Some bad news to report. Major updates of this site are going to be put off a bit longer than anticipated due to some unavoidable computer issues. Every thing should be back to normal within a week. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Just a quick update to address a few lingering issues.

1. Some of you may have noticed that the site has been down quite often over the past few weeks. I brought this up to my host and have been moved to a different server. Since then, I’ve not personally witnessed any issues. Let’s hope it stays that way.
2. The site still has quite a few missing sections, which in turn bring you to a 404 Error page. I’ve been working on gettin this under control and am on track to have at least a few of these finished by this weekend. I’m not very happy about this whole issue, but it’s being dealt with as much as possible.

Thanks for your patience with these matters. The worst of it is over, thankfully.

I received an e-mail today from Alex informing me that Lightbox 2.0 might be better to use than Lightbox Plus for the site. I think this was somewhere in the back of my mind; I was uncomfortable with Lightbox Plus (let’s face it, image resizing by a browser isn’t exactly going to result in quality output). and Alex’s e-mail kind of just snapped something in my mind that made me realize the best course of action was to drop it entirely.

As I went to find Lightbox 2.x (which, incidentally, was actually installed here briefly before making way for Lightbox Plus), I stumbled upon a different version known as Slimbox. It did the same thing, but its file size was substantially lower. This isn’t important so much for my bandwidth as much as it’s important for the stability, processing consumption and speed of the site for the users. I figured it was worthwhile to use it instead. I feel that it runs noticeably more quickly.

So, in a round-about way, thanks to Alex for finalizing my opinion :). You can still check out our About Lightbox/Slimbox page for more information. It’s been updated to reflect the change and contains some information that you might find useful.

In addition, if anyone has any suggestions for things they’d like to see on the site, feel free to contact us. Personally, I’m open to anything that will improve Digital Devil Database in any way.

Thanks!

I’ve gotten a few e-mails asking where some of our older game sections are. Part of the reason it is taking so long for these sections to appear on the new design is due to some changes in construction of stuff behind the scenes.

Our resident programmer, Alan, recently created new image gallery software that has been implemented into the site. He’s tweaked some random things for me and I think we’re both happy with the final result. Now that this is finished, there’s more reason to actually bother with the additional sections. If we were to make the sections beforehand, it would pretty much double the work involved. It just didn’t really seem worthwhile.

The result of that specifically is that gallery pages (screen shots, merchandise, art, etc.) in individual game sections now display differently. They still make use of thumbnails, but we now have something called Lightbox Plus enabled when viewing the large versions. You can read more about that on our about Lightbox page. Most importantly for me, all of this is handled as close to automatically as possible.

In any case, I expect that the older sections will appear on the site (as opposed to bringing you to nasty 404 pages) within the week.

Note: This is a sticky post and will remain at the top for a short period of time. Newer posts will display below this one.

So, that redesign took a lot longer than planned. The sad thing is that it is not finished yet. There’s still content to move (particularly in some of the lesser visited Games sections) and new sections to fill in (Downloads?). Most of the old posts are still not moved over and categories on the side are claiming they have entries they do not. This will be fixed over the next few days. Beyond that, I’ve taken the quick route with some of the banners. In the near future, expect there to be artwork changes as well as textual changes.

On the plus side, every thing else has gone according to plan. The site now runs on WordPress instead of Movable Type. The main reason for this is for vB integration. You’ll notice that every entry now has a “comments” link at the end of it. Instead of having a separate comment form specific to WordPress, however, the site is set up so that you may comment with your forum account. Any post made on the front page that is deemed worth having comments for will show up in the new “News Posts” section of the forum instantly. Clicking the link on the main site to comment will bring you to a new reply window in the forums.

Obviously you will need a forum account to use this, but it’s quick to sign up for and saves you the trouble of remembering yet another set of account information.

This is probably the biggest change, but a lot of other smaller things have happened that are of benefit. The site is now easier to update and easier to expand. I don’t foresee myself running into quite as many walls as I did with the last version. I’m sure there will always be people who preferred how it looked, but you’ll get used to it. Personally, I think the place needed some color. It’s only going to get more colorful from here as I finish up the remaining imagery.

In any case, sorry for the delay. It’s time to get back on track!

Those who visit this site are likely familiar with Nirvana, a fan site for the Digital Devil Saga series. Somewhat recently, the owner, Argilla, decided to close down the domain it was hosted at. She has a short post discussing this and the future of her sites at yosuga.net right now.

As such, Nirvana no longer had a home. She brought this up to me and figured the best bet would be to host it here, something I had already offered when it was down once before (although only temporarily).

So, basically, Nirvana is now hosted at this site. It will always be reachable at nirvana.digitaldevildb.com. If you’re looking for more Digital Devil Saga information than is currently provided on this site, Nirvana is really the best place to go. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already.

I figured I could also mention that if you have a Megaten related site that you’re just not interested in hosting any longer for whatever reason, I’m more than willing to archive it here. Just send me an e-mail. I would make zero changes to it and it would simply be here for informational purposes. I’d hate to see some of the sites out there simply disappear.