Welcome to Gamer's Guide to Life.com, old and new friends alike; a comfortable place where all the latest and best gaming editorial is delivered to you by games journalists who not only care about their readers, but are primarily gamers themselves, well accustomed to the vast wastelands of gaming. It goes without saying that we want GGTL to be a place where all feel welcome, the site which you visit first in the morning and last before going to bed. Which is why we felt it necessary to redesign.

As you're reading this, look about the page a little. Notice the small differences to our previous design? If you don't, then I implore you to go for an eye-test, because GGTLv5 has finally launched with a new design, new features, new writers and a new way of working. I'm hoping this post will give you some idea of what's new, what's the same and what we're particularly proud of.

New navigation and search

The new navigation bar makes it ridiculously simple for you to find exactly what you want to read on Gamer's Guide to Life.com. The first links you'll see are the stalwarts which you'll see on most gaming sites, providing you with speedy access to our latest reviews, previews, features, analysis and more.

Not only that, but hover over the [...] at the end of the navbar and you'll be greeted with a dropdown menu which provides you with access to all our other articles by either a specific platform or writer. It's a big addition to the site which we hope will make the site much easier to navigate.

Featured articles

With GGTLv5, it's simple to find the best of what we publish at a glance. With our new featured articles section at the top of the homepage, you'll be greeted upon arrival with links and short descriptions of three of our latest and greatest pieces of content. Never miss an interesting, informative and entertaining read again with this new function.

From across the network

It's also simple with our new design to access the best and latest content from across the Gamer's Guide to Life Network. Take a glance at the 'From our other sites' module at the side of the featured articles and you'll be able to skim over and, should you want to, read the latest gaming news from our news arm, SystemLink, as well as all the other content from across the network.

The latest review scores

Get the lowdown on which games are hot and which are... well, not, with our at-a-glance 'Recent review scores' module. Our five most recent reviews will be listed, along with their respective scores out of ten. To get a more in-depth idea of what the game was like, click the title for our full written review. It's a simple and easy new way for you to know exactly what you want to about the latest games.

Top commenters

Whilst we love reading and responding to the comments you leave on our articles, we understand that commenting is usually a very unrewarding process. As such, we've installed a new 'top commenters' section which will display your name if you're one of our most regular commenters, giving you some reward for your comments.

Twitter integration

Now with added Twitteriness! Get the latest on everything that goes on in the lives of the GGTL team, the teams of all our networked sites and from some specially-selected friends of GGTL with our animated Twitter module in the sidebar. Look here for news on new and upcoming things on GGTL and the GGTL universe, and don't forget to follow us all!

Friends of GGTL

Some friends of Gamer's Guide to Life.com, who we believe will make your day of games reading just that little bit brighter. Specially chosen for their high-quality and entertaining content as well as their general friendliness, we'd urge you to visit as many of their sites as you possibly can, but remember to tell them that we sent you.

New writers

With our new design and era come new staff members, brought on-board to keep things fresh, exciting and vibrant. Look out for all new content from Andrew Whipple III, our new U.S. Region Editor. New contributors James Love and Jason Evangelho both bring invaluable experience in games journalism to the team and I'm sure that you'll be enjoying some fantastic original content from them soon. And, as ever, our regular writers and editors will be churning out content on everything from 3D in games, to the Taliban, to Danish children's toys. You'll understand when you read the utterly fantastic articles.


I do hope that everything with GGTLv5 is to your liking, and that you'll enjoy your time here more than you ever did. We're constantly working solidly behind-the-scenes to make GGTL the best it can be, and we appreciate our readership's constant support, loyalty and comments (however insulting or NSFW they may be). As ever, you can contact any of the team via their email addresses, which can be found in the 'GGTL Team' module on the side of the site.

Labels: Gamer's Guide to Life, GGTL5, Linford Butler, New Features, New Layout, Writer's note

Confirmed bugs with the new GGTL layout:

Lack of compatibility with the PlayStation3 web browser
Some aspects of the new layout are broken in the PlayStation3 web browser. We're working on making the site fully compatible with the console's browser, but this will take time. In the meantime, we recommend you use GGTL through a desktop web browser on PC, such as Firefox 3.

Lack of full compatibility in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
PNG images with alpha transparency show with a light blue background. The 'jump to top' button is not correctly placed and does not move when the page is scrolled, as it should. Sidebars are placed underneath main content, instead of at the side, as they should be. We recommend upgrading to a later version of IE (IE7 or IE8), or downloading and using Firefox 3.

Image sizes on older posts are smaller and are oddly placed
This is due to the dimensions of the old GGTL layout. We are currently attempting to resize images on the more recent posts which are experiencing this problem, to make your GGTL experience more fluid and easy. Bear with us while we resize these images.

Please bear with us while we rectify these problems. In the meantime, we suggest you use Firefox 3 from Mozilla, which GGTL is optimized for. It is available free from the Mozilla website.

If you encounter any more problems, please comment on this post and we will try to fix them for you.

Linford

Labels: New Layout

Well, I'm proud to officially announce the launch of our new GGTL layout! There's still a few bugs to iron out, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem for you. Enjoy, and keep us posted if you find anything that's niggly via the comments form on this post.

Linford

Labels: New colours, New Features, New Layout