Blog stories

We're well into the fourth month now, after the great Pinside.com redesign of April 2008 and thinks have fallen a little silent on our end. Of course we have been monitoring the site and fixing small bugs (some of which have been reported by you, thanks for that!). But then, inevitably, other work came round and before we knew it we had not more than one hour, maybe two, per week to spend on the Pinside.

You see, as much as wel love maintaining and building cool new features for the Pinside, money needs to be made as well. We can't live on silver balls alone! Martijn and I just started our own webdesign firm and we're trying to get some cool projects. But unfortunately, any time spent on those is time not spent on the Pinside. » Click here to read more...

After a whole lotta work we introduce a new feature in the site's Top 100 section. The "Bang for your Buck" list! Go on, take a look!

So what is this list all about?  How does it come to be? Read on! » Click here to read more...

Wow! After launching last thursday, a lot has already happened to the site. As visitors old and new came in (I keep trying to picture their faces as they come in and discover the new look) and search spiders crawled to index the new pages, the long and tedious (and very technical) process of optimalization set in.

I won't bore you with all the technicalities, but launching a site redesign like we did with the Pinside is a huge challenge. And after the launch you inevitably discover stuff that isn't supposed to happen. On a test system, where it's just you on the site, these bugs won't always surface, but as soon as the crowds come in, you'll notice bad performing pages all over the place! Databases squeeking, webservers grinding... Aaargh! » Click here to read more...

Ah, a new feature! Always good to hear, right? This time it's a new tab in the pinsiders section. This tab, called ratings, shows the users personal top X (where X is the amount of pinball machines that the user has rated).

So, for instance, to check out my ratings, go here: » Click here to read more...

Knock, knock... Hello there! You're still with us?

If you're a regular visitor to the Pinside your first reaction might have been 'Yikes! What's that?' when you visited your favorite pinball hangout this morning. Well, I can't blame you, as actually quite a bit has changed. We administrators figured that after almost 8 years the Pinside could do with some freshing up. So we decided to clean out the attic, to repaint the walls and to expand the living room a bit. Giving the Pinside a fresh, new look and some interesting new features. » Click here to read more...