Changes Coming to PlayStation.Blog

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Hello, faithful PlayStation.Blog readers. We appreciate the hundreds of thousands of you that come to visit us every week … and we listen to what you say. To that end, we’re getting ready to make your blog-reading experience better with a radical re-design.

Well it’s not *that* radical (internally we’re calling it “PSB 1.5”), but it’s definitely the biggest set of changes we’ve made since the blog rolled out in summer of ’07. Take a look:

PlayStation.Blog v1.5

As I see it, the main problem with blogs in general is that if it’s not at the top – nobody’s going to read it. With a worldwide reader base, a post that lives at the top of the page California-time might be buried at the bottom when our European friends wake up. That’s not good.

So the aim of PSB 1.5 is to get as much info at the top of the page as possible. At a glance, you’ll see our top story of the day, the most recent 4 posts (about 24 hours’ worth, typically), and a persistent link to the most consistently heavily-trafficked post of the week – the most recent PlayStation Store Update.

Recent Twitter updates will scroll along the very top of the page, and we’ll be updating it more often in the coming months. And in the upper right, you’ll have handy links to all the places PlayStation.Blog lives, such as Facebook, Flickr, Viddler, and our full list of links. We’ve also reorganized the categories to make them a bit clearer, and put them into handy drop down menu for easy sorting of past posts.

Finally, we took some of your comments into account with some smaller features such as an “older posts” button at the bottom of the front page.

In order to deploy the new design, it’ll be necessary for us to take the blog down for a few hours on Monday morning; everything should be up and running by 9am Pacific. We hope you enjoy the “new” PlayStation.Blog, and we’ll want your feedback on what else we can do to make your experience better. I can tell you that we’re currently working on a *lot* more features, and you should be hearing about them pretty soon.

Thanks for your continued support and involvement.
Jeff

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96 Comments

13 Author Replies

  • @kspraydad

    good point it is more than a little disheartening to see so many people talking to themselves.

  • Awesome job as always on the blog guys.

  • Great, I cant wait to see the new changes. Keep it up.

  • Nice! and you have no idea how much I’ve wanted an older posts button! Thank you very much. and I was wondering Jeff, remember when you guys had that thing in Orlando FL when we toured the Mo-cap studio? Are you going to do anything like that again?

  • GREAT NEWS! I love that you continue to give us this great news and have a newer way of informing us with it! Thanks guys! :D Greatly appreciated! ;)

    PS: I just received a Home Beta invite!

  • AWESome! that is all.

    peace,
    Lh

  • hellz yeah!!!!!!!

  • NICE JEFF, GOOD STUFF, KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!!! :D

  • I can’t wait to see the changes.

  • Is there going to be a timestamp and/or new moderator posts icon?

  • PSN integration would be ideal, as my PSN ID is T3mpr1x, not X1rtam. Haha. Maybe a way to reply to comments as well, so we don’t have to resort to “@User” or “@11…” :D

    Anyway that’s great news, looking forward to a fresh look soon.

  • sounds good

  • I was definitely missing the older posts button, and the dedicated playstation store link is a great addition.

    Nice work blog team :)

  • I’ve been looking forward to this, and it looks like the wait was well worth it. Definitely a great redesign, with special emphasis on providing a great experience for the readers. Nice one.

  • Sweet I can not wait to check out the updated PlayStation blog. This blog has done wonders and has been improving the PS3 in little ways. The developers read our opinions and see what we want and then try to put it into the firmware. I give Props to Sony for this.

  • Seems like a great update! The problem with most updates is that they tend to change winning formulas (ex ign), this ones seems to just improve the winning formula=)

  • So good you guys are showing us Europeans some love :D

    Can’t wait :)

  • nice to see good updates coming to the blog. im sure they will be good.

  • Would it be possible to do more changes? I never load up the site, I just have PSBlog added to my RSS feed with Mozilla Thunderbird. However, the PSBlog is the only RSS feed I have that formats blog posts as text only. It would be nice to be able to see pictures/embedded video from my RSS program.

  • Cool.

    Finally an “older posts” button, and a much needed refresh.

    Can’t wait.

  • Nice!!!

  • I still wish you could make us log into our PSN account, like some other PS Sites are now doing, so only those with a PSN account can post at the blog.

  • These changes make sense. I actually try to take the time to read through as much as I can but this should help those with shorter attention spans find the info they need easily. :lol:

    Thanks for the update Jeff.

  • Sounds good to me! Also the new look is great! Looks way more Playstation like and much less PS3ish and should help those of us who can’t afford more then one console at a time feel much more at home posting here thanks for the changes!

  • How come I can’t find the page to set an avatar I want to use??

  • Something I have searched but never found is how do I add a picture to my profile, could the new redesign add a profile manager?

  • Great improvements am looking forward to that on Monday of how the blog has been transformed ;-)

    Also glad to read that this blog is now officially seen as a place for PlayStation fans all over the world and not as some might think for “US/CA” only.

  • The only thing would I think would enhance the blog even more is PSN-integration.

  • @73

    Click on the silhouette and it’ll sign you up for Gravatar…set your Gravatar to E for Everyone and it takes a little while to show up.

  • Cool!!! :D

    Hopefully we’ll get nested replying sometime ;)

  • So will this mean, that you’ll add european launch dates on posts as well, for games and DLC, and that sort of stuff? … Or maybe.. Dare I say it? EU Playstation Store Update List?

  • Great news! This blog needed a new design.

    Keep up the good blog guys.

  • Will this effect the RSS feeds? That’s how I read the PSN Blogs. (many times a day)

  • Great news! I’m very excited to see what all the changes will look like!

  • when are the ps3 commersiols coming out

  • Thanks, it’s excellent to see some much needed changes…

    Here are a few things I would love to see in future revisions:

    -Add an edit option to posts.
    -Add a preview post option
    -Allow us to create our own passwords.
    -Allow a profile for each user, enabling us to keep track of our posts and their progress. It would be good to see if a comment has been made about my comment, and then have an easy way to find it.
    -Link us up to our accounts like GAP has recently done.
    -Add a, +/- system so we can vote on each post and thread.
    -Allow us to have a general discussion area. Let us create our own threads.

    -Allow us to comment on a users post within the thread. Make it attach, slightly offset or a different colour to show that it’s a comment.

    Thanks for reading.

    PS… If I’ve asked for ideas that will be included in the update, I apologize.

    Have a nice day all!

  • @ 84 striplay

    Kinda sounds like a forum :)

  • Awesome, 5 stars.. Anything that improves the communication between Sony, its developers and the fans is pure win.

  • Damned cool, Jeff. Can’t wait to see “PSB 1.5.”

    Any chance of PSN Callsign intergration, like the official PlayStation site?

  • Updates look like they are going to be nice.

    I still am wondering two things though, and the first question is MORE important than the second one.

    1.) I bought Qore Annual ON the 29th. I meet the age requirement, but did I meet the Qore Annual Requirement since I bought it on the 29th of Oct?

    2.) Where is my invite. I’m still homeless. :( That makes me sad. “That makes me a sad panda.”

  • off-topic but I read a comment about the Playstation youtube channel and Jeff replied that all videos may be watched on the ps3 browser with the latest firmware update. I used to watch youtube videos on my ps3 but I have found that since I installed the latest firmware I can’t watch some videos on youtube, just the audio runs but no video. Does anyone else has trouble watching some youtube videos on the ps3 browser?

  • This blog is the best for Sony i really appreciate my t-shirt i received for being in the top 50 bloggers. what would really be great to see happen for this blog is video uploads. Also more realtime chat sessions with developers. I think a realtime chat session should be posted at the side of the PS blog where we can view who’s online and see what is being said. Really make this blog more dynamic. I also was wondering if you guys will soon allow us to use our PS3 Id to sign i so you could have a better and more accurate idea of who owns a PS3. These are just ideas. Thank you.

    P.S. Realtime chat would be a blessing i hate having to wait for a possible response to a blog i might post. If not give us a PS3 messenger. Oh wait that is in home. Thank you.

  • cant waite! great job

  • That is going to be one nice facelift.

  • awesome!

  • Great work Jeff, the blog has already a great quality ,theres like 3 posts a day.
    Really good, cheers man.

  • tru its always good to have something new. but Jeff are there any plans of doing an event in N.Y.C.

  • @88

    Add &fmt=18 to the end of the url

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