Nine months ago, we set out on a mission to cover the UNCHARTED universe during the launch of UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves, but didn’t want to focus on just the game. Like TrekMovie.com is to Star Trek, we wanted to share news with our readers and UNCHARTED fans about anything related to UNCHARTED itself.
A few weeks ago, I finally decided to re-build All Things UNCHARTED from the ground-up. Not only was I going to get rid of the canned theme that helped me launch a site in a weekend, but I was going to design it right.
Let’s take a look at what’s new and what’s changed!
Clean Layout
What was once cramped and filled with text is now easier on the eyes, letting you read what’s most important on the page without being distracted by the secondary content on the right. The sidebar content has been redesigned, dropping the tag cloud in exchange for the most popular articles (based on reader comments) and the latest discussion.
New Homepage
Right up front, we’re focusing on the most important articles with a brief teaser. The slider The smaller images on the old site have been replaced with high-resolution imagery with the latest articles under them.
100% Advertisement Free!
We looked at the stats of the site, and found that nobody was clicking on the banners. While every site owner would like to re-coup some of the money they spend on their servers (and let’s be clear, I’m not making any money off this site, even though that’s not the goal), why mess up the experience with banners? Instead, we’ll just use affiliate linking to the appropriate merchandise: If we’re talking about the UNCHARTED soundtrack by Greg Edmonson, we’ll provide links to iTunes and Amazon that’ll give us a small percentage for each track or item that’s purchased by a reader. That sounds good, right?
New Article Headers With Prominent Author Credit
We wanted our authors and guest contributors to get clear credit for anything they’ve written. Now, you’ll be able to easily tell who wrote the article and have easy access to contact them and follow them on Twitter and play against them on UNCHARTED 2‘s multiplayer with their PlayStation Network tag.
Live Commenting, Powered by Livefyre
We’ve replaced our commenting system with the brand spanking new discussion engine called Livefyre. What makes Livefyre so special? Well, you get instant updates whenever someone comments? Want to reply to someone in real-time? If both of you are on the same page, you’ll see each other’s comments as soon as they submit them, enabling a dynamic real-time two-way discussion. Soon, we hope to expand this functionality to guest interviews and live discussions. You can log in with your Twitter or Facebook accounts as well. Who needs a forum?
We’d like to send a special shout-out to the Jordan and the gang at Livefyre. Thanks so much for the help during the launch of this site, and we’re so excited to see what we can do with the platform!
Enhanced Mobile Access via the Latest Mobile Devices
Whether you’re browsing with your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android or Blackberry phones, or on the bigger-yet-still-small iPad, we have you covered, and they look great! We’ve streamlined the site down to the content you want to read, saving you from the content you don’t need to see while you’re away from your bigger screens.
A New Contributor!
Helping me and Bryony out with the writing duties will be a new contributor who we’ll introduce on Tuesday. Their first article is already in the system and we can’t wait to publish it for everyone to read! Be on the lookout tomorrow for their first post.
We hope you love the site as much as we loved making it for you! What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!