Welcome to the Redesigned VGB!

Oh hi there! Welcome to the new VGB! If you’re reading this, that means we’ve successfully updated Video Games Blogger with a brand new look. *Surprise!*

Please bear with us as we iron out the kinks, you might encounter a few small problems here and there. Getting the server speed back to normal for one. Know that we are working on it and we appreciate your patience as we smooth things out post-launch.

It’s become tradition to give VGB with a fresh new coat of paint every two years. For the past few months we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to setup this redesign for you, our readers.

The past year the VGB team has exploded from 2 to 7 gamers. While most gaming websites are still all-guys clubs, it seemed silly to me to perpetuate that myth into the 21st century. After all, I firmly believe that like human population ratios, nearly 50% of gamers are female. To us it doesn’t matter if you play casual, core or hardcore games, it’s all gaming and that’s what we like to talk about. So with that in mind I set out to balance things out over here and it’s worked out great, I’m happy to call these smart & creative team members my friends. But as a result I felt such a diverse group of gamers should be the stars of the blog (alongside the readers, of course). And that’s what this new theme does best, it highlights both the hard work we do & the fun we have daily and brings it to the foreground…

So what’s new?

  • Obviously we have a beautiful sleek new design made possible by the amazing efforts of designer Nate Yungkans. It’s meant to make browsing the latest news, guides and other articles much easier for you. It’s a nice, clean look.
  • Go ahead and move your mouse over the top menu categories, not only will sub-categories pop out, but they all have their own VGB-style cartoony icons drawn by the fantastically talented artist Gene Kelly. Fancy eh?
  • For the first time ever we have a unique frontpage that will be the home of the latest news headlines and videos like our shows, which are featured there for your convenience.
  • The new sidebar features all the talented VGB authors and displays their favorite links. Here’s the nifty part, each time Josh, Rob, Megan, Steve, Laura or Meg update their text balloon with their sage wisdom (I’m hamming it up here, I know ;)), their links square will get pushed to the top. That way you can instantly see what we’re up to each day. Awesome!
  • Still, your opinion is more important to us, so your latest comments will be shown at the top of the sidebar. It’s really easy to login nowadays, you can even use your existing Facebook & Twitter accounts.
  • The latest videos are highlighted at the top of each page, and the latest news updates are visible at the bottom of each page as well. So you’ll always know what’s going on wherever you are on the blog.
  • Next, we have the category pages that also display what’s popular each month at the top. New search results and game-specific tag pages, like Uncharted 3 are listed in their related articles, also displays an informational Qwiki video at the top. Futuristic!
  • Also note at the top of the page are left & right arrows and at the end of each page are links, both of these show the previous & next article you can browse. Convenient!
  • What else? … Oh yeah! The actual pages you’re looking at right now are much bigger, they’ve increased to a whopping 640 pixels width. Which is great for viewing large images and HD videos.
  • Last but definitely not least, is our cool new gallery system. As an example to show how easy it’ll be to browse images like screenshots and wallpapers for you, I’ve added the previous blog designs. By the way, I think the screencaps show some real design progress over the past 5.5 years. 🙂
  • PS: That bunny is a real papercraft you can get via Printables.

    If all of that wasn’t enough to engage you, you’ll want to check back regularly for we’ll be running multiple fun features and game contests every week this summer! So stay tuned.

    Please take a look around, stroll through some of the new additions, and generally make yourself at home. Please let us know what you think in the comments.