They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but a book’s cover can tell you a lot about what’s inside. A book cover (a good one, at least) can get you in the ballpark of what the story will be about and prepare you for the adventure ahead. It’s a signpost of what to expect going forward.
Websites don’t have book covers in the traditional sense of the words, but similar consideration goes into a site’s overall structure. A website’s design (a good one, at least) should assist visitors in finding the information they want, present information they didn’t know they wanted until they saw it, and just possess a heck-ton of good organization.
Here at Game Rant, we put a lot of thought into our book cover, so to speak. And our cover has changed over the years as the internet has evolved and our site has grown. This is a look at our visual evolution - from the early Game Rant days tothe post-acquisition Valnet days!
Navigating Our Homepage Through The Years
As with most websites, even in the early days of the internet, we wanted to be a prime destination for users. Despite our current size and readership, Game Rant started as a passion project run by a small group. The early team,about a dozen people, covered breaking news and featured reviews on the latest game titles.
All the way back in 2009 (ancient times, we’re aware), Game Rant’s homepage contained a typical structure; our navigation menu included game consoles as “hub pages.” If you owned yourself an Xbox 360 and wanted to check out the latest gossip about it and its game titles, you could mosey on over there and read up on the latest Microsoft console news.
Screenshots above courtesy of theWayback Machine.
Nowadays, our homepage focuses on games rather than the consoles they’re housed on. Games provide the hub structure for our site, and given how many come out every year, we can frequently update our nav bar with the newest releases.
I love that you can find all of our unique content right on the homepage and we can organize it to our liking.
“We attempt to highlight our exclusive stories combined with what we feel is the most interesting news of the day,” editor-in-chiefAnthony Taorminadetails regarding our homepage’s design. “Our goal is to give readers a snapshot of what’s going on at Game Rant and provide an opportunity to join the conversation surrounding the biggest games of the moment. I love that you’re able to find all of our unique content right on the homepage and we can organize it to our liking. We put a lot of work into our exclusives and videos, so being able to highlight those right on the homepage is a huge boon.”
The creation of our database (read more about it here) also means not only is our focus on individual games heightened, but reader interaction is increased too. From our database, readers of the site can build their own profile, rate their favorite games, leave reviews on games they’ve played, create wishlists for upcoming titles, and follow favorite authors.
Article Excellence In Both Design And Content
Time passes and things change. As a result, our articles are more than blocks of text with occasional images interspersed throughout.
Through easy-to-use tools, we can draw attention to important tidbits of information we don’t want our readers to miss. And while these tools are incredibly intuitive, they weren’t always in existence. Our Valnet IT team brought them into being, and they’ve made a world of difference when it comes to writing, no matter what department we’re talking about.
For instance, when it comes to news, speed is of the essence, so shortcuts to getting information out there are a major assist.Dalton Cooper, a managing editor for GR’s news team, has most enjoyed the ability to inject game tags into articles (courtesy of Game Rant’s database).
“The tag injections have been great. They give readers a quick run-down of all the most important info about any given game or subject and add genuine value to our posts. They include important-to-know information like release dates and platforms a game is available on so if someone is curious about when or where they can play something, they can get that info quickly and conveniently. By including all that info in tag injections, which are super quick and easy to add to any given post, it frees us up to focus on other details in-text.”
More evergreen aspects of our site’s features come from other recent additions.Greysun Morales, GR’s lead guides editor, appreciates what he considers to be “the most important and biggest update we’ve gotten (at least when it comes to guides).” He is referring to tooltips.
“Our tooltip integration withFextralifesets our guides apart from other sites. It seems small in the grand scheme of things, but it’s so cool to me. Not only is it visually appealing, but it’s so easy to use and not distracting or in your face.”
Each of these developments, from image galleries to game tags to tooltips, evolved with Game Rant over time.
Migrating Site Hurdles
These features available on Game Rant were only made possible after migrating it to Valnet’s proprietary CMS (content management system). And despite the easy-to-use nature of its tools, migration itself is no small feat. As our lead functional analyst, Fabio Del Greco explains, it can involve a lot of moving pieces.
It’s like transferring passengers from one moving bus to another, except the first bus can’t slow down below 50 mph…
“Migrating a website is always challenging, but the biggest hurdle is that the website can’t simply pause. When we decide to move a site onto our proprietary CMS and infrastructure, our goal is to ensure that readers experience no disruption. It’s like transferring passengers from one moving bus to another, except the first bus can’t slow down below 50 mph, just to pick a number off the top of my head.”
Once a site has made it to our CMS, we have the ability to update it with new features. The decision of what and when to add new features depends on our reader base, as Fabio explains.
“The most important factor is delivering value to our readers. Migrations offer a valuable chance to learn from other teams and understand how they create content that resonates with their audience. When we adopt a new feature in this context, we ensure it becomes available across the entire network. Welcoming a new team is an opportunity to amplify the impact of all our brands in better serving our readers.”
Saying this is a lot of work is an understatement. Most sites within Valnet Gaming have experienced this migration, and many of our editors and writers recall the difficulties. But the end goal is ultimately worth it.
“Once it’s all done, the sense of accomplishment is undeniable,” Fabio continues. “Migrations are intensive projects that demand a great deal from everyone involved. Along the way, overcoming each challenge can be incredibly rewarding. But nothing compares to that moment, usually a few weeks after completion, when the team is fully acclimated and comfortable with the new system. It’s a return to a new normal; one that validates the effort everyone on the technical and creative sides of the operation had put in.”
Evolving Site Style, Permanent Passion For Games
Game Rant has been around since 2009, and since then a lot has changed. And as with most digital publishing, even more change is on the horizon. The Valnet IT team is already at work on new additions to our CMS. “Many of our upcoming plans revolve on bettering cohesion in community features. When logged in on Game Rant, a reader can review their favourite games on our extensive DB pages and customize their own profile page with custom lists. However, it currently feels insular. We want to show off our active readers and make it easy for them to share their reviews and discussions with friends, or make new friends.”
The internet has improved in many ways, and we’ve improved along with it. As our evolving “book cover” indicates, we can adapt. But through it all, our love of games has stayed the same. And our desire to report breaking news, offer in-depth guides, and provide probing features has remained the same as well.
You can’t always judge a book by its cover, especially if the cover changes as the years go by. But, if we may say so ourselves, our book cover has been, is, and will continue to be heckin’ awesome.
