Monthly update (March 2016) - Top Dogs special_characters cleanup
Another cleanup of broken links, reviews, etc in games descriptions. This time it was all top dogs that have a name starting with a number of a special character.
Still looking for some people who wish to help. Visit out GoogleGroup if you are interested.
20-02-2016
Monthly update (February 2016) - Special Collections
Introduction of special collections (click "Special" category on the top navigation bar). In contains games grouped by other criterias than genre/theme, like Tolkien games, Superhero games, Non PC games, Open Source games, etc.
In additions there were some fixes (broken freeware games navigation).
30-01-2016
Monthly update (January 2016) - Top Dogs 'A' cleanup
With the new Council we decided to go for several changes. One of them being monthly updates. The premise is to aim for smaller but regular improvements. This month we tackled broken links in games descriptions and checked reviews. Top Dogs starting with letter 'A'. We checked and fixed like half of them (it will be much faster from now on since people are getting experience with this and we have improved the tools to do these) and we will finish letter A by the next month it seems.
Quite likely soon we will start recruiting more people who are willing to help us with those, so, if you might want to give it a try start by subscribing to our group home-of-the-underdogs+subscribe@googlegroups.com we will recruit there once we are ready.
30-12-2015
New game added
Another game added, this time a small text based simulator of a roguelike developer. It's a tiny and short game but deserves the inclusion due to a unique take on the software development genre. Enjoy MyADOM.
Because this game is extremelly hard to find on the net we are hosting it (download link available on the game's page).
28-12-2015
HotU Council formed
The HotU community has approved the Council nomination. The Council consists of: vic-k, LotBlind, martiniturbide, broklynite, FlyM0lo and will operate until 30th June 2016.
To people who were not following the discussion on our google group the Council is a body of people elected by the community under the premise to switch from a one man job to a team effort. Now with more people responsible for the wellbeing of HotU things should go more smoothly.
23-12-2015
Winter cleanup!
Removed several outdated/broken things/links, rearranged the left menu. But that's just the beginning, quite soon we will have more staff onboard and we will start a big revise & cleanup of all the pages.
Also Happy Christmast!
21-12-2015
Council nomination
Since people said they have trouble to nominate people since they do not know each other we changed the Council election system. Now there is the list of Council members prepared by me and all community members are to vote if they APPROVE / DISAPPROVE it. This will be considered a provisional Council for half of a year term only.
We were discussing on our GoogleGroup and the consensus is we need a change. The updates are far too rare and overall it's not working very well. So, we are switching from a one man job to a team effort. The first step is to elect a HotU Council that would decide on various things regarding HotU. Such Council will be elected by the community (which means you).
Big cleanup, updated some information on various paged, removed some outdated ones. Changed forum button & link to redirect to our new google group.
04-04-2015
Communication (GoogleGroups instead of forums)
The forum was sooo abandoned recently. In order rejuvenate communication I decided to switch to google groups instead.
You can use it like a traditional web forum (via web interface) or use like a mailing list (with an option for digest email if you don't want to be flooded with these).
Fundraising
OK, time for the final test if HotU is to survive or not. Technical stuff was more or less fixed and it's functional, now what's left is the money. Probably you noticed we have much fewer ads that in the past, I would really like to keep it that way (plus, the ads income is minimal nowadays, so, really direct donation from you is the only realistic way for this site to go on).
I think the best way will be to use Patreon. It's a website to collect recurring donations for various "atristic" projects require ongoing income (so ideal for HotU). It's a reputable site, many people use it.
How it works:
1) Register at Patreon
2) Decide how much money (like $3-$5) per month you want to donate
3) At the end of each month your donation will be deducted from your CC/PayPal (you can change it anytime) and transfered to HotU
If you want to propose a game to be added you can do it via forum "Add Game" subboard (do not forget to include as many information as possible).
30-08-2014
Companies description
Improved publishers and developers profiles, added descriptions, logos, countries, etc.
Enjoy!
23-08-2014
Top underdogs slaughter!
Today 1607 top underdogs lost their status and reverted to regular underdogs. The remaining 2069 top underdogs enjoy their status even more.
There was simply far too many of these, too many.
11-08-2014
You can propose a game to add!
We have a section on the forum where you can propose a game to add (check 'Add Game' subboard).
It's super easy (make a topic and post all you know about the game like: name, genre, theme, year, designer, etc).
If you have trouble registering drop us a line on: FaceBook or Twitter
16-07-2014
YouTube button & FaceBook page
- added two YouTube buttons to game page, the first search YouTube for a review of that game and the second for a longplay
- created FaceBook page (link on the right bottom)
12-07-2014
Upcoming Changes!
I was observing for a long time how the community was still hanging around, regardless of my laziness and negligence. And finally I gave up, you do want HotU to exist and you do want it to grow, so let it be your stubborn way :)
Since you really love it that much, let's bring HotU to its former glory (or at least make it fully functional again).
Of course there are several obstacles, but I think I got all or most of them covered. At the moment there is a discussion going on at the forum about the details.
But the overall plan is like that:
- an overhaul of the site (technical & functional wise - the look & feel will change over my dead body)
- more or less regular updates (like quarterly?)
- fundraising to assure long term survival and growth
- building a strong team of editors and other helpers (so I'm not the bottleneck)
- embrace the XXI century (to a reasonable extend, in the end we are all old geezers or geezeress (or whatever female geezer is called) who live in nostalgia world :))
For now I made a small overhaul which is:
- created Twitter account
- fixed/removed some outdated information
I will post more details once we got them forged out.
Click here
Prehistorik 2
Powermonger
