Author’s Note: Hey everyone! As you may or may not be aware of, the beta for the new version of the Giant Bomb website just dropped! With Chuck busy handling tickets I went ahead and got permission to copy and paste Chuck’s post summarizing who is getting access to the beta, the steps involved for signing into it, and what we can now confirm is the long-term goals for the site moving forward. If you are still having issues logging into the beta and have premium, let out a yelp either here or on the Giant Bomb Discord in the “Site-tech-issues” channel.
Also, feel free to share any bugs you encountered while exploring the beta as well as early impressions and concerns So, without further ado, let’s hands things off to Chuck!
Chuck here. Wanted to make sure you heard here as well, but on Bombcast 902 we announced that the new website beta will be open for testing on TODAY!
The beta URL is: https://enormousexplosive.com/login
In order to participate you need to –
- Have an active Giant Bomb premium membership (monthly or annual is fine!)
- Know your username & email for the site
That’s it. If you provide verifiable matching info, we will email you a link to set a password for the test site.
What the test site has:
- Very nearly the full catalog of video and shows with fully functional video player
- I spent too much time building a dataset and sanitizing the backlog, to be honest. But it’s in a pretty good spot right now. I would love for folks to point out what’s still missing.
- Shows/Seasons for Video
- Handy video page search and filtering
- Full site search
- Live stream channels (including GBF)
- [Redacted]
- Article pages
- Review pages
- Comments/Commenting
- Legacy comments won’t be making it over to the new site. That’s for the best – y’all said some stuff
- User Registration
- Disabled for the site beta and replaced with the premium checker one.
- Billing information & premium management
- Disabled for now. This completely works, but it’s best to keep doing that on the main site for now.
What’s still in the works:
- Podcasts & RSS Feeds (this is actually 90% done, but we don’t have API keys for premium feeds yet and I still need to transfer audio files)
- Fun fact – the new audio CDN is already in use for recent episodes, so you may notice the premium RSS feeds are a bit snappier.
- Forums
- This is happening – I’m still researching what forum software I’d like to use. You’ll enjoy full SSO between the site and the forum when this is rolled out. No timeline on this, but before go live certainly.
- Playlists
- I want … Show playlists. Season playlists. User “watch next” playlists. I just prioritized other things for the beta.
- Premium user content
- Top of my mind has been how to manage user generated content on the site and the liability of an open door
- The solution to that for us is – make them Premium features. This includes Reviews, Blogs, Lists, etc.
- The Giant Bomb Wiki and the Wiki Integration
- We plan on having a full dynamic relationship between the site and the wiki, the wiki project is still in early-earlymid stages. We could use your help!
- The sale is still finalizing, and when that’s done we’ll have all the data and be able to import it into the new Wiki.
- We need help from folks that want to design, do front-end work, learn about MediaWiki, built the project and point out issues, anything really.
- Also – authentication and SSO! Infrastructure, CI/CD! know these words? Come help!
- Usability, polish, improvements.
- I practice a lot of “blocking” in development – I get the bones in place and then double back to shine things up. You’ll notice, for instance, the content of the home page is the shiniest.
- This results in less do over for me – I framed out much of the site, and now that I’ve spent a lot of time on the home page I have a better of the site’s identity
- That said – if you notice buttons / inputs / spacing is weird on a given page, submit a report anyway. I’ll track all of that as a to do list.
What’s out and not makin’ it:
- Old Site Chat
- I get asked a lot about this – I love site chat too! But the audience was split in three channels and it was pretty brutal to engage with.
- I think there’s a narrow avenue for a type of site chat if we ever do premium-only streams where they aren’t on Twitch or YouTube, but the cost associated with redeveloping site chat is a thing.
- The emotes are safe and stashed away.
- Free user generated content like reviews, blogs, lists, etc.
- Social media style features – friending/DM’s. It’s a liability thing and heavy to implement.
- User image uploads on the main site (excluding wiki) for reasons stated above.
Sorry, lots to read. If you have questions, ask away – I’m happy to answer them and get your feedback.