o9Media

I had almost forgotten that today o9Media has been around (on Wordpress) for a full year. Of course it’s been a rough year for our beloved website, nonetheless it’s made it through a year. As I acknowledged it’s existence for 365 days I sort of stumbled in the way one might stumble when forgetting about a girlfriend’s birthday until the night before. And parallel to the present that said girlfriend would receive, I’ve given you guys a picture. I can’t quite think of anything as nostalgic as o9Media today one year ago.

Please keep in mind that this picture was taken several days after the site was released and the top is a bit cut off, but it still bears the original design. To my knowledge this is the only existing shot of the original o9Media design.

Happy Birthday big guy!

So, I’d really like to give everyone a ten page address on all that I’ve done over the past few weeks. Though, seeing as how I’ve slept maybe a solid 10-15 hours in the past three days that’s not gonna happen. I may write something more later. I may not. However, I do feel I need to give everyone a brief rundown of what’s been done.

The Home Page -
First off, you’ll notice the homepage. It’s not longer a barrage of articles and information and this and that. Some returning users may not like this, but I’ve found having a calm, easy, static page explaining o9Media off the bat is best for everyone (and should urge more readers). A feature that should be coming in the near future is a news-esque ticker combining all of the blogs’ RSS feeds. The blogs will be explained further below.

The Blogs -
This is by far the biggest change. Unlike any other time when I redesigned o9Media I never actually changed the way it functioned. Well, I did now. I’ve separated the old blog into three main categories; music, art, and tech. Each blog is located on it’s own subdomain with it’s own RSS feed and it’s own distinguishable design. As I’m writing this, the RSS feeds and the subcategories have not yet been implemented. (I’ll be doing that as soon as this has been published) So, bear in mind a few things may not be perfect from the start.

The Designs -
As stated above, each blog has a distinctive design. Why? Well, I figure if you’re going to have multiple sites within one site, you may as well make each distinguishable. Which is exactly what I had done.

Everything Else -
You’ll notice a lot of little changes here and there. Changes I don’t have the effort to analyze. Ergo, I’m just going to let you, the reader, the user explore the new o9Media. Bear in mind, this is some what of a soft open. There will be problems, of course, but with the database issues (which I may or may not explain later) I had to rush to get o9Media v2 up. Here it is! I’m gonna go nap for about six days.

Thoughts?

I’m going to put it blatantly, I am an asshole. There’s no other word for it. Sure, what I did was wrong, but I got some good laughs out of it, that and we didn’t have any article to publish yesterday. But, hey, every website on the face of the earth did a prank. Some of the best of the day were the CollegeHumor prank (even though it wasn’t that thorough) and the Legend of Zelda trailer.

Also, to all the staff, I changed your passwords so nobody could be shifty and get back in… So, just change it back. Sorry XD. Anyways, places to go and articles to write. The moral? Don’t trust the internet, it’s a series of shifty tubes.

Dude! What happened?!
The o9Media you had grown to love is now gone. But don’t fret! You’ll be happy to know that under this slick new design Wordpress and SMF are powering the site. Many changes have been made since you last came — Or, this could be your first time here… Who knows?

So, you just redesigned it? Big whoop.
Don’t be too sure of yourself. We’ve restructured the staff system, and recruited a writing team. In other words, we’ll be producing a lot more blogs. Hopefully, at least one every other day.

Blogs of…?
Stuff you’ve never heard about.

This interests me, why?
…Let me rephrase myself. Our staff isn’t just in charge of writing. We spend quite a bit of time finding internet gems, researching, and whatnot. We have several correspondents exploring music, the arts, and the “internetz.”

Wow, anything else I should know about?
Actually, yes. We have community forums, for the users to discuss just about anything. But really, to get the full effect of o9Media, I recommend browsing around, find what sparks your attention.

Welcome one and all to o9Media 3.0!