Year of the Barrel – Building a Better Redder Blog

The Year Starts Here!

We chose the to launch Big Red Barrel when we did, partly as we liked the date — 1.23.12, in American format — but mostly as this was the time the site would be ready for the world to see. We had originally planned for a possible 1st of January launch, but soon realised that this meant that no one would want to come to our birthday party next year! There were also the possible launch dates of the 12th and 21st discussed. They came and went. But we waited. And we worked.

We took the time to craft an accurate representation of the vision we had in mind. It is by no means perfect and there were some small compromises made along the way, but we are very proud of what we have achieved together in such a short space of time. There are a few things to tidy up that we will be attending to for the next couple of days. As well as a number of additional features that we would like to add – that we ending up leaving to one side so that we could concentrate on the core project of the site design.

One key feature we did manage to implement is the inclusion of a game release schedule in a calendar format on the front page. Not only can it be used to easily keep track of all game releases, information and BRB related content , but we will have news and scheduled gamernights listed there too. If it’s not convenient enough, you can chose to sync the BRB calendar to your Google calendar and have all the information available to you on-the-go, with no need for a separate App or internet connection. This is just one way that BRB is looking to make your life easier. We have a number of similar features to add to other areas of the site that we think you will find just as helpful and will look to implement them in the coming weeks and months.

Also like to take a moment to thank the unsung heroes of this blog design. Many people played their part, from Alex’s mass editing of day one articles, to Rich adding custom smiley designs, but two people really stood out for praise when it comes to the setting up of the blog. Danny’s graphic design skills were well know to me, but he has continued to impress throughout the design process, helping to produce the logo designs and the strong visual identity that will help define everything we do. The other internet wizard working away behind the scenes to make sure everything works smoothly and helping to fix everything that we broke, is the one and only Regua. Without him there literally would not be a Big Red Barrel. Big thanks to all those that helped make a great new home for us all.

When we locked down the launch date to the 23rd, a BRB team member pointed out that this was Chinese New Year, with 2012 being the Year of the Dragon. This must have been fate, as we had repeatedly joked about making 2012, the “Year of the Barrel!” So, as we tend to do at BRB, we decided to roll with it.

Year of the Barrel is our way of saying that this is just the start. The tip of the iceberg. Just the beginning. There is SO much more to come from us it would take us the rest of the year just to tell you about it. Judging by the massively positive reaction we have had so far, you are very much going to like what we have in the pipeline.

Glad you could be with us from the start. It is going to be a BIG year!!

#YotB

Tags: BRB, Chinese New Year, Year of the Barrel