Lunchtime.org.uk
Like a book club, but with video games.

Hello, and welcome to GLA5

Firstly, this is the official feedback post! If you have some kind of feedback to give on the design, then please leave a comment on this post. If you have a bug to report, then please file it in our issue tracker instead. Doing so is a much better way of getting it fixed than messaging me directly.

So, yeah, here it is. Truth is, I always wanted to do a big rebranding. As I was mocking up GLA3, Digg had that godawlful redesign, so I decided to shelve some of the crazier ideas and just go with what was safe. Same with GLA4, but that time Kotaku was the tragedy. Although nobody really misses Kotaku, do they?

Anyway, here it is, in all its glory! If you don’t like how it looks, then too bad, because I posted something very similar to this design on the blog about a month ago and nobody complained. There are a few new features, such as the asynchronous theme switcher, doddskipedia section, tips bar (replaces the info bar), aforementioned issue tracker, new polling system, non-fluid, media-query based stream area, pirate bay proxy, better social media integration, and gigantic improvements to blogging, commenting and editing site content, due to the new blog system. The biggest of all, however, is probably the switch from Livestream to Twitch. Tell me what you think about twitch! I’m going to be trailing it for the next week or so, if it really doesn’t suit us then we will be switching back to livestream. But I really hope it does.

ALL of our current streamers should have received an email with a stream key that’ll let you broadcast to our Twitch channel. Make sure you check the email inbox that’s currently connected to your Livestream account. With the WordPress account you also have, you should also be able to author news posts, Doddskipedia entries and add a bio for yourself to the ‘about’ page, which I would recommend.

Try out some of the new features! Switch the theme! Resize the window and see what happens! Go nuts, really. If you’re really mad you can try connecting to our chat with an IRC client.

Finally, I’d like to thank Hexler and IronCladLou many many times. You can thank Hexler for the awesome illustrations that adorn the various pages. He seems to be a perfectionist in the same way Valve are. Mostly in a good way! You can thank IronCladLou for the site not looking like garbage, he was the person who convinced me to move away from my original (terrible) mockups, contributed a lot to the current design (particularly in the typography department) and gave us the lovely teacup logo that I now worship. You can find them both credited in the footer, and in humans.txt.

Oh, and don’t miss our podcast recording! This Sunday, the 9th of September, 4PM UK time, 11AM eastern US time, 8AM western US time, 5 in most of Europe (according to wolfram alpha).

Love, Cats

Lou

Why the dead dove? Why must the GLA have such a sobering memento mori? :(

Anyway, site looks baller. Hexler’s illustrations are splendid. If I had to nitpick (I do obviously), I’d suggest putting a bit more of a gutter between the blog post area and the right-hand nav, as well as more space between the top nav and the content area (on texty pages, not the main page). And the illustrations might be a bit too big or something, I can’t decide.

Great job, cats.

On September 5, 2012 at 8:26 pm

Catsman

Hey. You clicked it. It said dead dove. Don’t click a link that says dead dove if you don’t wanna see a dead dove, man.

Anyway, I will note your feedback and probably address these issues in future updates. I have a good track record of doing that, as you can probably tell from how fast I fixed the off-center ‘i’ on GLA4’s navigation.

On September 5, 2012 at 10:08 pm

ZMansJams, Jammy, Space Jams, Semen, Smajsnamz, ZedMansJams, and uhhh I'm forgetting a few :

I like the umm dark button. :D I do not enjoy the dead dove button based upon Lou’s experience. I like my turtle better see!!! http://i.imgur.com/jjkTO.jpg I also like the button for fullscreen mode since in the old GLA i had to pop out the chat and alt tab from full screen like this http://i.imgur.com/Cpqm6.jpg I like that I can talk to people from the GLA. I like ummmmmmm the fact I can give feedback about what I like. I miss my diary though. I LIKE THE GLA! <3

Love, ZMans

On September 6, 2012 at 5:52 am

Catsman

Hey Zmans. I modded you in the chat, so hopefully that should work better for you now. If you resize this window until it’s smaller than about 500px then it should turn into just the chat.

Also, make sure to check your email because it has the key that’ll let you stream on twitch.tv.

Love, Catszman

On September 6, 2012 at 1:16 pm

Seanie

When i clicked the dead dove i didn’t know what i expected.

Also catsman, GLA5 dark mode is HNNNNG

On September 6, 2012 at 2:02 pm

Angry Scotsman

I’m loving the new design. I’d love to contribute again.

On September 6, 2012 at 11:40 pm

Catsman

The podcast records this sunday at 4, if you’re around. Last time you joined I think it was in that akward-first-few-episodes phase that most podcasts go through, but we’ve actually picked up quite a bit of steam. I’m sure your presence would be most welcome there.

On that note, seeing as migrating the mod team was basically a case of copy-pasting into a regex document, you may well have recieved a twitch.tv invite from GLA. Although perhaps not to your current email account. Most people seem to love twitch, the video quality is higher, the chat is less buggy and it has built-in follow functionality and better discoverability, which means it scales down to small, personal channels (like Shiny’s) really well.

Also, did the bug in Opera fix itself? I’ve picked up opera and had a look, but I’ve been unable to replicate it.

On September 7, 2012 at 1:14 am

Seanie

I cant seem to click the links in the first half of the news feed, i can go down to episode 9 of the podcast but above that it wont work except the headers.

On September 7, 2012 at 8:14 am

Catsman

Cannot seem to replicate the issue. If you’re reporting a bug, please file it in the issue tracker (it functions as a todo list for me, so I don’t forget when the next blog post is up I don’t forget about it). It would also be handy if you could tell your browser\version\os, etc.

I DID recently fix an alignment bug below the polling widget, it closed an extra div when you had voted compared to when you hadn’t. But that sounds like it shouldn’t have anything to do with your issue.

On September 7, 2012 at 4:21 pm

Seanie

Welp its fine now, once again thanks for the site

On September 8, 2012 at 7:00 am