Welcome to the Awakening Fighters Website 4.0, the latest revision of our website. This article should introduce you to all you need to know. Although all the new additions have been in discussion amongst the team for a couple of years, we finally knuckled down in October and got things done. The last three weeks especially have been a really hard slog as we tried to overhaul the site before Christmas. Regardless of how many 24hr sessions we put in, we simply failed to reach the Christmas Day deadline and we sincerely apologize about that. Each year our visitor figures are very high from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day, all those sleepy holiday eyes bored of Christmas tv!
So what's new? What are the improvements? The amount of improvements are almost too numerous to mention and they range from very small to extremely significant. I'll try and come up with a useful breakdown list to help highlight to the changes.
Fundamental Changes
Community
We have created a platform to host a community, so you can get involved in a number of ways: forums, groups, comments, photos and much more. The community section is something we're very excited about and will continue developing and adding more stuff to. It also serves as a direct link between the Awakening team and you the community, beyond the usual constraints of facebook and email. To read in more detail about the community try our article Website 4.0, Awakening Community explained.
Responsiveness
Our analytics show that almost half of you visit our website from your phones and tablets, as opposed to around 5% of you back in 2012. So we fully understand that you guys have been struggling to view the information on fighter profiles for a long time. Website 4.0 is now fully responsive so it will look great on any device. It's been a lot of hard work I'll admit to redesign the website so that it looks good on any device, but we finally did it! On Website 4.0, this is the most important change and we hope that you are as delighted as us that we've now stepped into the new age of the internet (three or four years overdue). To read in more detail about this change try our article Website 4.0, responsiveness.
Membership
For the community section to function we needed to introduce the ability for visitors to register and log in, and therefore the need to have a membership system was created. Membership is free, there are of course membership upgrades available for the hardcore Awakening supporter. To find out more about the membership levels, visit our Membership page, the most basic upgrade will remove all the advertisements when ever you log in. It was important for us to introduce some kind of monetization on Website 4.0 as the need for the Awakening website to become sustainable is now at a critical level. To read in more detail about why we've introduced monetization try our article Website 4.0, sustainability.
Editing
We've opened the doors somewhat for community members to edit parts of the fighter database. We are still working on the finer details of this. Allowing community members to edit the database comes with a number of problems, namely the occasional troll. We're working to put in place fail safes that will protect the info from abuse. Although the editing ability is already in place to a degree, the system will be fully operational within one or two weeks. So this is definitely something to watch.
Awakening Fighter Profile improvements
Primary Discipline
Now visible right at the top of the profile for quick reference.
Fight Records
Moved to the top of the page. We figured this is the info that a visitor usually wants to see first.
Social Networks
Now much more visible and moved underneath the profile photo
Photo Credits
We finally have the ability to add hyper-links to photo credits. This was not achievable before due to how the page was originally built.
Tabs Removed
The previous revision of the Awakening Fighter Profile used tabbed information as part of the design. Many visitors didn't know these tabs existed. Tabs have now been removed and ALL information is visible.
Team Info
Team info is much more visible
Galleries
The photo gallery system has been overhauled. All photos are now visible, no scrolling necessary - this is much more visually pleasing. Also, we now have the ability to change the order of the photos. This has been something we wanted to do for a few years but was impossible of the previous website. This now means that we can make the photos appear in the order that they happened during the athletes career - as opposed to the order that they were uploaded in.
Additional Links
More space for adding additional links
Sponsors
We now have the ability to upload and include sponsor's logos on an athlete profile. This new feature is part of membership level 3. We felt that the additional work involved for us to do this, added with the fact that doing so significantly benefits the sponsor alone - was something that was justifiably monetizable.
Verification & Claiming
Finally, athletes can now gain a "Verified" icon at the top of their profile for added prestige. To gain verified status an athlete needs to claim their page. To find out more visit the Claim a Profile page.
