July 5, 2012 by Paul Curtin
It’s been a fast five years since MediaStinger was launched back on July 5, 2007. In the past year alone we’ve made a ton of a massive changes to the site in order to give users a better experience when visiting. The most noticeable of our transformations over the past year was changing our name. Back in September we changed our name to MediaStinger in order to focus on both movies and video games and also introduced portals for users who still just want to use MediaStinger for movies or for games.
To account for the large influx of visitors we get over the summer, we’ve even upgraded to a fully dedicated server (a decision my bank account is not happy with) and also upgraded to the just released 2012 version of Disqus to allow users to have a better experience when commenting on the site. The new Disqus 2012 has a ton of neat features like the Community tab which displays the top discussions and top commenters — make sure to check it out and sign up for an account if you still haven’t!
For the first time ever we gave out our own awards for 2011’s best movies and games, and just last month we again covered the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles for the third year in a row. Our E3 2012 coverage was even greater than ever and featured over 40 exclusive previews and trailers for upcoming highly anticipated games. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our E3 2012 article roundup, which also features our own awards.
One of my favorite updates that we made this year was taking our user stinger rating system to the next level. For years we’ve allowed users to rate whether extras during or after the credits are worth staying around for, but now with the new scoring system our system is far easier to understand and use. Since its release in theaters last May, The Avengers has alone gotten 1163 votes (1100 Yes and 63 No) resulting in a +1037 score — easily becoming the site’s top rated stinger of all time.
With today being our fifth birthday, we decided to give the site a little facelift and updated our navigation system once again. The new improvements to the header navigation introduces some extra features like the top notification bar above the navigation, which allows important information such as what’s new In Theaters, what popular topics are trending on the site, and other various breaking news stories like this very one.
But the facelift wasn’t just to to give the site a fresh look, and the new design more importantly reflects the new style of something else we’re working on. I was hoping to to make that announcement today along with the new design, but that big reveal will just have to wait as it’s still in its beta stages due to issues with other developers. Hopefully, we’ll be ready to show you all what else we’ve been working on before the end of this summer. 🙂
As always, we couldn’t have made it through the last five years without the support from our users who visit the site and even submit information. I’d like to personally give a big thanks to Vinnie Leduc and Matt Spencer who joined the team years ago and help me keep the site flowing with tons of new content. If you’re a fan of the site, be sure to Like Us on Facebook and Follow Us on Twitter. With today’s update it’s now easier than ever and just one click away in the top right corner of your screen!
Every year we work harder to make the site better, so keep on the lookout for new features and expect tons more big updates in the near future.
Thanks again for all the love and support,
Paul Curtin
Founder, Webmaster, and Content Manager
