Front Page
The home page of Newgrounds displays recent submissions chosen by administrators as a special showcase of their favorites. On April 21, 2003 the first front page icon for a user-submitted Flash game was posted under the heading "Tom and Wade Recommend." The game that was posted was Taipan 3000 by Josh "Psycho Goldfish" Tuttle, a remake of a popular Apple II game called Taipan!.
As Newgrounds received more quality submissions the "Tom and Wade Recommend" section grew from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, and 4 to 6 icons. As of 2009, there are 36 icons on the home page; 12 for Flash animations, 12 for games, 4 for music and 8 for art. The rate at which this page was updated also increased, from weeks to days, eventually leading to the removal of the "Tom and Wade recommend" heading and becoming a staple of the Front Page, making it easy for new users to the site to find quality content.
Originally the icons were created by moderators, as were the long Flash descriptions (the same process used for the collections pages), but this proved to be an extremely time-consuming, tedious task. Currently users are given the ability to attach their own icons with their submissions, and write their own brief descriptions.
On January 12, 2004 the home page archive was launched, keeping a month-by-month list of Flash content that was deemed to be worthy of display on the Newgrounds homepage. This includes either those who performed well in the daily awards, or simply those the admin deemed worthy.
On June 27, 2006, the Icon Helpers system was launched for Newgrounds volunteers to make and submit icons for newer flash content that was lacking an icon, making the integration to automated collections pages much more effective.
On a few occasions, while maintenance has been performed on the site, the home page has been replaced by an "under construction" page showing the Newgrounds tank picture being welded by a programming crew. The image is accompanied by a message describing the work done, such as that displayed during the major update that occurred in July 2007, July 2009, 21 October 2009, June 2010, November/December 2010 and the crash of October 2011: "IN UR TANK, UPGRADING UR SERVERZ :3". The October 2011 crash was caused by the Homestuck End of Act 5 Flash, hosted on Newgrounds.
On January 17, 2012 Newgrounds joined in the SOPA Protest, by blocking the front page of the website showing info about and how it would affect Newgrounds, the block lasted for 12 hours afterwards service was resumed.
On February 6, 2012 Newgrounds was shut down while the long-awaited redesign was being implemented. A selection of Newgrounds movies, including some made specifically for the downtime, and a chat feature were available for people to use while the redesign took place. On February 7, 2012 at 7:20PM (Eastern Standard Time), the site launched as confirmed by a tweet. After roughly 8 minutes, the site completely crashed and returned to the maintenance page which featured a selection of Newgrounds movies and a chat feature. However, the site soon re-launched and has been working since then.
Read more about this topic: The Pube Muppet
Famous quotes containing the words front and/or page:
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)