Welcome to the new and improved Kazamatsuri.org! We're calling this version 2.0. I've been working on this for the last month or two, but the wait is finally over! A big thank you to @Uppfinnarn for once again making this all possible.
The blog has moved on from WordPress, and we are now running on the Ghost blogging platform instead. From a writing and development perspective, this platform is a lot nicer and easier to use, compared to WordPress which was quite a mess. The look of the site has changed quite a lot from what it used to be, with a grid-based front page displaying all of our articles instead of a long, scrolling column of every complete blog post. It's much easier to see all of our content at a glance. Also, you may notice the new navbar has some noteworthy additions, namely the 'Key Games' dropdown. If you mouse over it, you'll find a bunch of information pages describing all of Key's works in great detail! Inside you'll find a general introduction to each of Key's games, information on the history of the franchise, the format of the game, how to run it in English and where to buy it. There's also a 'What is Key?' page to introduce beginners to the world of Key. I've been spending a lot of time on these pages, gathering resources with the help of the community to provide you all with helpful information. I hope these pages might come in handy when you want to introduce Key's games to a friend. We hope you appreciate the hard work that's been put into completing them for you!
With that said, we'd like to hear your thoughts on the new-look Kazamatsuri.org. Love it? Tell us! Hate it? Please give us constructive feedback of what you think we might be able to change in order to make you love it. We want to hear what you think, good and bad. Please leave your feedback in this post's topic; let's open up a discussion about the changes. We look forward to hearing from you!
I like the new design, it looks cool and everything but what I find … a bit annoying is that the topics are sort from left to right. I didnt mind the previous Kaza web, that had bigger posts but was from top to bottom.
But you can say this is a really nice way to shorten in up so more topics can be shown at the same time.
Pople who are new to the web may be lost in what is new and what is an older post. Even tho under each post are infos, when they were posted (imo).
Anyways, I still love how it looks and am looking forward how it will look in the future!
“providing a sense of mystery, and whimsical atmosphere which bring out the fantastical” A whimsical atmosphere, surely?
“Visual novels are a type of video game, often descrived as” Described
“their primary genre of focus being nakige; a term when translated means ‘crying game’.” A term that when translated.
“A typical Key plot follows the formula of a comdic start,” comedic.
“Key’s three co-founders originally worked together in under the brand Tactics.” No “in.”
“while the latter chapters was more story-focused.” Were, not was.
“In 2010 Key followed up on Little Busters! with another spin-off sequel starring the titular character, Kud Wafter.” Structure is off. Makes it sound like Kud Wafter is the name of the “titular character.” If people didn’t know who Kud was, this sentence would be very confusing.
“The following year in 2012.” You don’t need a “in 2012” there.
“It’s worth nothing that none of the games except Little Busters! are fully supported by English patches.” I think it’s worth something~
Oh, and this image on the Kanon page is very confusing. Why does Air show up?
It’s different. But I figure the front page of a website should show you, at a glance, everything the website has to offer. Having to scroll all the way down to see new posts seems like such a chore. This new design lets you see everything much easier.
I think the reason why I don’t like it is that I have a hard time figuring out which exactly is the latest article.
But eh, probably just a personal issue I have, no need to worry about it.
I do like this layout a lot more, I think the way that you’re not immediately thrown into an article is a good way of getting people to decide on what they want to see on the website rather than it almost being like “hey here’s the latest article, read it.”. I think this’ll probably mean that people will come for the articles, but also be drawn towards the bar at the top and may look at the forum and information pages.
Just noticed a minor thing, it would be better if clicking the image for a post on the homepage brought you to the article that it’s in, rather than bringing you to the image file.
Scratch that. It’s not an issue with the theme. It’s basically pulling the images directly from the posts, and it was the images that were linking to themselves. I fixed it so they’re not linking to anything.
WHAT I COULD DO is make an effort to make the first image of every post link to the post itself. Would people like that, or prefer if they didn’t link at all, and click on the titles instead?
I understand what you’re saying, but does the order things were posted really matter as much as you think it does? I don’t think the average user will care what order things were posted in.