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

Comments are closed.

96 Comments

13 Author Replies

  • AWESOME!!!!!!!!! :)

  • sweet! best blog ever. now back to R2…

  • thanks. I was annoyed that there wasn’t a link for past post at the bottom.

  • Cool… something to distract me from the Mondays, Monday morning.

  • I Hope it will have an Intergration with our PSN ID’s Im tired of SPAMMERS on here..

    Please Make a Link at the Top to Get to http://www.us.playstation.com/ also.. and have one at the bottom too just like before.. it makes it easy to get to the Forms for both Playstation Forms and the Beta Forms.

  • PSN id integration?

  • PSN id integration would be sick

  • @7 XxBigP123xX
    ——————-
    yes just Like on http://www.us.playstation.com/ were you can sign in and be Loged in with your PS3 – “PSN ID’s”

    It would be a way to keep SPAMMERS from SPAMMING on the BLOG..
    ——————-

  • Hope to see some really good features Jeff. Keep it up.

    One cool thing you could do is randomly give out PSN vouchers for people who comment on the blog.

  • I agree with the link to the main us.playstation site.

  • sweetness can’t wait to see it!

  • Looks like a nice change.

    But What would be better, at least imo would be if you guys set up a global blog of some kind.
    Its nice reading news, but its mostly American based, and as nice as threespeech is, it doesn’t have that nice official touch like this one does.

    But ah well, I’ll survive anyway.
    And referring to and older comment, its a pity about you and your ex, she had taste in cool t-shirts, lol.

  • Excellent…will the new blog have the ‘no whining’ patch? :-)

  • Sounds good, can’t wait.

  • AWESOME!!!!

    this place deserves it!

    It would also be cool to have a way to see if any red posts (like you or a developer) have been made and when…so we can know to go back and check the response..

    just an idea…

    btw- i’m getting a PSP-3000 soon, what is everyone’s favorite PSP games here?

    I know i’m gonna get crisis core and chains of olympus and wipeout pure..

    • Yeah, that\’s one of those features I want to roll out in early 09. Absolutely.

      BTW, you just picked 3 of the best 4 PSP games of the year there – add Patapon and you\’re all set.

  • PSN ID integration is a must.

    I’m a mod on a gaming forum and we spend a HUGE amount of time banning Xbox fans constantly creating new accounts to make up bogus stories about PS3s dying, firmware bricking, and on and on and on.

    It was absolutely insane with the 2.5 release. It felt like every single Xbox owner in the world was at home creating new accounts on gaming message boards with fake ‘2.5 bricked my PS3’ stories.

  • Oooo that header looks sexy, very nice i like it. I hope it will be Opera friendly.

  • looking forward to it…. oh and will it be Backward Compatible with PS.Blog 1.0 or will PS.Blog 1.5 users be expected to keep their PS.Blog 1.0 in order to maintain access to all the Great PS.Blog 1.0 posts in their library.

    Seriously though looking forward to it. You and the guys and the team responsible for hte PS.Blog (waves to the team) have done a magnificent job.

  • @17

    Wow..that’s so…pathetic. Sounds like a case of “hardware envy”

  • heres my ideal: you should be able to view the blog thou the psn store :)

  • there’s a direct link when you open the browser

  • What the blog needs is a direct feed to the PS3’s Information Bar. That thing is so horribly out of date it isn’t even worth turning on. :(

  • nice

  • so is there going to be a funtion to edit posts? cause i hate spelling incorrectly

    • Nope (there\’s reasons for that). Double check your spelling before you hit \”submit.\” There\’s no time limit.

  • Preety nicee :) its more PlayStation like.

    As a web developer I have to say it looks wayyy better than this design and hope to see more AJAX features, just one suggestion there should be a login box to the right in the main page and there should be an admin panel integrated with the site where you can change your email and password etc… might be hard since this is running on WordPress but you guys are pros :D

  • Sweet. It looks a lot more professional and more PlayStationy.

  • Looks like a nice update, i’ll wait til Monday when I can fiddle with it instead of doing important things like work on Monday morning :p

  • very cool i luv you guys this is sweet to see upgrades for all this stuff sweet TY

  • Hey will there be any indication of posts that have “red” comments in them?

  • …but you’re still not allowing us to download paid-for PSN Video Store content more than once? Way to prioritize things, SONY.

  • @31
    Dont mean to be rude, but shut the [DELETED] up… :p

    Sorry for being so rude. I hate posts like that… “We want in game music! We want multiple album art edit! We want blah blah”

    Anyways! Thanks Jeff! Ive been wondering what this “”change” was going to be since you first hinted at it.

    And, just a hint for if the blog ever gets redesigned again-

    Ask us what we want before messing with anything. Thats what the blog is for, right? haha. Really, if there was a post like “What do you want changed on the blog?” style thing, we could have made some suggestions like people are doing in THIS blog entry. Obviously if there isnt PSN integration like everybody is asking for already, then its too late to add it now. They’re probably just working out the bugs and getting ready to release it now.

    Anyway, thanks for the continues support in everything you guys do! I love it, really.

    -Axecution

  • Stop whining AwRy.

    Good move PSBlog Team, keep improving.

  • r-nice, AwRy108 has a rather valid point considering the steep cost of the downloads. View once is enough incentive for most to switch to a different service once they find that out.

  • The new layout looks promising; I’ve been here since Day 1, and although I might not post and/or reply to other people’s comments as much as other people on here (likewise on the Playstation Forums,) I always try to read every post, etc.

  • Could we also mandate that anyone that gets to post information to the users of this blog also participate for an hour of their day and answer some of the questions raised?

    Jeff…you always seem to respond to a few questions here and there aswell as the guys from Criterion/Capcom/HVB etc etc…I’d like to have the expectation that EVERY blog post has some interactivity.

    Also…any news on a PSN ID API for the web so we can see and track our trophies automagically?

    • More and more do – but with many of the posts coming from people in other states or countries, it\’s not always possible. It\’s definitely getting better though, and the eventual red-reply tracker will bear that out.

  • Sweet! This is the only blog that I find myself reading DAILY! And now I know why, you guys care! :)

    Are there going to be polls? For some reason I have an odd obsession with answering polls! Specifically about video games…

    Yes… polls would be nice…

    • Yes, in last week\’s Halloween voting post, we tested out (successfully) our intra-post module. Expect to see it more often.

  • This is nice. Good to see that you guys are working hard, really appreciate it.

    Can’t wait for the new layout :)

  • cool

  • i’m fine with what the blog is atm but new features would be awesome

  • Nice update coming. Please also include an area or link to the playstation youtube page as well so we can check out the videos that are posted there.

  • Thanks Jeff.

    Sounds like a good change and I welcome it, but I’m not saying I don’t like the present format either.

  • So there won’t be a use for “FIRST!” anymore? Since you’ll soon be buried under a multitude of comments?

    Smart thinking.

    Also, there’s now way to tie Blog updates to what’s shown on the Info board, is there? It would be really cool to have PS3/PSblog functionality besides whats on the Internet Browser.

  • How about a “brainstorm” page. It’s not a blog improvement but it’s a wonderful idea. Check out Ubuntu Brainstorm for inspiration.

    Also, it would be nice to get email notifications if your comment gets answered.

    I’m also curious; how many of us are reading this blog from an RSS reader? We don’t have the problem with older posts getting lost. Yay! :D

  • @ephracis

    I am included on the “Using RSS Reader” list. RSS Reader FTW! :D no losing posts :P

  • No color for the PS logo? Oh well its a new look, and i like it, it tells others we’re too bold for color, its all about the PlayStation Family!

  • Adding features to an already amazing website? Win =]

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