readers cared about since most people did not click on the short posts. The majority of those clicks were from an external source, which meant if I used that data to gauge what content was "successful" on Siliconera it would be subject to outside bias. Obviously, longer playtest posts ranked higher too, but this data was largely irrelevant in determining what games we should cover. The only egalitarian suggestion to procure this information was to make each click essentially count as a vote.
As a middle ground solution I'm going to encourage loyal Siliconera readers who aren't crazy about the new design to try using the RSS/atom feed. I decided to switch this feed to full syndication (even though it probably means I need to hunt down reposting it) to alleviate the issue and ease your daily reading.
Update 2: This topic isn't dead, it's still up for discussion. I appreciate all the honesty regarding the new layout and I have a few ideas how to have an option for a secondary layout more similar to Siliconera 2.0. If I can get a solution online it won't happen right away. This requires coding, unprecedented work and a little settling down. So, please be patient and feel free to use the RSS feed as an option in the meantime.
