We've been quiet as mice for the past few weeks but with very good reason. We've been busy, busy, busy! Busy with what you ask? Watching Game of Thrones, drinking beer and playing Portal 2? Hey those are perfectly valid things to do right now but that's not what we've been up to...

Its crunch time here at WWG and a year of picking away at clandestine projects is finally coming to a head. In the not too distant future we'll be cracking open the door to a new home for you with substantial changes both in terms of enhancing your shopping experience and improving the larger community experience. A great deal of thought was given to making the hobby more approachable and we hope that these changes will stimulate what we feel is a market that hasn't yet truly found its feet.

We've also been extremely fortunate in welcoming Christopher Roe (the artist formerly known as Ebbles Miniatures) to the WWG family. Most of you know Chris's work and WWG has enjoyed a close relationship with him from somewhere near the beginning. I'm pleased to announce that you'll see select items from the Ebbles catalog migrating to the new storefront and hopefully new and exciting things from Chris as we move forward. Among his many talents Chris has been instrumental in helping us shape the new webstore into a fine tuned machine. I could go on about how amazing his coding skills and ideas are but I may embarrass him Suffice to say, his help and unique understanding of the market have helped us to realize many long held dreams.

Anyway, there's a lot (and I mean a lot) I'm not saying here but I think its best to leave a few surprises to the launch of the new site. If at some point in the near future the site goes down for any reason, just be aware that we are actively working on things (you can catch us on our Facebook page for updates if that does happen: http://www.facebook.com/worldworksgames ).

As always, your patience and your support are appreciated more than you know! We're just getting started

It's the most fun I've had programming in a fair while due to the challenge involved, and don't discount the amount of work you put into the presentation and appearance--that's just as important as the functionality under the hood.

-Mel

As a new user and comer to the forums I must say I have been impressed with the polish and over all functionality of the sites. -D²

(I copied and pasted the following question from a different thread because I don't like jacking other people's threads.)



Don't worry--there are 2 things I absolutely hate as a web developer: sites that break without Javascript, and gratuitous use of Flash. The only bits that need Javascript are all optional "gravy" extras, and the only place you'd see Flash is where it's just another piece of media in a product page or whatever. All core functionality is required to work without Javascript or Flash. (I run Firefox with NoScript/AdBlock Plus, and my old smartphone didn't handle Javascript or Flash very well, so I'm keenly aware of how overdependence on these 2 items can break the user experience.)



Oh, the new site hasn't gone live yet! We're still working on it.

-Mel

Thank you MEL!!

This will keep the Flash where it belongs... with the Product Video's...

too bad we don't see those more often. Love the Mars Station and the Tower of Chaos trailers... (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

edit: First Light is also top notch. (I miss them so on the new ones)

edit 2: Going down memory lane, totally forgot the hilarity of the Interior Works: Pubs and Inns with the outhouse.... absolutely brilliant!

I am so anxious of the new site! Keep up the good work behind the scenes.

As a side note, I need to start watching Game of Thrones and playing Portal 2...

Yeah with the wave of HTML5 potentially killing flash (or at least crippling it a little) I wasn't too keen on using flash on the new site.

Creating movies for model sets is something I hope we can one day return to. The truth is though, that its a fairly big time investment for that little extra and the current market is way too competitive to further slow releases with movies (as much as we loved making them).

Yea, I think we discussed this before.

And I'm sure the time vs production quality is quite a killer.

but they are awesome and a great compliment to the products.

Perhaps have Video Competitions after major releases? Prizes in the form of gift certificates for WWG product?

The Auld Grump, wait, that would involve taking pictures....

I would vote (and pay) for a video of AuldGrump roaring and stomping through a Mayhem build...

Upgrading my comment to: Looking good and sounding good, too!

Am looking forward to whatever new and shiny customer loving friendliness is coming up for the site

Well if this is not the "new' site then I am awash with anticipation to see the real new site.
-D²

Lol, yes that would be worth seeing. Also looking forward to seeing the tricks you have up your sleavs.

I am sure the new site will be awesome and I am eagerly awaiting launch day.

Like everyone else, I cannot wait to see the new site. We have experienced greatness upon walking through the WWG virtual doors, and we have come to expect it as well. I know we will all enjoy the new site because we have come to know that when you guys say something is new and improved, you deliver on that!

Should be an awesome site, looking forward to it.

Though we're pretty far along, we've still got a bit of work ahead of us on the new site. We're implementing features which take this far away from the same old boring e-store and into something VERY focused on our community and this hobby in general. Some big additions, big changes and very pleasant surprises coming your way.

Long story short, we'll likely release a few more items on the old storefront before doing the big reveal on the new. Lots of tire kicking ahead but we wanted you to know just in case we experience and bumps in the road over the next bit here.

Can't wait to share

I'm looking forward to seeing how the site could improve on it's already high quality current design. What pleases me most though is the news that some of Mel Ebbles models will soon be available through WWG. Hopefully the ones I haven't already got!

Project delayed due to feature creep - now there's a classic IT headline

I hope the testing is going well.

Not really feature creep. Those features were in the specifications from day one--it's just that this isn't a regular old cart. If it were, it'd have shipped weeks ago.

-Mel

Curioser and curioser!

p.s. Thanks for responding to my comment about Flash - there's nothing more annoying than sites that prevent users from having multiple pages open at once (my standard browsing method).

I don't mean to make it sound more curious or bizarre. It's like this:

-The easiest kind of cart setup is a basic setup for tangibles with simple shipping rules, those can be turned around very quickly and cheaply. In fact, you can pretty much get away with just using something like PayPal's default cart if you're a really small business with a low order volume. That's what I meant when I said it would have shipped weeks ago if it were that simple.

-Downloads are a lot trickier. There's not a whole lot out there that you can just take off the shelf, so to speak. Existing solutions are either expensive, poorly thought out, or otherwise just don't meet the needs of this specific market. Most digital content support is geared towards ebooks, music, or whatever, and there's a certain amount of ignorance and stupidity in the implementations I've come across. For example, don't force the customer to fish through their order history for that one download they bought 2 years ago--that's just stupid. Just give them their freaking downloads already, and make it easy for them to access their downloads quickly.

-Cart software is usually written by clueless programmers, not experienced storekeepers. There's a fundamental disconnect right there, so nearly every solution out there is just badly implemented on the admin end because programmers don't run a store for a living. It's the little things that matter, and every small gain you make in efficiency and user-friendliness pays large dividends over the long run. For example, programmers will maybe do a few sample products for testing purposes and then call it a day. When you're stuck with data entry in a production environment and you have to add hundreds of products, that's a whole different ballpark.

-Cart software is also frequently designed with a "make it do everything so it can be everything to everybody" feature set. This means, in practice, hardly anyone will ever use the whole thing all at once. That's a lot of unnecessary fat in the codebase. For example, take Joomla/Virtuemart or Magento. Massive, bloated, slow, hard to retemplate from a cold start, and you can't just dive into extending the codebase without spending valuable time just learning how to use their plugin architecture. Screw that. Give the client exactly what they need, make it do exactly what they want, and keep it lean. It's not about the developer, it's about the client, and frameworks are one of those things that favor the developer over the client and encourage laziness.

-I'm a programmer AND a storekeeper. I know how to write code, and I also know what it takes to run a store. That makes me better qualified for a project like this than somebody who can code but has never run a store in their life.

Short form: Existing solutions aren't up to the job because none of them were designed with WorldWorks or anyone else in this industry in mind. Denny had a vision of where he wanted to take things, and that was also not stuff that could readily/easily be done with off-the-shelf solutions. So, Denny dragged me out of retirement to bring his vision to life.

-Mel

Mel-
I am really looking forward to this now. Perhaps you and the rest WWG have small side business in "how to run the busisness" forming. I already like your plans to make download history sane. Anything to make life easier on the WWG end is just going to be a win for us on this end.

This is big in my business. We have a core software with many 3rd-party developers who simply do not get the industry and therefore, when they come out with a solution, they fail to realize the burden it puts on the end user (and the consultants like me implementing it).

Kudos for planning.

+1 on planning.

I work for a Dev firm as the tech. It's Db management for time and attendance software as well as biometric time clocks.

When an IT department of the client who has our software plan for server moves or installs by contacting me first, their job goes much smoother.

Planning is major but seems the least amount of effort goes there (even here where I work; frustrating), and there is so much disconnect in the tech industry from Dev's, End Users, and the techs who try to get things working.

Great job guys!!!

-D²

I wonder whether the new setup will come with unlimited downloads? The current setup (three dl's, reset with a reasonable request) seems to make unnecessary work for both sides.

This would be nice, but (IMHO) lower priority than being able to see all of your downloads without sorting through your orders. Also, even if there is still a cap on downloads, having them not expire would be a big plus.

I think you'll both be happy with what we've come up with Organizing that area in a way that just makes sense was a big priority for us.

Woohoo!

*happy dance*