EVE Community Website Updated

Hello! CCP Alice here on behalf of the EVE Online web team Roundhouse Kick with an important update.

As background information; Just over a year ago we made some changes to the EVE Online websites to create a better front facing website for the game at eveonline.com. This has been very successful and given us opportunities to grow EVE by improving how we explain our game and expansions to the world and potential customers. With that change we re-branded the previous eveonline.com website as the EVE Community website, to be the foundation for us to build on for community specific needs and desires.

We are now very happy to share with you the first major update to the EVE Community website that goes live today.

The Shiny Stuff

Although we did not completely overhaul the visuals of the website, we included some improvements and updates to how information is presented.

New front page with news summaries and links to further information commonly accessed on the website. We also added a server status and number of players online panel and the latest Dev Blog is now featured on the front page. 

Responsive layout that adapts to browser size. If you re-size the browser or view the website on a smartphone / tablet, it will alter the layout of the same information to be more appropriate for the browser size. You will be able to read all the latest and greatest from EVE more easily on your smartphone now! EVE everywhere has begun..

Updates to the menu structure based on feedback from user research with our Community team and the helpful CSM. This includes adding a new menu bar link to the forums.

Support content merge

Previously, there was a separate Support website that was home to the Knowledge Base, Petitions, and API Key Management. We have now moved these to the Support section on this new version of the EVE Community website. This will make it easier for you find all the available support information in one place and allows us to iterate on this section as a whole in the future.

We have not made any functionality changes to these pages only minor presentation tweaks. In case you were not aware of what these page offer, here's a little extra info for your benefit:

• The Knowledge Base has three sections containing a wide range of useful information provided by our Customer Support team. They are working to ensure the information here is correct and up to date, and for that reason we have temporarily removed the corresponding German and Russian articles. We will add the updated ones back in soon.
• A Petition is a support ticket you can submit to our Customer Support team for resolution of any issue you have with the game.
• API Key Management - The API is a way for our 3rd Party Developers to get data from the game and use it for developing applications and services. In order to use one of these applications, you provide a Key which is generated, updated and deleted on this page.

Expansion History moved to eveonline.com

Previously we had information about the past expansions on the EVE Community website and a myriad of "mini expansion sites". We have moved all this information to live in harmony with the current expansion pages on eveonline.com. Check it out!

RSS Feeds

We've made some behind the scenes improvements to how we handle RSS feed generation for content like News channels, Dev Blogs and Patch Notes. Due to this necessary update, the News, News Archive and Dev Corner feeds available here have changed URL. In order to continue subscribing to these channels, you will need to update the application you use for viewing them.

(Note: the legacy feeds in the Miscellaneous section continue to use the old system for now)

SSO (Single Sign On)

At Fanfest last year we introduced our plans to make changes to how you log into our websites and game services; the EVE Community website has been updated to use the new SSO log in page with this update. This does not affect your username and password; the change is simply that you will be directed to the new log in page which functions the same as the old one.

We will also be releasing the SSO update to Account Management, EVE Gate, Forums and the EVElopedia in the coming weeks. Once all the website are updated to use the new log in page - after logging in once you will not need to re-enter your credentials when you visit another EVE Online website.

Upgraded hamster wheels

The previous version of the website was using older web technology, Classic ASP, which made it difficult for us to continue development. There was also a massive amount of legacy code and content that was growing lives of their own over the course of the website's many, many years of existence (yes, we're talking Skynet bad). To fix all this, we have re-developed the website to use the successor to what we had: ASP.NET. We also switched over to using our newer Content Management Systems (CMS), enabling us to update and add new content with more ease and efficiency, in addition to translation support for other languages. 

Other updates and information:

• Improvements to the Fansites listing so it's easier to filter and find entries.
• The Patch Notes filter now includes the expansion name with each patch number. 
• Added breadcrumbs for easier navigation from within sub-sections
• Added wormhole systems to the Fleet Fight Notification form.
• Improvements to the News channel pages and in-page archive boxes for finding older articles more easily.
• Improvements to the Download page and organization of related test server information.
• Legacy API references removed (more info in this Dev Blog).
• Pre-constructed API Key URL still works and there are re-directs in place for api.eveonline.com and support.eveonline.com/api.
• The Japanese language version of the website has not yet been updated.
• The old forums remain archived.

And that's it!

Murphy's Law post update

This is a major update, with far reaching consequences that have been difficult to fully identify in advance (it was a really old website). We have done our best to ensure the update goes as smoothly as possible, however, we expect there to be issues that we will need to release fixes for in the coming days and weeks. We thank you for your patience in advance and please remember to report any issues you find in comments thread for this blog.

What’s next for the EVE Community website?

Our long term goal continues to be for you, as a player to go the EVE Community website to find and access all the content, information and functionality relevant and useful to you and the broader community of EVE Online. In practical terms, we will continue to evaluate where content is today and what should be merged into this website from other places like EVElopedia, EVE Gate, Forums, etc. Once the dust is settled on this update we will be iterating on this version as well as adding new content and features (the Community team here at CCP are already prepping a big list of things!).

Love and Lazors,
CCP Alice and Team Roundhouse Kick