Improvements for games.on.net: better file browsing, faster forums, and more

As we head into Christmas, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to iron out more and more bugs and improve the way we do things around here at games.on.net.

Today we’ve very proud to announce that we’ve rolled out a major release from our development environment — here’s some of the things you’ll notice around the place.

General changes:

• The site has a new favicon, with the old legacy icon finally removed
• A bunch of very shameful spelling errors in static files cleansed and purged

News and comments system:

• Simple bbCode has now been added to the news comments system – you can use [b], [i], [img] and more.
• The news article search function has also been drastically overhauled to return far more relevant results.
• In case you missed it, we’ve entered into a partnership with Green Man Gaming, to give you the best possible prices!

File library changes:

• Application pages have been completely reworked: full app descriptions are back along with information on Developers, Publishers, File Types and Platforms
• Featured file content is now shown at the top of the File Library, highlighting the most popular content
• File filters return: see the latest Client Files, Demos, Full Clients, Media, Mods and more with a single click
• File search has been drastically improved and can be combined with platform searches: for example, “Application Name: Metal Gear Platform: PS3″ will return results matching both filters.
• Our file and application pages now include a handy link to search for that content on Green Man Gaming with one click.
• Video on demand – streaming content has now returned! It doesn’t suit everyone to download a 892.95 MB file like the Far Cry 3 Launch Trailer from our library. So to meet this need the file download pages now feature an HD stream (if one is available) for our members. You can also quickly copy and paste the [gonvideo] tag to use this content on our community forum or in HTML5 for a personal website.

Forum and Community:

• We have removed the words ‘view topic’ and ‘view forum’ from page titles, reducing clutter and making bookmarks easier to read
• Ever forgotten your username, but are absolutely certain you’ve registered? And the site tells you your email is already used? Well, you don’t have to fill out the contact form any longer: we’ve now got a simple automated system for you to request a new password along with your username by submitting your email address.
• Topic load speed has been drastically increased. We have heard your cries and are wiping away those tears with a number of backend improvements to decrease the page load time when reading topics in our community forum.

There’s more miscellaneous changes around the place, but that’s most of it! If you spot any problems, please let us know.