As many of you, I am sure, woke up to on Christmas morning, we have updated the site with our long anticipated new design. It has been a long time coming (that’s what she said), but this holiday break has allowed the staff to obtain a few days to simply relax and do what they wish; for me, this relaxation consisted of work. Irony. Nonetheless, it turned out great and we’re quite happy with it. Due to the fact that the update was ported over at 1 am EDT by myself alone, I am sure that there may be images, links, or even pages that may have broken as a result of this transition. If you spot any, feel free to drop us a hint and we will work to get it fixed asap.
In attempt to spare you all the thirty seconds it may take to familiarize yourselves with the new feature, I have taken the liberty of creating brief outlines of the pages that changed significantly: the movie section.
The new movies page
1. Featured Video: Pretty much self-explanatory. If there is a movie which we feel should be brought to your attention first, we will add it here. The links in the bottom right corner of this section allows you quick and easy access to its profile and to our new movie player (more on this later).
2. Movie Listings: This is perhaps the most drastic change from the previous site design, where we had that dysfunctional and incredibly server-intensive flash scroll of the movie posters. As you can see, the posters are a lot larger and easier to identify which movie you may be looking for. In attempt to make your search even easier, I have added links at the top of this section to sort the movies either by the time of its last update (default) or alphabetically. This uses javascript so it is instantaneous, however, for those browsers who have disabled javascript, you guys are out of luck. Additionally, whenever a movie profile has been significantly updated, or when a new movie is added, a little banner will display in the corner of the movie poster on this page. As you can see, the Extras movie profile page has been updated, and a small yellow banner is shown. If you have any suggestions for other ways which we can make your browsing experience easier, please feel free to let us know. To show you how much I hate flash now, here are some brief statistics that you may be interested to see about our euthanized (Portal reference) flash scroll:
Over 30% of the failed requests (translates to thousands of requests) received by this site were made by the flash file.
61% of all requests (translates to over 675,000 requests) were made by the dynamic PHP image file creating the movie poster thumbnails. Note for any aspiring web developers or programmers: always directly link to cached files, never to a dynamic file (such as one with a .php extension). Browsers don’t cache php files.
Essentially, flash is the downfall to all high-traffic websites. Especially when you are on the Digg frontpage.
3. Popular Videos: I don’t think I have to explain this one very much. Basically, we take the top ten viewed movies of the month and display them here. Easy as that.
4. Please donate. It isn’t cheap to maintain a website and sacrifice a great deal of time to making quality movies, any monetary assistance would be greatly appreciated. We have cake!
The new movie profile page
1. Watch Now: You no longer have to struggle looking for a link that will simply let you watch the video, it’s right her, laced with gold. Additionally, if you hated loading that Stage6 DivX web player every time you loaded up a movie’s profile (me), you no longer have to endure such agony. The pages load much quicker now.
2. Movie Poster: With a cool reflection! Click to view the high-resolution, orgasmic work-of-art made by our very own Filipe. This man is incredibly talented, and for the ladies, quite handsome. I think he’s single…
3. Download Links: Same as always, find the format that best suits your computer’s capabilities and viewing needs.
4. Music: We heard your call, and we’re working on it. Our previous attempt to publish the music on iTunes appears to be going nowhere, so we’re pursuing alternative methods. You will be able to download Lars’ should-be-award-winning music, soon enough. Hang in there!
5. Images: Worth over a thousand words each. I heard they’re worth over two thousand words each if they’re in high-definition…
6. Comments: Like loading that DivX player, I hated loading over a hundred comments each timed I viewed a movie profile. Thus, I have reduced the number of comments that will initially be shown to twenty, displayed in descending chronological order (the newest reply shows first).
7. More Comments: If you want to read more of the vaguely interesting replies, simply click this new Digg-like javascript link and it will automatically display twenty more comments, and so on.
8. Reply: Have something worth saying (that does not consist of blatant insults and retarded negative comments)? By all means, please post!
The new movie player
1. Theater Skin: What you see now is simply the default. Eventually, when we get the chance, custom skins will appear for its respective movie, adding to the experience and embellishments of the eye.
2. DivX Player: Yes, it’s still there. However, we are open to suggestions. Do you feel like this is the best format for displaying our videos? Do you have any other suggestions? We’re all ears. Well, not literally, we’re all homos. Homo sapiens. Yeah, we’re not gay.
Anyway, I digress, hope you enjoy the new site, and have a Happy New Year!
Do not abandon divx, I love the quality stage6 offers over its competitors (Read: YouTube and friends). With your movies quality is a necessity. If you find a nicer looking one, switch away. Hey, why don’t you let us download those several gigabyte uncompressed videos? That would be even better!
Stick with DivX, the format is fantastic - great quality in a small file size.
I have several LFF on my PS3 in DivX and on an HDTV they look great - don’t abandon the format!