textadventures.co.uk has a new look, some new features, and no more ads!
It felt like time for a refresh - the previous design had been iterated on since 2013, and was based on a Bootstrap theme that was inspired by Windows 8’s “Metro” design. Probably not far off being cool and retro in its own right. And the ads… well, yeah, if you weren’t using an ad-blocker before, the experience was pretty bad - the Google Ads had become increasingly intrusive. But since launching Quest Viva, I’ve been able to shut down the costly servers that the old player and editor needed to run, so I don’t need the income from ads any more.
The new design is slicker and more modern, and it supports dark mode (following your system setting, or toggle it in the header). Authors can now choose one of five looks for their game listing pages - for categorised public games, the look has been automatically picked one based on the category it’s in. You can update it from the page where you edit your game listing, where you can also preview each of the themes.
Descriptions, reviews and comments can now include links and basic Markdown, plus ||spoilers||. There’s a formatting toolbar and preview.
Main page:
Game listing (“Midnight” theme):