The All New Vooks is here – Find out what’s new!

It’s out with the old and in with the new! Welcome to the new site loyal Nintendo fan! If you havent already noticed, were calling ourselves Vooks now – no .net anymore. We thought the change would be better because… well, thats what everyone calls us.

You may not see them all but there is over 300 changes to the way the site works and runs. We thought we’d run through ten of the biggest and best changes to the new Vooks. Remember, if you find anything wrong drop us a line! 1. New Design
Perhaps most obvious, and number one on the list for sure, is our renewed site design. As Im sure most of you can see, the design of the site has been improved drastically compared with the old design, which was getting very tired as it had served the community for just under 3 years. It should be made known that it was the longest we’ve ever kept one design for. The changes are not just pretty aesthetics; the sites navigation has been refined without changing too much, allowing lots of new features to be included. Also youll notice it looks a hell of a lot better with a new clean design sporting bigger, easier-to-read information and much more structural consistency. Complimentary to the new and improved design comes new code, so our pages load more quickly even with added features.

We hope that you like the new design as much as we do as weve had a good 3 months to look at it and its really grown on us. If however you do notice anything wrong with it though, drop us a line.

2. Brand New ‘Whoson’
Let’s face it, finding your mates online with WFC is a pain in the butt. You dont know what game they are playing or even if they are playing at all. While our old Whoson system worked all right, we have improved it a lot.

Not only can you tell when someone is on by visiting the site but you can keep tabs even when you’re not on the site. With the new widget, you can tell whenever someone is on just by looking at your desktop (more on that later).

When using the Widget, all you have do is click on the chat icon on the forum, set your status to the game you’re playing, and not only can you chat in real time with everyone else playing in the Vooks Community, you can tell what they are playing. Its easy and open for all members.

3. Release Date Calendar
Other countries have it easy getting release dates pinned down accurately. However for Australian releases this is sufficiently harder, a fact quite noticeable when it comes to Nintendo games. This is why we have made a new Release Date Calendar. Not only can you browse it and check whats coming out for a full 6 months in advance, but you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for the calendar as well, with new options to give you access to the information you want. What if youre not interested in DS games? Well then, just subscribe to the Wii calendar! You can subscribe to as many or as few of the RSS feeds as you want and then when the Calendar is updated youll know about it. On every page of the site there is a section of the right hand side of the page so you can see whats coming out from any location on Vooks.

4. Widget
It’s not always possible or convenient to visit the site to see whats new — as you may be doing school study or be at work — but thats where the Vooks Widget comes in handy. Dubbed V-Widget for short, this little downloadable app allows you to check on the latest news of the site and to see who is playing online at any given time with everything updated in real time. To use our Widget all you have to do is install the Yahoo Widgets program available here, download our Widget here and youre as good as done. The Widget works on any Internet connection and is compatible with nearly every PC. The V-Widget is sexily styled in either Black or White.

5. Integration of the Forums
While the V-Space has been a around for some time, it’s now been moved to the top of the site; our Vooks is now yours when you are logged in. Members can keep track of Private messages, log in and out, and even check out their avatar display. Also new are the latest forum topics, so you can see whats being discussed from any page on the site as well. It may be small but its a useful tool to improve the Vooks experience.

6. Upgraded Search Engine
Now while this is not one of the biggest things in the world, the search for the site has been completely reworked allowing you to search content all over Vooks including all types of information, such as blog posts, forum posts, news articles and reviews from our search portal. Our old search was next to useless so Im sure youll find this new feature quite useful. Check it out here.

7. Signature Tags
This is a feature you can use on any site, not just Vooks. Simply input your signature tag into your message board signature and whenever you utilise our Whoson System minutes later your signature, wherever it may be, will update to tell your friends that you are playing a game and more specifically what game you are playing. Its just another way the Whoson system allows you to set up games more quickly and easily with fellow Vooks users.

8. Wiki Play Guide
We have a pretty supportive community around here and there is no better way to show your support and help out your fellow gamers out than to write a Play Guide or FAQ with other community members. Pick a game and then either in a lone effort or a large support team, you can work on the project, start communication and write an informative guide for stuck gamers. The Wiki is open to all and any member of the Vooks community can contribute.

The Wiki will open later on this week

9. Consistency
This is moving away from features of the site now and more to how were working the entire thing. While the features, looks and works are getting an overhaul, we thought we would give ourselves one too. No, we’re not doing the Biggest Loser but we’re working together to make the sites writing and style both of a higher quality and more consistent. We’ve developed style guides, which will help reviewers and writers to write at a higher level and more consistently. All staff members are striving to improve themselves and we hope with our changes behind the scenes youll notice and appreciate the difference.

10. Future
So the new site is all up and running, time for a break you say? Not this time. As soon as the site is launched we’ll spending the next month or so correcting and tweaking it based on your feedback and any errors we may come across, and after that it’s Wii time as we move onto providing you the best launch coverage for the Wii down under. Once the Wii launch is out of the way, we begin work on more upgrades to the site, 2 of which have been requested many times and only now can we bring it to you.

Before I close up this rundown I’d like to thank everyone who helped make the new site, from the Whoson to the Calendar, to the Wiki and everything else I couldnt have done without your help. Also thanks to the readers for their support and feedback along the way. I know we’ve been teasing this for a while but its finally here.

Thanks everyone and enjoy,

VOOK