Wire.vg Dev Blog

See when people reply to you

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 09:37:56 -0500

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 sorted by newest first.

Merry Late Xmas, Have Some Icons

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:24:38 -0500

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.

Minimal.wire.vg - easy news

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:13:11 -0500

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

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 06:57:50 -0500

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 when people reply to your comments.

Another feature to now exist is the ability to edit your own comments. Though this is less because it’s finally ready, and more because I only just realised I didn’t enable it.

Tell me, how long ago was that?

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:31:21 -0500

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.

Spot what's trending

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 06:29:23 -0500

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

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:01:56 -0500

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 now disabled.

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:09:27 -0500

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 more gradually. It’ll make the site feel more alive and dynamic, which at the same time leading to much less load on the fragile server.

Experiment With "Gravity"

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 17:38:46 -0400

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 bigger and it takes more and more to keep it up. Inevitably each balloon will sink.

The new system promotes new, voted on news to the top of the page much more effectively than the old one, hopefully giving you more new stuff to read.

To try out the new system, edit your chosen channel (try your Front Page) by clicking on the little wrench and choose “Gravity” from the Sort By menu.

It’s very new, so it’s still being tinkered with.

It’s based on the same rating algorithm Hacker News uses, detailed here.

Once everyone is happy that it’s working and we’ve made it run happily on the server, it will become the default ordering on the Front Page. So, if your Front Page is currently ordered by Most Votes, it’ll switch over to Gravity (not the best name, I know). You can change it back if you don’t like it, and if you’ve set your Front Page to be sorted by anything else, it won’t change.

If you do play around with it, be sure to tell everyone how you get on.

Hide the bar

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:47:08 -0400

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.

"Add to front page" buttons make customisation easier

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 12:53:29 -0400

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 want a full list of sites, head to the About page. A page specifically for helping you find new sites will be coming soon.

You can now Edit your comments.

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:16:44 -0400

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 auto-redirects you back.

Not much difference really.

The Results Are In!

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 06:40:44 -0400

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 stats (ex. article readings based upon geographical position/age/sex/other)

You can now auto-post comments to Tumblr

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:10:46 -0400

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 tick box with the Tumblr T will appear below comment boxs. Tick it, fill in your info, and away you go.

If you’re wondering why you have to fill out your Tumblr email and password each time, it’s for two reasons:

The way Tumblr’s API works you have to send this info during every posting. If you didn’t enter the info every time it would have to be stored, and I don’t want to have the responsibility of storing your Tumblr password just yet.
If you posted every comment you left on Wire.vg to your Tumblr, everybody would probably get mad at you. You should save that feature for when you’re at your best.

Press Release: Wire.vg launches TGS-specific site to track all the news without requiring effort

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:17:43 -0400

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 going to a billion different websites. It’s an arse,” said John Kershaw, what did the code for the website. “Nobody has time to trawl across the internet for news, especially when they’re looking for one specific topic. That’s why I made TGS.Wire.vg, it’s simple and works.”

Kershaw, who was called charming last week by somebody he didn’t know that well, created Wire.vg (http://wire.vg) after finally having enough of Google Reader telling him he had thousands of unread posts, creating an unwelcome feeling he was being judged. Wire.vg acts as a fancy-pants gaming post aggregation service and recently added an API and an exp system for users. It’s this API system that’s used to produce sites such as TGS.Wire.vg.

Media Contact:

For more information please contact John@Wire.vg

You can now auto-post comments to Twitter

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:07:16 -0400

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.

You will also soon be able to post your comments to Tumblr, if you were wondering.

If you go to Wire.vg on your Android or iPhone, you should be...

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:20:52 -0400

If you go to Wire.vg on your Android or iPhone, you should be greeted by the new mobile version of the site. There may be bugs, so watch your step.

If you’re logged into two devices at a time (PC & phone), you’ll probably find errors on whichever was the last device you logged in to.

Gamefreaks added to Wire.vg

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:21:00 -0400

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, what’s the worse that could happen?

Which brings me on to the second hesitation. The server is only small, and as well as running my other sites, Wire.vg’s API, subdomains, front-end and thumbnail fetcher, it also has to download every single RSS feed it uses. Then, every hour, it processes every single post published in the past few days to get the trending list. With the frequency with which blogs like Gamefreaks update, overloading the server (with the sheer volume of pure unfiltered awesome) is an actual possibility.

But fuck that line of thinking.

tl;dr: Gamefreaks can now be added to your Front Page (click the little wrench icon when you’re logged in), or any other custom channel. Hurray!

And if you break my server, you’re buying me a new one.

Spoilers: Wire.vg's channels can now exclude results containing a given word

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:06:38 -0400

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 been added to the search feature, just to make life that bit easier.

A newer design.

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:12:46 -0400

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 smart comment and get upvotes
or just avoid the misconstrue

Go on now look!
Click buttons too
You may need to sign up
But that’s nothing very new

There’s conversations you can see and join in with if you like
You think it’s easy,
You think it’s a waste of time?
Oh no, not I!
I think it’s great
There are more than fifty gaming sites
I know that I can now conflate

I’ve got all my votes to give
I’ve got all the news to live
I love new Wire,
I love new Wire!!!