Why hello there. Fancy bumping into you here. I’m Norman, Maximum PC’s newly minted Online Editor, though you might remember me from such roles as Norm the Intern at PC Gamer magazine. Along with our esteemed Editor-In-Chief Will Smith, I’d like to welcome you to the new Maximum PC website. We’ve been working on the website re-launch for the past few months, and we’re thrilled to finally be able to share it with you.

Maximumpc.com version 7.0 is has been designed from the ground up with the reader in mind. We’ve streamlined the look and layout of the site to facilitate more frequent updates and web-exclusive features, while seamlessly integrating magazine content so you’ll always find exactly what you’re looking for, whether it’s a hardware review or instructional How-to article.

The new website isn’t just a visual overhaul, either. Regular news reports, daily feature stories, and even up-to-the-second liveblogging from events are just a few new types of articles we’re committed to deliver. And over the coming months, we’ll be making regular upgrades to the site to bring you even more cool content.

But before you jump in, I want to take this opportunity to spotlight some of the fancy new features of the site, including a few that you’ve been requesting for a long time.

(image courtesy of Mikelo on Flickr)

Best of the Best

We promised we’d put this up on the website, and here it is: our picks for the best products in 20 hardware categories, with explanation for our decision and review link for each item. As we discover new favorites, we’ll be updating this department to keep you in the loop.

Front Page

The biggest change on the front page is the expanded main story column, where you’ll find not only every new review and feature, but also daily news post from our crew of tech-savvy bloggers. The three-frame slideshow keeps you up to date on our hottest stories, and the orange center column gives you quick access to our newest reviews, how to’s, features, and web exclusives. Your most recent comments and the most commented stories from the past 14 days are also listed on the right side of the homepage, so jumping into a busy discussion thread is just a click away.

And by the way, if you have a juicy news tip, send it over to tips@maximumpc.com!

Tags

Every article is now tagged with a bevy of relevant keywords, which let you browse stories by topics instead of article type. For example, if you want to read about video cards, you can just click the “video card” tag underneath a story to land on an index page with all video card-related stories, whether they’re a news post or a product review.

Take note of the Geek Tested navbar at the top of the site, which links you to the site’s most popular and relevant topics.

Article Details

Clicking through to an article brings up the full article detail page, where we’ve also integrated some useful features. You can now generate a formatted article printout page by hitting the “Print” button, or forward stories you find interesting to your buddies with the “Email” link. Social bookmarking links are now at the top and bottom of every page, so feel free to promote our articles on Digg and Slashdot!

Scroll down to the bottom of an article and you’ll find the new comments system, which supports nested discussion threads as well as personalized user avatars by every post.

User Profiles

Every registered user now has a personalized profile page with their avatar, biography, and listing of posted comments. As with the old site, your maximumpc.com account is tied to your forum handle, so you only have to log in once to post comments on both article and forum threads. Your avatar will even show up on the top of the homepage!

I also want to give a shout out to our two tenacious interns, Benson and Reed, for probably violating many labor laws by putting extra hours in for bug testing and database entry to ensure that the old site content migrated over correctly to our new digs. Thanks a lot, guys!

For the rest of you, I sincerely hope you like what you see, and don’t hesitate to email me with any feedback at norman at maximumpc dot com.

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