Official Relaunch of CSW News

Update1: We will be redesigning the top header area to look less ‘Drudgey’…and we are looking into other design changes. Stay tuned as this site is an “iterative” process as we work to enhance it!

We understand change is hard, but our previous site design was not suitable for posting news stories quickly. As a recognized leader in consim-boardgaming related news, we had to find a design that would better position ourselves as a news aggregator. In short, we were spending too much time editing images and adding text in support of news stories.

The result is this site redesign. We decided to settle on the WordPress platform and have partnered with Media Temple, a leading hosting provider for WordPress. Before some may cry foul about this looking like Drudge Report — rest assured this design does not represent any political affiliation or endorsement. It’s a very popular format used by hundreds of other sites and best positions us as a news aggregator to post 24/7 as news come in.

The changes we have made serve the following aims:

• POST NEWS FASTER. The new headline-based format allows us to get news out in one minute rather than taking upwards of 10 minutes or more when we had to edit images and add extra text for every story posted.

• 5x MORE STORIES! Our previous site only displayed 12 stories on the front page. This new site design shows more than 50 news stories at a glance!

• NEWS CATEGORIES. To help you spot the news you are looking for, we’ve categorized news by major topic — New Releases, Preorder Alerts, Game Reviews, Game Replays, Special Offers, and more. And now you are guaranteed to see 10 of the most recent postings for each category!

• ENHANCED READABILITY. This site template is used by hundreds of sites who favor function over design for fast page-loading and improved readability.

• MOBILE DEVICE SUPPORT. This site design is optimized for mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones.

• HOBBY RESOURCE LINKS. Our previous site included a separate link section for some key hobby resources. We have made these top resource links visible on the Front Page and have categorized them as well to ease discovery.

• IMAGES FOR GAME RELEASES. While we are limited graphics to speed page display, all new product releases feature a front Box Shot (if available) to help them stand out.

• EXTRA INFO FOR PREORDER/GAME RELEASES. We include the name of the publisher and a link to a CSW Forum topic for all preorder and game release postings.

• PROMOTING PUBLISHERS. We’ve listed all major active consim boardgame publishers on the front page. Publishers can also take advantage of our banner advertising program, similar to our previous site, and we are no longer using those pesky-Flash-based ads that take ages to load.

We hope you will visit us often as we are better positioned as a consim-boardgaming news aggregator. Whether it’s new preorders or game releases, or following the latest game replay or review articles, looking up posts regarding a specific publisher, or accessing many great hobby resources, we aim to deliver it to you right from our Front Page. Of course, we will continue to refine and improve the site as we learn more.

As always, we greatly appreciate your support and we look forward to improving our coverage of our beloved hobby!

John Kranz
ConsimWorld