On redesigning the website for better updates and archive navigation, plus a few remaining behind-the-scenes photos from the “Sisters” vignette

This week marks the one-year anniversary of nightzero.com, and to celebrate we’ve launched a brand-new website designed from the ground up for an improved user experience. I hope you’ve all had a chance to poke around and see what’s new. If you’ve got some feedback, send an email or post a comment below. If the page is all messed up and looks like somebody vomited HTML onto your screen… you’re probably using Internet Explorer 6.

Most immediately noticeable, of course, is the home page. While 75% of our regular visitors come for every update, the other 25% come only once a week, and we wanted a home page that was convenient for all of them. In the old model, missing an update meant a series of clicks to navigate to the episode archive or risking spoilers by back-clicking through the updates you skipped. In our new system, an entire week’s worth of pages are on the front page so you can jump right to where you left off. The previous images can remind you at a glance what the last page was, so you’re always on top of the story. Some favorite links have also been added to the home page, including some of our excellent photocomic brethren.

While I’m generally pleased with the new ARCHIVE navigation page, there are still some browser irregularities that cause occasional misbehaviour. In general, though, I like that each episode is given full focus on the page, rather that being all cluttered together, and that there’s room enough for a brief synopsis and some preview photos. Interestingly, episodes one and two were the only ones that cover photos were specifically planned for—the rest of the covers are either frames from the episode, or photos that were storyboarded but cut from the final layout.

The actual archives themselves are still in progress, and I apologize to anybody who’s had difficulty with them. For a seamless reading experience, the archive for a particular episode will download that complete episode from the start, allowing access to pages as they become available. This dramatically improves reading times because there is no wait from one page to the next; unfortunately the flipside is that it increases the download time at the beginning. Our wonderful coding team is well under way on a new version that will only download a few pages at a time, which should improve things all around.

People have repeatedly requested more Night Zero merchandise, and to that end we’ve created a dedicated STORE page. As swag starts to become available, like our upcoming T-shirts and anti-infection shot glasses, they’ll be added there. For now, the store is dedicated to Night Zero: Volume One, so if you haven’t gotten yourself a copy, head on over and check it out.

Episode three has begun it’s run, so our blog posts in the upcoming weeks will reveal some of the great new things that the Night Zero team brought to the production while it was being created. In the meantime, I’ve got just a few extra photos left over from the “Sisters” vignette, and they’re some of my favorites. Enjoy, and stay zombie-safe.