The Rumor Buster

I’m sure some of you have noticed the drop-off in the semi-regular columns recently and that’s because behind the scenes we’ve been working on Rumorbuster 2.0.  Talking to a few regular readers showed that there were a few things 1.0 could use to benefit from. Foremost was space for galleries.  Compression and storage was a big issue for the old space, as was figuring what to do with photos.  Manually coding HTML pages to store them was so 1997, and many details are lost in compression.

Now with the Rumorbuster Galleries we’ve got a place to put galleries with hi-res photos.  The gallery has space for comments, rating  photos and eventually we’ll post profiles, descriptions and information.  Right now the galleries are about 1/4 done but throughout the week we’ll be uploading a few hundred more photos and we’ll continue on until we’ve finished shooting and uploading all the Super Hero Squad figures (and of course we’ve got some other small-scale heroes thrown up for good measure.)

Second, Blogger’s comment system left a lot to be desired.  Users couldn’t edit their comments and there was no way to discuss just general topics without a post started.  When there was a post on the subject, it’s only on the frontpage for a few days anyway.  So after much thought, let there be a Message Board.  Enjoy, but remember that we’re a family friendly site.  You’ll see that there are some awesome features in the message board including a place for everyone to post and rate reviews and articles, trader feedback where you can rate traders you’ve done business with and the ability to attach images to your post (no external hosting and linking!  Yay!)

Third: Shorter URL!  therumorbuster.com is quicker, faster and prettier than the old URL.

Fourth: Everything is going to be under one roof from now on.  Once we’ve brought over the archives and checklists, everything will be under one name.  No spotty service with Google Sites, no bouncing between that and Blogger.  Everything will be local, and that means we’re not slaves to whatever formalities and formats those services require (ie. no more being limited to the HTML and formatting of Google Sites.)

Now, some of you may wonder why we didn’t wait until everything was scanned, shot and brought over.  The answer: the longer we wait, the more stuff we need to bring over. More posts, more pictures, more links.  By switching over now that the framework is set up, we’ll know what needs fixing and we can carry on building with what we’ve got here rather than adding to the stuff we need to bring over.

Please send bug-reports or suggestions to clevernamehere@therumorbuster.com, or post them on the board.