Good Morning all and welcome to the new Lazygamer.co.za, over the past 2 months we have been busy working away in the backend designing a new look and feel for our site.
After many failed attempts on my behalf, Nick stepped up and came up with this awesome design. He then went on leave and made me slog away at getting it to work…
Okay so lets go through some of the improvements that we have made to the site…
Feature Block
If you take a look at the top left you will see a yellow and blue block with 5 titles in it, these are our feature stories and are generally the stories we either put extra effort into or which are Lazygamer exclusives… Just click on the feature image to see the whole list.
Review Block
The same block is on the top right and these are simply the latest 8 reviews that we have posted on the site… click the review image to see the rest of our reviews.
Search Bar
If you look on the right panel you will see a search text box that, unlike our previous one, actually lets you type in a search term and click on search… the wonders of the Internet will never cease to amaze me…
Feedburner RSS Feed
Under the search box you will see the RSS feed icon, you can click this to subscribe to our Feedburner RSS feed… which is the easiest way to stay up to date with our latest postings.
Rotating Ball of Awesomeness
Further down the right panel you will see our rotating ball of awesomeness. All the popular tags that we use on our postings are floating around in the ball and the larger the tag the more common it’s use. Just move your mouse over the ball to see it moving and click on any tag to perform an instant (depending on your Internet speed) search on that term.
Team Listing
The next major addition on the right panel is the Team Listing panel which gives you quick view of who is currently working in Lazygamer’s basement. Yes and the real names are listed for the first time. You can then click on the names to read a short bio of each of us… I only added this onto the site this morning so the rest of the guys still need to add their bio’s.
Related Awesomeness
After clicking the read more link, which you must have done to get this far, you will be able to read the story in it’s entirety and at the end of the story you will see a block of 5 related stories. These are linked together by an amazingly complex algorithm which we stole from NASA… it’s also a handy way to keep you on the site for longer.
And lastly we have
Sharing is Caring
If you liked the story then please feel free to share it around by clicking on one of the icons under it. I have added all the ones that I think are important but if I have left off your favourite site please let me know and I will see if I can add it.
Okay that’s it, I hope you enjoy the new site and that you find it easier to use.I have been using it for the last month and have found it much easier to get around and find related stories with.
Let me know if something is missing or has gone horribly wrong and I will get onto it straight away.
*If the site hasn’t changed then hold Ctrl and hit F5 to do a hard refresh… it may have been cached by your firewall or my caching software.
Last Updated: January 26, 2009
Macethy
January 26, 2009 at 07:35
That rotating ball is truely awesome!Nice one,great new look 8) just get the old smileys back.
NoMaD
January 26, 2009 at 07:57
Nice Job! Looks good.
Arc316
January 26, 2009 at 08:57
Very nice!
easy
January 26, 2009 at 09:08
looking good, but where’s the poll gone?
LazySAGamer
January 26, 2009 at 09:18
Well I wanted to keep it but apparently I was outvoted…
it may make a come back though if I get enough requests for it
LazySAGamer
January 26, 2009 at 09:21
The old smileys were completely broken for everyone using IE… yeah some people still do that 😉
however I have just added in a whole bunch of new ones so let me know what you think of these 😎
Goose ZA
January 26, 2009 at 09:30
Looks great guys!
Fox1
January 26, 2009 at 09:35
:w00t: :silly: :pinch:
You guys always amaze me 😎
Fox1
January 26, 2009 at 09:36
And this is actually the only blog that I have seen with smileys :w00t:
easy
January 26, 2009 at 09:53
well you got one vote for it to make a come back 😉
ewie
January 26, 2009 at 09:59
my screen resolution is set to 1024 * 768 on firefox, and it cut of the right side a few pixels.
darthdad
January 26, 2009 at 10:02
“Rotating Ball of Awesomeness” FTW!
Very nice guys.
LazySAGamer
January 26, 2009 at 10:37
Hmm did it cut the content or just the blue watermarked background?
Also which browser are you working on?
LazySAGamer
January 26, 2009 at 10:38
MSN is our official line of communication with the staff… so smileys are vitally important :silly:
ewie
January 26, 2009 at 10:42
Could be the background,
On firefox an IE,
moegoe
January 26, 2009 at 10:56
Fantastic new look!!! Well done guys!! :wub:
V@mp
January 26, 2009 at 11:46
Looks good. Well done
Ace
January 26, 2009 at 11:58
I just dont like the yellow and blue things in the top left and right. they dont seem to fit in very well. but that might just be me
nice job guys
Roland Browning
January 26, 2009 at 12:40
Well you wouldn’t expect a mechanic to understand design 🙂
Marc
January 26, 2009 at 13:13
I would have to agree, the content of the “Features” and “Reviews” lists should be slightly more toned down. Especially since you have the review scores color coded.
Just my 10c…
LazySAGamer
January 26, 2009 at 13:17
By the content do you mean the colours?
ewie
January 26, 2009 at 14:28
Yes, I would say use just one colour for the TEXT and score, so If it is 9 + green,
8 – 9 red,
7-8 yellow etc.
but that is just me.
Fox1
January 26, 2009 at 15:23
I like the new logo :sideways:
Fudzy
January 26, 2009 at 18:14
Nice work Lazy, glad to see the search bar is there.
Loki
January 27, 2009 at 00:29
Nice one guys. Glad it is up and running. :devil:
Marc
January 27, 2009 at 18:12
Well I meant the actual features and reviews. The blue and yellow rows are competing with the heading. I would make them slightly paler. But hey, it’s the content that matters 🙂
Hugh Jass
January 28, 2009 at 12:45
Honestly, it doesn’t look that different to me. If i had not read this post i wouldn’t have know it was different.
Like your new logo though. And the Rotating ball is, indeed, awesome.
LazySAGamer
January 28, 2009 at 12:50
Nick is going to be over the moon, he wanted it to be an improvement over the last one while still keeping it’s original style..
You can see the old style here http://test.lazygamer.co.za/
2Three
January 29, 2009 at 23:19
I would say you guys achieved that. Really nicely done! And this is coming from someone that finds most sites to be an eyesore.