Letter from the Editor: Back in Black
Shacknews is back with a redesign that celebrates its history while looking forward to the future.
Shacknews is back. We have experienced three consecutive months of all-time highs in monthly unique visitors. We had our largest presence ever at E3 2018 where we hosted interviews with developers and crowned MegaMoose64 our Shacknews World Champion in our first ever electronic sports tournament. We are carrying this momentum forward in all parts of our company. Today, we unveiled a brand new redesign of Shacknews.com. This is phase one of a two part redesign. Today's update focuses on improving our search engine optimization and social media presence. We have also completely overhauled the tools our writers have at their fingertips. This was a massive feat, but we wanted to tangibly improve the Shacknews experience for our readers.
It is a very daunting task to modernize a twenty-two year old website while maintaining its identity and respecting its history. When we began this redesign process, I pulled up my favorite Shack design of the past. It was green and black, and there was a ton of information on the site. This redesign shares that same spirit. With a focus on mobile as well as desktop user experiences, we tackled this project with an attention to detail that is very apparent. The return to a black website was important, but allowing users to choose was the extra detail that makes this place so special. Optionality is something that I love as a user, and it is at the core of this redesign.
What was once old is new again. We have brought back our iconic Shacknews logo with a bit of our own new take. We will continue to draw inspiration from our rich history while pushing Shacknews forward. There is a laundry list of improvements that we have implemented today ranging from our Chatty comment threads appearing at the bottom of articles to Google AMP support. Articles are easier to find with improved visibility of our topics and it is super easy to share them to social media. A ton of little things have come together to make this redesign a major update for our users as well as our writers.
I want to thank the team at Greenlit Content for the work they did helping us achieve our vision for what Shacknews should be. Thanks to my staff for their amazing work, and thank you to our readers and Chatty community members. As we hammer out the bugs in the next few days, my focus will shift to phase two. I plan to provide our users a new and exciting way to express themselves like never before.
Do it for Shacknews!
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Shacknews
replyAsif Khan posted a new article, Letter from the Editor: Back in Black
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sweet.
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Dude, what does mine say?
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Woah, the comments at the bottom of the article are very slick! :D
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Agreed! Very nice looking.
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^^^^Good idea!
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this is probably the best part. Get interaction highlighted. Give me a reason to read the news, and a way to comment on it. That's what eased me into the chatty years ago, maybe it will do the same for some others
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article comments looking so different from the chatty is a tad bit offputting though. Chatty redesign coming?
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also chatty search results that have a result in the thread of an article (like this one) pull up the article and the comments thread but don't highlight the comment with the search term like it would if it was a regular chatty thread
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and my posts don't show up until a refresh (unlike chatty)
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Awesome! Massive thanks again Asif for the redesign and purring your heart and soul everyday into the Shack over the years(you are our savior) and of course all the work your Staff and other partners have done for the site over the years.
Site looks freaking amazing and feels good! Fresh, clean and Pro is how I would describe it now.
Mega man hug, a Bro high five and last but not least big respect. -
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Looks great on mobile too! Love it! Great work and thanks to the devs for already working with ThomW to implement stuff needed for the LOL scripts etc. Above and beyond!
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Heresy!
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User has been banned for this post.
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THERE IS!!! https://i.imgur.com/DQNTsPV.png
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ew.
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Here comes the Shack in black,
Black and green like you rememberrrrrr -
Speaking as a Designer & Development dude I think the site mostly looks pretty good! My only real criticism is the font used for body text, shack sans. Its feels like the entire article is written as a header or title, it's really quite distracting.
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The spacing of the body copy isn't good, bad kerning or that's just how the typeface is?
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There doesn't seem to be any letter spacing (kerning) in the css. It's part of the font, they seem to have designed their own font which has various weights, and they've used a slightly lighter one for the body, but the design of the typeface itself is very much a header font not best used for blocks of texts.
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A smidge thinner could do wonders.
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Thanks for the feedback, sincerely! The goal is to make something both useful and good looking, so to that end, we'll keep working until we hit that. As Asif mentioned, this is part 1 of a larger push, which means things can and will evolve over time including type treatment. Thanks, again! - the designer
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No problem, overall i think the site looks great. And trust me I know what it's like launching a big project like this, it is really about getting fundamentals in place and evolving it from there.
Congrats.
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While true, it's also not the easiest font to read.
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GG. Nice design too.
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It even looks good on mobile. First time I can say that about the shack. Good job.
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Thanks, I spent a lot of time working on the mobile design with our team. A bunch of little things that make it a way better reading experience on mobile.
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Hear, hear.
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Hooooly shit I hadn't even tried mobile yet.
That might be the fastest loading mobile news site I've ever seen.
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I typically hate the redesigns sites are doing today, because they are focused on mobile. this redesign makes reading the shack on mobile web better, but doesn't ruin the usability in a wide screen browser on my crazy big monitor. Well done - can't think of a better compliment I can give.
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I agree, it's pretty well done.
Mobile chatty is pretty rough right now, hopefully they can fix it up over the coming days.
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Bring back Late Night Consoling.
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Looks great. Both on mobile and pc.
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Thank you!
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This is fantastic. Great job.
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if you look here: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ashacknews.com+calipsoii
the "Overwatch April 18 PTR..." result is a hit from the new comments section below the article. there were already lots of ways for comments to be indexed by google though, comments here are in no way safe from google indexing-
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Is the giant chatty header permanent? Still not sure why it doesn't shrink when scrolling like the rest of the site.
https://i.imgur.com/1xMGpGM.png
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Hmm. I don't know what the deal is. Resizing the window to a narrow width shrinks it completely, like it would on mobile probably, but that's different. Tried disabling all extensions and forcing the refresh, still no luck. As for Firefox, this is an all new install of the latest version. Chrome is up to date as well, and Edge I never use but it's busted there for me, not even intermittently functioning.
Just gonna try using that old css thing in stylus to hide it completely when scrolling for now I guess.
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I'm on Firefox and it doesn't shrink for me either. On either of my machines.
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Yea this is how it is on mobile Safari and mobile Chrome as well. Hopefully they can fix it.
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Also, the icon for the account doesn't align the circle to the center: https://twitter.com/shacknews
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Fixed!
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Aardvark the forgetful editor is still on the payroll.
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On a third party app?
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Yeah, bizarrely they don't seem to be showing up there.
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I just have a really quick question about the Twitter bio for @shacknews "Gaming News on the Cutting Edge of Technology."
What's up with that? Is the website itself cutting edge? The content? The games? The gaming news?
Or is it tongue in cheek reference to the fact that the website used to be run by a dude from a Pentium 4 that he dropped one time?
Or is it too late in the day, and my buzzword radar is working overtime and I'm ready to just go home and lay down? -
I'm loving everything about the NuShack, Thanks Asif
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[ REQ ] Before this mega thread expires, can the Dev team please add a new CSS to the names of the poster so that it is not the same color as the post itself(which is white and white right now). It is sort of driving me mental LOL :)
The mouse over color on the posters name looks perfect(that blue color) and then all you need to do is make the new mouse over color like yellow or something.
Thanks XOXO \m/ :) -
I like it, nice job shacknews team!
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I still miss Random Comments.
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I heard in the Podcast that shack has a new design. IT LOOKS BADASS BLACK. I love it.
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