Today concluded the site's two-week downtime and revealed a significant number of changes. The web site has been upgraded to the vBulletin 4 software, which made a number of these improvements significantly easier.
VaultWiki Moved
First of all, the VaultWiki tab (and all VaultWiki content) has been completely removed from the site. For VaultWiki customers and others interested, the dedicated VaultWiki site was launched back in January: http://www.vaultwiki.org/
Portal pages
You'll also notice that the home page has been completely redone. We've now added thumbnail links to some of the more popular projects both on the home page and the new Studio portal. We believe that this will make it much easier for new visitors to find them on the site.
In a similar vein to the old "Upcoming Releases" box on all pages, we have added the "Recent Releases" box to the home page. This box lists any new videos, publications, or other pages that have been flagged for inclusion in the box. It's displayed in reverse chronological order, and should also label anything that's "new" since your last visit.
We've also improved navigation within Studio information pages (formerly called "The Vault") by pinning the most frequently used portal pages to the header.
It's now much easier to find Cracked Egg Studios merchandise. It's now quite obvious with a tab called "Store" in the header.
In a similar vein to the old "Upcoming Releases" box on all pages, we have added the "Recent Releases" box to the home page. This box lists any new videos, publications, or other pages that have been flagged for inclusion in the box. It's displayed in reverse chronological order, and should also label anything that's "new" since your last visit.
We've also improved navigation within Studio information pages (formerly called "The Vault") by pinning the most frequently used portal pages to the header.
It's now much easier to find Cracked Egg Studios merchandise. It's now quite obvious with a tab called "Store" in the header.
Site Performance
In addition to a newer, more egg-themed style, we've also gone ahead and made the site much faster. In the past it was typical for any page to take anywhere from 8-10 seconds to load.
We've made better use of our Content Delivery Network and fixed some problems with script minification, so most pages should now load between 1-2.5 seconds.
In the past, it was typical for the EggPlayer to freeze up before the video even loaded, requiring the user to click in order to get it going again. This was due to problems with our previous usage of the Content Delivery Network, so we believe these speed enhancements to have solved the issue.
We've made better use of our Content Delivery Network and fixed some problems with script minification, so most pages should now load between 1-2.5 seconds.
In the past, it was typical for the EggPlayer to freeze up before the video even loaded, requiring the user to click in order to get it going again. This was due to problems with our previous usage of the Content Delivery Network, so we believe these speed enhancements to have solved the issue.
Coming Up
Within the next few weeks, we intend to update more of the Studio wiki pages (like the Ni-Ki-Oh! page) to conform more to the "portal" style we have already begun to implement. It's been a while since the last new video, and I already know of 3 or 4 that are going to be rolled out before June 1.