Nintendo Everything celebrates sixth anniversary with first major redesign
Posted on October 22, 2013 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Podcast Stories, Site updates
Unbelievably, Nintendo Everything is celebrating its sixth anniversary today. That number alone – “six” – completely boggles my mind. When our doors opened in 2007, I could never have predicted that the site would still be alive and kicking today.
Now, it’s true that we’ve gone through plenty of other anniversaries since NE came about, but this one is particularly special. I wanted it to be special in order to commemorate today’s occasion. And so for the first time in Nintendo Everything’s history, we’re introducing a major redesign.
We focused on three primary aspects for the new site: the look, highlighted content, and room for even more content.
Let’s talk about the look first. This was the first and most important element we sought to improve. A new design is definitely something that was needed – it’s a long overdue change. To put it simply, the layout just didn’t look as pretty as it should.
The site has been completely redone with a blue/white color scheme. It looks nice, don’t you think? We’ve changed things up from the dark and dull design of the past and provided NE with a fresh coat of paint in hopes of invoking a more modern feel.
Next point. In the past, we’ve been missing a section for certain types of content. What I’m specifically referring to are more general videos, images, and news posts that don’t normally make the cut on Nintendo Everything. We originally took an approach to share content we felt was most important while filtering out potentially superfluous items. But really, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have room for extra, off-beat posts.
You’ll now notice that the site possesses various “tabs” on the front page. The first, “Latest Content”, is where you’ll find anything and everything – it encompasses all posts in “The Digest” tab, as well as things we wouldn’t have covered in the past. It’s your one stop resource to the latest Nintendo happenings, whether it’s coverage of an off-beat video, impressive piece of fan art, or niche game (…Petz?!).
Latest Content is for those of you who want a little something extra in the world of Nintendo. Over time, I think we’ll see it continue to evolve with content. We’re hoping our dedication to expanded news items will ultimately give further meaning to the name “Nintendo Everything”.
The second tab, “The Digest” should be most recognizable to regular visitors. Posts included here are the regular items you’d typically find on NE – important news, videos, screenshots, etc. This is for visitors who enjoy accessing the site as is prior to the redesign. We may be just a tiny bit more strict on content and designate a few more posts to “Latest Content” instead, but you can always count on the most important posts to be added to The Digest.
Regarding the third tab, this ties directly into our goal of more easily highlighting our features. Every review, interview, and podcast, can be found here for easy access. We’ve also added in links for “Features” and “Reviews” in both our header and footer, giving you even more ways to find original items.
Quick overview
- Latest content: home to everything Nintendo. News, screenshots, videos. Viral videos, random videos, fan art, niche game coverage (like Japanese only-games, casual game coverage like Just Dance). No filter here! Everything is accepted.
- The Digest: strictly the important news items, videos, and screenshots similar to the way we’ve approached content in the past, prior to the redesign. Filter: won’t display non-important Nintendo items.
- Features: the latest reviews, interviews, podcasts, and other original content on Nintendo Everything.
Continuing on the theme of highlighting content, that’s where the five blocks you see towards the top of the page come in. Going forward, we’ll have the ability to push certain posts – a feature, an important news item, etc. – in your direction and ensure that they do not quickly disappear from the front page.
So that about covers the important stuff. Other things you should be aware of:
- Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking to iron out any bugs and improve things further. This will come with new functionality as well. Some ideas we have in mind are being able to scroll through different items in the highlighted blocks area (currently shows top five, and that’s all), create a user system, give a couple more options in the ways you can view content, and enhance the games database further.
- The new site was a massive undertaking, so it would have been tough to re-launch two new websites at once. Still, I haven’t forgotten about Gaming Everything. There will come a time in the somewhat near future when we’ll bring over the same design and features, for the most part. You’ll find information about this on GE when the time comes.
- Nintendo Everything is best-viewed in Google Chrome. We’re fully compatible with other browsers, but for the best viewing experience, we do advise using Chrome.
With that, happy anniversary to Nintendo Everything! And thank you all so, so much for taking the time to visit the site. We wouldn’t be much without you guys!
