Ch-ch-ch-changes…

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Hey all you Ibyers!

Hope you’re all enjoying the start of the new year!  A new year means new beginnings and fresh starts.  One big change has been the updated look and feel of the site, which we launched last night!

We’re pretty excited, as the redesign was something we’ve been wanting to do for awhile now.  When we first started the site, it looked totally different from where it is today, and as we grew, we had to quickly add new features on.  Over time, some things got a little disorganized (like your typical bedroom).  We quickly realized (particularly with your feedback) that there were quite a few things that could be improved on.  Here are some of the key things we aimed to make better:

1. Make the site easier to understand

We’ve cleaned up the layout of our welcome page to make things easier to take in, whether they are special competitions, MVP profiles, or special events on the site.  On the competition page itself, we’ve hidden extraneous information that, while important, is not always needed.  For a fresh-faced pee-wee, sometimes too much information is just too confusing.  Yet having this information easily displayed, for more experienced users, was also important.  We added a simple auto popup for entry information whenever you hover over any entry.  The video entry playbar automatically hides itself until you move your mouse.  Overall, we’ve made the site layout wider so things are less cramped (and so we can add other cool stuff later on more easily!)

2. Make it easier to discover cool entries and competitions

A lot of folks had told us that it was tough to find good competitions and entries without digging for it.  We’ve created a new competitions page where the cool stuff is highlighted.  In addition, we added new category pages, where you can more easily discover cool competitions within a category (e.g., Pets), see its leaderboard and see what people are commenting on.  On the competition page, we moved up Related Competitions and More Competitions By this User, making it easier to discover related and interesting content.

3. Make it easier to use

On the competition page, we added the scroller so that you can essentially scroll to any entry you want.  The entry information is now accessed automatically without any clicks with an automatic small popup.  Iby awards and comments are unified in a single module, while comments for the entry you are currently viewing can be loaded with a single click on the “This Entry” tab.

There are quite a few other things here and there that you may notice.  Photo and video entries should look a little cleaner, at proper dimensions and they should load more quickly, even if you click between many entries.  The other little things you will discover along the way as well.

We’re really excited about the changes and what we have in store for you down the road this year.  Meanwhile, keep on giving us your great feedback (yes, we do read all your emails!).  We’ve already read quite a few since the redesign launched.  If you do see any errors, strange things, or of course, just have any suggestions on making this new look better, please do let us know!

Peace,

Team IBY

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