After what has actually been years of preparation, I'm finally going live with a major overhaul to GameBanshee. This is the biggest change to the backend that I've made in the site's nearly ten-year history, so there are a lot of issues I'm working through as it all comes online. Please bear with me over the next few days, as you're bound to run into some broken code, layout issues, and maybe even the occasional error.
For the time being, I have turned off the GameBanshee News and GameBanshee Polls forums. These will actually become archives at a later date, as our article and poll systems are now handled in an entirely different manner. For those of you who enjoy commenting on our news and polls, you can now do so directly within the article/poll itself.
Before I jump back into the fire, let me outline a few of the goals I had with this renovation:
- An RPG database. Since day one, I've wanted to offer a searchable database of every RPG, MMORPG, and RPG hybrid in existence on GameBanshee, and I'm finally close to achieving that goal. Over the next several weeks and months, I'll be adding descriptions, box artwork, screenshots, and other media to each game profile's page. Once I get around to going through our 30,000+ news items and assigning them all to games, they'll begin to appear in the "Related Articles" section for each game. You can also comment about any and all RPGs in the database, just as you would any news article.
- Easier content management. Back in the late 90's, one of the most popular content management systems went by the name of NewsPro, and later, Coranto. It's served me well over the years, but unfortunately it cannot keep up with the demands of a more modern website and had to rely on third party software (vBulletin, in our case) to handle news comments. I'm now running Joomla, which brings with it more options than ever before. Without it, none of our new features or upcoming features would be possible.
- Modernization. A Flash-powered spotlight feature on the homepage, article-specific comments, social networking integration, search engine optimizations, an RSS feed, robust galleries, and a lot more. It's almost 2010, so GameBanshee was well overdue for a lot of this.
So there you have it. Have a look around and check out what's all changed. If you happen to run into any issues, please report them here.