January 2011
1 post
See when people reply to you
A long awaited feature has finally arrived; you now get notified when people reply to your comments! Never again will you need to worry about missing an important conversation.
You can also view all the times you have been replied to, as clicking “Replies” in the top right takes you to the cleverly named Replies page. Here you can select to see only unread replies, or all of them...
December 2010
4 posts
Merry Late Xmas, Have Some Icons
A very small and not all that festive update for you: Site’s on Wire now have their icons (if they can be found) displayed on their subs. It’s just another way to make it easier for you to find what you want.
4 tags
Minimal.wire.vg - easy news
Minimal.wire.vg is a new page which simply shows you what the big news is today. It uses Wire’s trending topics function to generate the list, and a basic search to get the stories. Every hour or so it’ll be updated to reflect what the gaming blogosphere is talking about now.
A simple, fuss-less way to get today’s gaming news.
Nested comments allow for better conversation
A feature long promised has now emerged from testing: Nested comments.
This means, simply, that you can now reply to specific comments, allowing for a branching conversation to exist. Without this, conversations are shattered and the resulting comment section is hard to follow and ultimately useless.
Once I’ve worked out a practical way to do it, you’ll soon also get notifications...
Tell me, how long ago was that?
Not content with your Wire.vg times being set to your own timezone? Well, fear not my time-illiterate friend, for now there is an option to make all times show you not when, but how long ago.
Go into your profile (http://wire.vg/profile/) and select “Show dates and times relative to now (e.g. “six hours ago”)” to view these new times.
November 2010
3 posts
Spot what's trending
Little flames now appear on articles that contain a trending topic. The little icon appears out the way on the right for easy skim reading. The icon for comments has also moved to join it, allowing you to easily and quickly skim read down the right hand side for interesting things.
Oh, and pages now show 100 items, rather than the old 60.
Titles and permalinks play musical chairs
On the Wire front page, clicking on the title of a post now goes to the actual post. Clicking the link which used to say “permalink” and now says something along the lines of “2 comments” now goes to the comments page.
This is the order that makes the most sense.
The Opposite of an Update. A Downdate? Thumbnails...
After a month or two of no updates, have one less feature.
The little thumbnails you see next to each post have been disabled. It may seem like a step backwards, but it’s part of an interesting and much larger shift swirling around the underbelly of Wire.
To help with scaling, a lot of code is being tweaked to run less like a clock and more like warm butter. Soon the front page will update...
October 2010
3 posts
Experiment With "Gravity"
Right now, posts get voted on. More votes means the post goes higher. Once it’s reached a set age, it disappears. That’s going to change.
Soon posts will start out in the middle of the page, go up when voted on, then slowly fall back down the page over time.
Think of each post as a hot air balloon with a rip in the top. Every vote gives it more hot air, but over time the rip gets...
Hide the bar
You can now, via your profile, choose not to see the Wire Bar when you browse to an external site.
If you tick the “Hide the Wire Bar along the top of the page on outgoing links” option you will simply be redirected to the article you’re wanting to read.
4 tags
"Add to front page" buttons make customisation...
Before, if you wanted to add a new site to your front page you had to find it in a big list. Now, you just browse to the site’s page on Wire.vg (here’s Gamefreaks’) and click the big button.
If you’ve already added the site, then the button becomes a handy “Remove from your front page” one.
Just one of several updates to make common tasks easier.
If you...
September 2010
8 posts
You can now Edit your comments.
Typos begone! There’s now a small “Edit” button on your comments which let you change what was previously unchangeable.
This update comes hand in hand with a change to how comments go about being saved. Which, from your end, means instead of going back to the post page with a message saying “your comment has been posted”, you go to an extra page which...
5 tags
The Results Are In!
Last week a poll was put up on on the site asking “What should Wire.vg do to make money?” 79 people replied, and these are the results:
Some of the suggestions from the “Other” category:
Change the zeitgeist in a way that would positively affect wire.vg
Donations button, MERCHANDISING
Wire commision service - develop complex features or solutions for subscribers
Sell...
4 tags
You can now auto-post comments to Tumblr
First you posted comments, and it was good. Next you voted on comments, and it was better. A week ago you got your comments to auto-post to Twitter, and it was awesome.
And now you can post to Tumblr, and the [adjective] [noun] is [verbing] all over the [noun]!
Go to your profile page and select “Add the option to post your comments to Tumblr”. Once you’ve done this a little...
Press Release: Wire.vg launches TGS-specific site...
Wire.vg launches TGS-specific site to track all the news without requiring effort.
Internet – September 14, 2010 – Wire.vg, successful internet website where people press buttons, today launched TGS.Wire.vg, a simple site dedicated to tracking news from the Tokyo Game Show. The site uses cutting edge science and baked goods to bring gamers of all ages a brand new interactive experience.
“Screw...
You can now auto-post comments to Twitter
If you go to your Profile page on Wire.vg you can now get Wire.vg to be BFFs with Twitter. This lets you auto-post (not to be confused with annoyingly-spam) your more thoughtful comments to Twitter. Each tweet comes with the free subtle implication for your friends to vote for your comment to earn you that sweet sweet exp.
As with most things on the site, you can expect it to be a bit buggy.
...
5 tags
3 tags
Gamefreaks added to Wire.vg
Gamefreaks, after a delay of far too long, have been added as a selectable source on Wire.vg.
The delay was partly due to a hesitation around adding Tumblr blogs to Wire. As it’s essentially an RSS reader, having Tumblr posts on there (with their bajillion updates per day) could cause problems. But, with the success of GJAIF, and the understanding that people have to opt-in to the content,...
4 tags
Spoilers: Wire.vg's channels can now exclude...
If you put a minus before a search term when configuring your channel, the results will exclude posts with that phrase in their title.
This means you can remove mention of your favourite games (because spoilers), or least favourite companies (because who cares) from your life. Well, not your life, from one of your custom channels (excluding the Front Page, for now).
This functionality has also...
August 2010
7 posts
A newer design.
Once I was afraid I was petrified Kept thinkin’ I should change so much but it was all untried Then I spent so many nights, changing all that was still wrong Then Wire evolved, and I burst out into song!
And so look now! It’s looking good You’ll find it shiney, moden, clean and exactly like it should
It’s so much faster that before And has an XP system too Leave...
That's a nice comment
We all want comments to be good. The XP system rewards good, smart, informative and interesting comments. And now you can share them.
Clicking on the date of any comment takes you to a comment page (very similar to Twitter’s feature to show individual tweets) which displays the comment without any extra clutter. Like this, or even this.
Soon there will be a “Leave Comment and post...
Level Up! Wire.vg gets XP and comment voting
It’s been on the to-do list for a while, but comments now have voting button on them, just like posts. To multiply the excitement you’re probably feeling, this update comes hand-in-hand with user XP. Every time somebody votes on one of your comments (excluding you), you’ll gain an XP.
Soon we’ll be getting league tables, levels and maybe a mark next to your name to...
Beta Codes Begone!
To sign up to Wire.vg you no longer need a beta code! Just go to http://wire.vg/login/new and join away!
The reason for this change is more a reassessment of the reasons why the beta codes were there in the first place: to slow the growth in users. The understanding that “we might be too successful” is a poor reason to do something has now made us change the sign up process....
Obiwan is the design you are looking for.
The first Jedi-named design, Obiwan, previously available as an option has now been updated to be compatible with all major browsers and is the default design. “New”, the previous design will not be available as an option (unlike the design before that).
To get into the meat of the new design, have a read of the previous post on the matter.
The tl;dr is that the new design gives you more...
4 tags
Tell me, young Luke, what brings you out this far?
The new layout for Wire.vg, codenamed Obiwan, is now into its public testing phase. To use the new layout simply go to your profile and select “Let me play with Obiwan, the new layout”. Upon confirmation, Wire.vg should look like this:
What’s changed?
The biggest difference is the right-hand column. Instead of simply showing you the top posts, you now get the top trends by...
Trending Goes Public
The above image is taken from the now public Trends page. You can take a look for yourself by going to http://wire.vg/trends or clicking the link labelled “Trends” in the footer of Wire.vg.
This takes you to a page very similar to Google’s own Trends page. The data is all pulled from the Wire.vg database, and is fantastic for seeing how the gaming press has been reacting to...
July 2010
9 posts
2 tags
Comments, move to the centre
Comments have now replaced Related Posts in the “what goes under the article” bit on pages (like this). The Related Posts now go up on the right (where “Top Rated” used to be). The comment section also shows comments from other related posts, just so you know you’re not missing out on anything.
It’s all a touch complex still, but once we start seeing more...
3 tags
Oh Noes! Trending: Offline
Chances are you’re going to see this more often than I would like. The reason is:
tl;dr: it’s better for the trending list to be offline than the whole site.
The Nerdown: An interesting bug was found this morning. The bug was stopping the trending calculation using all the data it could. This meant the trending list was populated more with the stuff that was simply popular, rather...
4 tags
What did you say? Wire.vg has commenting!?
The buzz is true; Wire.vg now allows comments!
The Nerdown: One of the big problems with commenting on Wire.vg is that there are, by the very nature of the way the site is built, going to be several posts on the same thing. To overcome this the comments section on Wire.vg articles will not just show the (soon to be nested) comments for that specific post, but also show the popular threads from...
3 tags
Pulse gets a facelift
Pictures are cool. We like pictures. We like them so much so there is now loads of them on the wire.vg Pulse page (http://wire.vg/pulse). The new page design uses images found in the posts relating to the trending topic and are there to look nice.
The trending topic calculator was also given a bit of a poke recently as is now far less likely to produce two trends for the same topic.
Some...
and then the server was all like...
The above graph shows the number of posts added to the database each day. The small lump in the middle is E3 (when the server fell over). The big spike on the right is today.
tl;dr: A bunch more sites have been added to Wire.vg.
The Nerdown: Whenever new sites are added to the system, the first time Wire.vg looks at their RSS feeds everything is new so everything is stored. When you add more...
Never Forget
With the new buttons came some new problems. One of them was a strange bug that caused people who didn’t opt to be remembered to not be able to vote.
tl;dr: Fixed it.
The Nerdown: The way Wire.vg “remembered” you was using a cookie stored on your machine. This combined with session data on the server and a monitoring of what IP you last used is what makes it secure. When we...
The unvote is born!
Voted on something by accident? Optimism causing you to click before reading? Drinking and playing internet, only to regret your votes in the morning? Well fret not; the un-vote is here!
Just click on anything you’ve voted on, and your vote is (almost) instantly unvoted! As you can only vote/unvote once per post per page you may need to reload for it to work (if the button says...
Numbers?
What are all these numbers doing in my buttons?
If you click the vote button, and instead of saying “YEY!” the button turns around and gives you a number, do not fear. This is not the server lashing out in anger, rather it’s complaining that you poked it wrong (or at least, it thinks you poked it wrong).
Normally these complaints are hidden. However, as we’re testing a...
Let There be Buttons!
Rounded corners and everything!
When the button turns red, it means you have voted. If the text turns into a “YEY!” then it means everything is fine and you win a life point! If you get a number appear instead, it means something broke and you should email or tweet at John (john@wire.vg or @wardrox).
The site has also been updated to only allow people who are logged in to vote....
June 2010
19 posts
1 tag
Add and remove sites from your Latest list!
It’s been one of the most requested features since the site launched: A way for you to add (or, more likely, remove) sites from the “Latest” page.
tl;dr: Now you can.
The Nerdown: The Latest, Top Rated and Most Viewed channels are special. When you click on these there is hard-set code that fetches the posts needed. These channels were here long before custom channels, and...
Lets go Public baby, you and me
tl;dr: Nerds have more toys.
The Nerdown: To use the new Wire.vg API you need a key. Thankfully, we just made a key anyone can use. Hurrah!
Now, if you want to play with the API, use the key “public”. The catch? Every request you make is cached for an hour (or more). So the information you get likely isn’t going to be real-time. As we can’t control the public key all...
2 tags
Wire.vg has an API
Right now it’s very basic, but it’s working. Wire.vg can now be interacted with via third-party apps. There some basic information on the new toy here.
If you want an API key then get in touch.
4 tags
We found a Pulse!!
What happens if you use nothing but Maths to try to work out what the big news of the day is?
This: http://wire.vg/pulse
Pulse (as in: the news pulses down the wire, geddit?) is Wire.vg’s attempt at just that.
The Nerdown: The list you see when you go to the Pulse page is 100% based on a computer algorithm. There’s no direct editorial control picking and choosing what stories are...
Hey look, trending!
Continuing the theme of “I like to play with data”, Wire.vg now has a list of trending phrases.
tl;dr: A bit like Twitter
The Nerdown: Every 15 minutes every post published in the past five days is loaded from the database. Every word and pair of words is extracted (this is measured in the dozens of thousands). An average frequency is calculated for both the past 5 days, and the...
I like graphs
Above is the first (of many) graphs to appear on the site. This one is on the front page (down on the right) and simply shows the number of posts that Wire.vg has collected for any given hour over the past two days. The grey area is always “yesterday”.
This may seem like a rather small update, but it’s actually the first use of some new code. This lets the site do a fair few...
Custom Channel Pages
Just a quick update to let you know that custom channels now have pages. With all the E3 madness the update was rolled out sooner than scheduled to make sure you can all track the news you want, easier.
What broke today
The graph sums it up, but there are words underneath for those wanting to know the details.
Those following Wire.vg today will have noticed that at around 1pm EST things went a bit weird.
What went wrong:
This morning I turned off the caching system I had been working on over the weekend. I was unable to get the kinks out, so decided to remove it to make the site faster for E3.
I left in a...
A new design.
If you go over to Wire.vg, You’re in for a big surprise. If you go over to Wire.vg, The change may hurt your eyes.
For ev’ry shape that ever there was Has change in size and colour, because Today’s the day that Wire gets a facelift.
