New BRUTAL! features added
News posted by Ryan on April 2nd, 2009 at 12:04am GMTWith the volume of news and media that BRUTAL! covers only growing, numerous additions and changes have been implemented across the site to make things a bit easier. Most of these are minor tweaks, however there are two major additions to be aware of:
Community Tracker
On the front page you’ll find the new Community Tracker, which avoids all the fuzz and gets straight to the point. It exists as a condensed preview on the front page, and as a standalone Twitter-like feed. It can also be subscribed to via RSS or email.
The general idea is that while major news stories and whatnot will continue to be posted in the main news, smaller tidbits such as random rumours and interesting Brutal Legend-related blog posts will be posted on the community tracker. Reviews, previews, and other such things will also eventually make an appearance.
Additionally, any updates to BRUTAL!‘s own content such as the addition of new screenshots, etc will be posted on the Community Tracker — until now this has largely happened behind the scenes. In fact, if you check it right now you might notice four awesome new screenshots.
Fan Art
The new Fan Art section is in essence just another gallery, but it’s one where user participation is encouraged more than ever. If you can produce beautiful art, be sure to have your work immortalised here!
While I’ve made an earnest effort to get in touch with talented artists so their work can be featured, the hope is that those of you who know to tickle eyes the right way will submit your own art. If you make something particularly awesome you might even end up in the main news.
Community Tracker sounds like an excellent idea!
But is it just me who can’t access the proper RSS feed for that page? The address points to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/brutallegend2/ , which rather than a simple XML feed of the items included, looks exactly like the Community Tracker page, just without the style sheet. In any case, I can’t see any way to subscribe.
What am I doing wrong? :)
Thanks Vili! It looks like you spotted a bit of a configuration issue due to some URLs changing during the changes. :E
I’ve fixed those, and both the main and community tracker feeds should now be working. The RSS feed icon in your browser’s address bar or whatever on that page will also now reflect the community tracker rather than the main news.
Cool! I have seen alot of those pics on Deviant Art, I was actually kinda suprised by the amount of Brutal Legend art I found on there already, and the game isnt even out yet!
Just shows how excited people are and rightfully so!
Thanks for fixing it Ryan, everything works perfectly now!
Can I add a feature request though: an option to get an email notification when someone adds a comment to an article that you have already commented to?
There are a few WordPress plugins for that. I have personally used Subscribe to Comments on my sites, but you may want to look around if any newer and more feature-rich plugins are available.
And is there any reason why you don’t promote the comments feed on this website (either the site-wide feed with all comments or the post-specific feeds)?
We are a demanding audience, huh? :)
Hah, well because I’ve always used Feedburner due to its email subscription options and whatnot it kind of takes over the feeds, and to be honest it’d never occurred to me that it’s obscuring the default WordPress comment feeds.
I’ll look into restoring those this weekend, and I’ll put in your subscription request too. I have used Subscribe to Comments before, but I guess it got overlooked here!
Thanks for the feedback. :))