News - IndieDB

462 comments by INtense! on Jan 18th, 2012

Today, the 18th of January is the day to let it be known that you oppose two bills currently before the United States Congress.

These bills, PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) have the noble goal of attempting to eliminate the theft of copyright. They propose to do this however, in a manner which will fundamentally break the internet. Imagine a world where Youtube was banned, Minecraft was stopped because a fan made a character out of blocks which loosely resembles a movie star, or ModDB.com closed because someone from the community posted something inappropriate.

These threats are real, and today we call upon our audience to make themselves heard and let members of the Senate and the House know that while we must all work together to stop piracy, eliminating our freedom of speech on the internet is not the solution.

Actions speak louder than words so please:

• Sign the Google petition.
• Educate yourself about how SOPA and PIPA work.
• Print and mail letters to your state's senators and representatives, urging them not to support this. Physical mail is harder to ignore than email. It piles up. You can find representatives' addresses here and senators' addresses here. Remember that PIPA is a Senate bill and SOPA is a House of Representatives bill.
• Call your senators and representatives on the phone and urge them not to support the bills. See above links for phone numbers or click here to get a quick list of representatives based on where you live.

Finally, to all of the sites which have taken the extremely bold move of blacking out today - we salute you.

Thanks to Explosm for the graphics used.

20 comments by Henley on Sep 15th, 2011

Back in early March 2011 at GDC, Design3 sat down with Scott and I to do a video interview on all the websites that make up the DesuraNET family.

Special thanks to the Design3 crew for taking the time to organise, record and edit this fantastic video. And yes ladies, Scott is available!

Oh look another interview with Nerd Age about ModDB and her sister sites! Nerd-age.com

25 comments by INtense! on Aug 18th, 2011

Over the past month we've deployed a ton of awesome updates to the site, figured it was about time we gave a roundup.

New hardware

About 3 months ago our DB server hit it's RAM limit and our web boxes were spiking. So we began a massive data migration onto entirely new hardware. It hasn't been without pain and a few sleepless nights, but it is finally complete. Massive thanks to Greg who is the architect behind the upgrade, he has installed a media CDN with locations in Europe, USA and Australia, separated our upload system, upgraded our PHP threading so we can push more clients than ever before and made countless other upgrades. The site should be lightning fast and will remain that way.

HTML5 videos

My favorite update has to be HTML5 video support. This means you can now watch trailers and content via your mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads which don't have flash support. This update will be followed with more, as we slowly retire our old video player. Expect our new one to eventually add HD support, have less ads and to work quickly and always.

Upload direct from Youtube

Possibly the coolest feature is the ability to upload videos directly from Youtube URLs. You just select "upload from URL", paste the Youtube link then click upload. Our system will automatically attempt to grab the best quality video available from Youtube. It isn't perfect as the good guys at Google are constantly changing the system, but it is handy when it works! Please note that we still ALWAYS advise you to upload the original high-quality video to the system. It will yield better quality output, especially when we roll out HD support.

iFrame textarea support

The textarea you post content in now allows iFrames, which means you can embed widgets and other cool features from external sites which was previously not possible.

Created a newsletter system

Previously newsletters we sent were manually coded up with no stats to track subscribers or do anything awesome. Well we've finally built in a backend system which does all of this for us. Means we can track read-rates, click-rates, bounce-rates and hopefully deliver better content to your inbox more often as a result. To subscribe check out our new newsletter page! It also opens up the possibility for teams to use the system to email press and fans, though that functionality is still yet to be fleshed out.

Integrated social buttons everywhere

While i'm not the biggest fan of slow-loading social buttons spamming basically every site on the internet, I caved in and added them to all content on the site. To make them bearable I made sure none block the page loading and the bigger buttons only show up on the most popular content. I also choose to use Addthis for their in-built analytics and smart-button ranking support. We are seeing a bump in Twitter and Facebook followers as a result, so if you are on those sites (who aint!?) fan us and we'll keep you updated. Oh and also supported the new Google+ button, so if you haven't plussed us up yet, now is the time:

ModDB:

IndieDB:

Desura:

Clear all button for updates

Our heavy users have requested this for years and it is finally here. A tiny clear all updates button, so you can reset all mod/gamewatch updates in one go, saving tons of clicks. Enjoy!

Developers can trigger sales on Desura

Our aim with all of our sites has been to make them developer driven, after all it is bloody hard to get an editor to write about your game let alone give it front-page treatment. So we want to give you control. On Desura we initially hid away a few features but are now opening them up, as we need to get better at running sales, doing bundles and all that cool stuff. Desura has a ton coming so if you are gamer give it a go (and support ModDB / IndieDB) and if you are a developer - we want to release your game.

Speaking at Freeplay

Finally for those in Melbourne, Australia - i'll be speaking at Freeplay on Sunday the 21st of August at 10:00am. Topic of the presentation is "Cheating the Golden Rule". I'll be joined by Farbs and a few other indie game developers. Stop by for a chat if you can. Here is the blurb:

14 comments by Greg on Aug 12th, 2011

Just a quick update to inform everyone who's been wondering why the site has been on the slow side over the past 48hours. We recently outgrew our database server and immediately started experiencing large load spikes.

We have just migrated to a new box, which is roughly 8 times the speed of the old one. This migration is ongoing and we expect it to complete late next week. Once it is done expect a faster and more dependable response than ever before! Appreciate your patience, and happy to provide any of the technical details of our new infrastructure should you want them!

Hopefully we can return to our 99.98% uptime record and push it up to 99.99%!

29 comments by INtense! on Aug 10th, 2011

You may have noticed a slight change on the site over the past 24hours, which is due to us introducing GameRevolution as our new marketters. These guys have been in the business for ages, represent Destructoid among others and shall be responsible for all ads and brands you see integrated on ModDB & IndieDB.

While ads are typically frowned upon, I'm a believer that ads which are relevant and compliment the sites content (without getting in the way, playing unexpected music or flashing) are a good thing. After all without them we wouldn't be able to run ModDB & IndieDB, and fulfil our aims of creating a developer driven community where finding new fans doesn't require complex press releases and stunts. By working with GR we expect you will see more high quality brands and strictly no crap.

Of course if you want less ads, create an account and sign in as members always see less. And if you want no ads use an adblocker support us and indies by buying games on Desura, consider it a donation to get ZERO ads, we've got great games and most cost less than $10.00!

For enquires about running ads, get in touch with Paul and for feedback just comment below.