Welcome to the new Kotaku! After a good couple of months of graft from Allure Media’s tech giants Ben White and Rob Hussey, we’re finally dropping the bomb. Kotaku memberships. We’ve got it. The ability to edit your comments. BOOM. We’ve also got it. User profiles? Hell yes. We have it. Slightly updated fonts you probably won’t notice? DAMN RIGHT IT’S ALL HERE FOLKS.
First off I want to give massive props to Ben and Rob for all the extra hours they’ve put in getting this all together.
[Fist bumps Rob and Ben]
Okay, now that’s out of the way — let’s to get to the nitty gritty.
Membership
Okay, first off, memberships.
It is now possible for you guys and girls to create proper memberships and log in to Kotaku, Gizmodo and Lifehacker using one single username and password. Members will be able to edit their comments, report comments, and create user profiles with avatars and all that good stuff.
We (and by we I mean Rob) have made sure to make this whole process as streamlined as possible. Creating a user account is insanely simple: choose a username, sort out a password and get moving. You’ll barely have to move off the Kotaku page at all.
Much like Twitter, we have usernames and display names. Display names can be changed at anytime, while usernames are there for good.
For those who don’t want membership — that’s completely fine. You can still comment in exactly the same way you did before. You just won’t be able to edit your own comments.
User Profiles
The ultimate plan is to have a system where, whenever someone replies to you on a comment, you’ll be notified. The idea is to make the simple act of having a conversation on Kotaku even simpler. That’s for the near future, however.
Perhaps my favourite thing about User Profiles is the ability to go back and check out previous posts you’ve made. Here’s the crazy thing: if you register using the email you previously used before membership existed, you’ll see that all the post you’ve made using that email will now be synced to your account. Not only that — if you mistakenly used a second email, perhaps a work email, you can also sync additional emails to your account. I know, wizardry. This will work across all three sites.
I love you Ben and Rob.
You’ll also notice Newsletters and Special Offers. These are, of course, optional. We won’t be sending anything out for now, but in the near future this will become a thing.
Design
Our designer man Ben White is a perfectionist. He keeps working and complaining about the incredible stuff he does and keeps trying to do more. This is what he does.
As a result he’s made a few design tweaks. He’s changed some fonts, messed around with out carousel and put together lots of little things you might not notice at first, but it’s all done with the express purpose of making things ‘purtier’.
Again, I’d like to give a big shout out to both Ben and Rob — they’ve put a lot of effort into this and deserve a bit of love. This is the first step on a grand plan for memberships. The ultimate goal is to help make things a little easier for this great community to communicate with one another. It’s all been done with you guys and girls in mind, so please don’t be afraid to give us feedback.
Thank for listening, and enjoy!
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