Before talking about my proposal about the future structure of Insert Coin, I want first to tell you what this blog is not about. This blog is not about the name, the mascot or the art design, this blog is about the structure and function. The other stuff is less important and more argumentative and therefore it will come in the next blog.

Structure
So now it is time to start talking about the structure. I made a mock up, to show you guys the structure. Remember it is structure and function and not about the art and title.

Behold, don’t mind the spelling mistakes

The tabs are below the title for fast access. If you want to go directly to the forum it would be annoying to always scrolling down. Retro Leo is for retro games, editorials will be blogs, reviews are reviews, forums are forums, and postbox is where you check you PMs. We can increase or decrease the number of tabs, or the might not be tabs at all, but the point is that you can reach everything fast and therefore it should be below the title.

Updating
The front page is divided in 3 parts: the headline, the photo part and the other news. The paper updating goes like this.

Because the current system works very well, I tried to keep it the system of updating as close as the current one as possible. The updating will work the same way, but with one key difference.

Updating as it is now

When the updater decides that the news is big, he shall have to fill in an extra 3 paragraphs. The first paragraph shall be the news condensed into one paragraph and the rest is extra info. The first paragraph must be filled in and the other two can be replaced by pictures if you just can’t give any extra info or if you are a lazy sod.

The structure of the head line, the 2nd and the 3rd paragraph are not mandatory, and can be replaced by pictures.

Now here comes the cool part: when a new big news update is done, it will take the place of the previous headline. The headline will drop to the other news and will have only the title and the first paragraph. This is why the first paragraph must always be filled in, because it will fall below when other big news takes its place. When clicking on the headline, you will still be able to read the 3 paragraphs.

Here you can see clearly that the drop from headline to the other news

The cool part is that the layout does not need to be changed every time you post headline news, you fill in the 3 paragraphs and the front page will automatically change. No editor is needed. That’s why the strict 3 paragraphs rule is enforced otherwise we have to fit the stuff in there, every time some one decides to do something differently. I have chosen 3 paragraphs, because 2 paragraphs are to low to fill the entire width of the page and 4 and higher is too much work.  For the other news only 3 news items are shown, but we could lengthen them it to show 6, 9, and so on, by lengthening the page length.

About the big news, well we could do it like now, and only consider something big when it is really big, or we can decide to post one or two most important news updates per day. This is open to discussion, but it changes nothing in the way we update, only the frequency of the big news updates.

GG weekly
Some people like the aggregate news gathering and that functionality will not change. To the left of the mock up we have the news that is not deemed as important as the bigger news. These shall work exactly like GG weekly. The newest news is up and the older news is below, just as it is now on the front page. By clicking on the tab “show all news” you will be taken to a page with all the aggregated news.

The aggregated news will give you the option to order the news by day (like now), by console or other ways. It shall look like a job vacancy page in a newspaper. And it will have option of encircling news that you want to read later or crossing it out if you are not interested. You like you would do when looking for a job.

This guy in encircling things he is interested in

The updates will be done the exactly the same way as they are now, the only difference is when posting big news, than you have to fill in 3 paragraphs.

There will still be a place to comment on the new GG weekly place. This will give us an opportunity to talk about the news without opening a topic in the forum for every little piece of news.

Photo Part
This is the middle part of the front page. This is the photo part. Are there some screenshot(s) everybody has to see, than put them here. Or maybe there is a funny picture of gif of Cammy, Miyamoto or Ravi Drums, you can put them on the front page. You can put 1 big one or multiple smaller ones.

Archive
After some days a news update or pictures shall not be shown on the front page anymore, for this we need an archive, so that you might find it again. Something like we already have for GG weekly.

Summary
The front page newspaper will replace our current front page and GG weekly shall look like a job vacancy page. All the other things like blogs and reviews will have a newspaper like design in letter type and paragraphs.

Future
The next step is to choose a title and mascot/symbol (like the globe in daily planet). And we need also to choose what newspaper we shall homage. For instance New York Times will mean that the title, letter type and spacing will be exactly the same as they are in the real newspaper.

For no we will have only one front page and one GG weekly page, but we could easily do more in the future. But this is a good start.

Comments
I tried to make an idea that shall make all of us happy. Did I succeed? Did I forget something? You want to do something differently? Let me know! I shall edit this blog as we go.

-END-

Alright I'll stop with the magazine thing. This format looks alright. Though it just doesn't scream "hardcore" or "awesome" or "niche" to me for some reason.

Designwise that mockup could and should change, the news feed bar needs less prominance, we need more space for more stories etc. Pretty good though.

We should avoid tagging features with our user names (pot here calling kettle) unless it's like the name of a series of editorials. For instance the Geek Report. Or whatever.

Editorials need to be more than just blogs. There is a difference between a personal blog and an article written as an editorial or opinion piece for a magazine or website. Editorials would essentially be the features of our site. Blogs would be personal every day stuff.

Great idea on the updating process.
I would have between 4 and 6 stories viewable in full on the front page and the height of the front page double and scrollable.

Also there is no mention of satirising the headlines?

I really disagree with keeping gg weekly. I think we need to scrap it and focus on re-writing a few stories ourselves. It's too much effort for very little reward at the moment.

I think forums are a top priority too.

@Punk
I does not scream anything yet, we have only the structure now.

@Foolz
Yes it looks plain now, but you are correct this will change

@GG
More space for stories means that we need a bigger headline. This means that we need to do much more work. We can make it longer and have more pictures, but need a normalized structure unless, you want to have an editor that places articles.

About the prominence of news feed bar, this is only a structure, the actual art we can make it bigger, smaller, shorter, etc.

Agreed only used it as a GG weekly for an example, it shall have another name. All these stuff shall have another name.

Good point we can seperate blogs from editorials and satirising the headlines, we do that already don't we?

GG weekly should stay, because many people want it to stay. It would be a shame to remove it.

GG you are correct this is a presentational change. The only difference is the frontpage. But look at the bigger picture. One page will become 2, 2 will become 4 and eventually we have a full featured newspaper.

Hopefully we will get more members and we can change our organisation to allow full editorials, editors and stuff, but for now this is a good compromise.

Do not underestimate GG weekly. No one reads it all, but some people read different thing than other people. Beaver likes Zelda speculation and Raven likes hamsters and Dora.

I LOVE it, DO IT.

@ Raven
Silence, Dora lover

@Vader
No YOU DO IT

@Bugs
Yes we are a news collecting site, this is a clean up, with a niece front page. It will start as a front page, but it can grow. The news gathering is already fine, but just need to make it prettier.

The essential differences are: the frontpage (we have to type out the news now) and the forums. The rest is newspaper-like look.

Of course GG this is only the first step. Like I said in the previous blog, end goal is a fully featured electronic newspaper, trophy wives for us and poolboys for Leo.

chinese proverb: A 1000 miles jouney start with a teleportation technique (or a single step for you puny mortals)

I propose an alternate solution for GG Weekly: open it to public use.  People can post news if they find it.  No schedules, no responsibility.  It won't be as clean, and those with the power can mod if they see something.  It would keep the format which I think is rather organized and together and work as a gathering for news, even if it would ultimately be less than otherwise.

I'll reiterate the problem with the magazine angle because it applies to the news format as well: The more images there are, the more difficult it is to automate.  As soon as you start adding pictures to the page, you have manage how that is added, how large it is, how the content wraps around it.  It's a mess.  Sure the picture in the example is a good size, but will you keep having a good picture the same size or at least proportions?

Also, just like the news, we're taking it from other sites.  This is why I like the satirical angle.  Photoshop images, ridiculous headlines.  It makes us unique, it gives articles a point, and it keeps us from getting too serious.

The form for adding to GG Weekly was designed specifically for GG Weekly.  It would be entirely different for an article, and not just an addendum.  More likely is to use the WYSIWYG editor with a few extras.  I can code it to split into columns if necessary, that won't be difficult.

And as not mentioned here, is the editorial process.  Writers should submit to a editor who edits and posts the articles for the week, then submits the front page to go live when it's all set.

Looks alright.