New News and Comments System

Shur’tugal is happy to announce our transition to our new news viewing and comment system, hand coded by our very own Robert Cox over the past several months. The new system is a transition over from our outdated news posting and commenting system to a fresher, easier-to-work with system. A full list and explanation of our changes comes after the jump.

Update: Comments should now be shown in the correct order (newest at the top, now).The new system is optimized for better news reporting and commenting performance. The first change we had in mind was to solve the current problem with the comments – they’re outdated and they’re inconvenient. We made a number of changes to rectify this, including:

– The comment box no longer pops up! Instead, comments are found at the bottom of the full news page (you are brought there when you click on “comments!” and display 25 per page
– Our comments system now requires a login in order to comment. Registering is free, quick and easy and only requires a valid email address to confirm that you’re not a spam bot and indeed are a human being. This will eliminate any and all spam and will also prevent people from impersonating others.

Other changes to our system include:

– News displayed on the home page now looks a bit different. We’ve added a nifty calendar graphic which changes color and title per month, displaying the date on which the news item was posted in the middle.
– Most news stories will now cut off after the first paragraph, prompting you to click either the news title, the “[…]” link, or the “Continue reading…” link to continue reading the story if interested. This enables us to show more headlines above the page fold (where you have to start scrolling down)

Future additions to the system will include categories and tags, as well as future improvements to the Shur’tugal registration (allowing you to do more, such as signing up for our newsletter, entering contests and more). Big thanks goes to Robert for all of the effort he put in to developing this system for the website!

Please feel free to use the comments on this news post to report any problems or feedback you have with the new system.