Hey! Remember us? No, you didn't end up on the wrong website-- welcome to the brand new face of ExtraLives.org, The Fundraising Gaming Website! We owe this new redesign to Toby of GameToAid.org who lovingly (and very patiently, considering the many dozens of emails I flooded him with) built the site from the ground up from a concept image I doodled close to a year ago. Given that the old website design was virtually unchanged from the earliest designs I whipped up back in March of 2008, it was definitely time for a change.

ExtraLives.org-- too cool for lorem ipsum.

While there are still a few things that this new design needs (mostly carrying over and fleshing out the tabs and old Marathon pages), the new site has a bunch of great new additions, including...

• A Marathon page stream and chatroom switcher-- switch between Ustream chat and video, Twitch.tv chat and video or any combination of the two.
• Automatic fanart uploading and gallery making-- you'll never need to wait years a while for me to manually upload Marathon fanart.
• An actual article commenting system-- gone is that half-baked system of having to post comments on the forum.
• Multiple pages of articles-- the old site never had more than three or four news posts up at a time. Now you can go all the way back to the first update ever.
• Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons-- we're finally stepping into this crazy Web 2.0 world.

...and a whole bunch of other great little features that help keep everything prettier and dramatically more organized. Compare it against the original design, kept uploaded for posterity here.

And hey, even the forums got a redesign-- we had to move on from the default phpBB3 theme eventually.

But what good is a snazzy new site without some new content? Well, we've got that covered too. It's been entirely too long since we last had a Marathon-- let's fix that. I'm sure you guys noticed that fantastic new banner at the top of the page (made by Jyn, Twitter/Tumblr). We're having another Zelda Marathon scheduled to begin in just two weeks, starting Friday, June 8th at noon, Eastern Time. Check the Marathon page for more details. We'll be raising money again for Free the Children, a charity devoted to improving the lives of children in developing nations. With $8,500 in donations, Free the Children is able to construct a schoolhouse in a developing nation which goes a long way to improving the quality of a child's life. Let's build that school!

Apologies that the Marathon announcement was made on such short notice-- been busy with finals and making sure everything was ready to be rolled out. We're going to need your help now more than ever to get the word out and tell everyone about our upcoming fundraiser.

As always, I need to thank you guys for your unceasing support. Since our earliest fundraisers in 2009, your continued generosity and enthusiasm has blown us away time and time again. We hope to see you all at the upcoming Marathon!