StarTrek.com Relaunched With A New Design & Integrated Fan Content

Two and a half years since startrek.com went dormant, the official site of the Star Trek franchise has been re-launched with a new look and a new mission. More details and thoughts on the new official site below.

 

StarTrek.com is back

It is great to see that the Star Trek franchise will once again get the attention it deserves with an official site. The new look for StarTrek.com, from web developer Funny Garbage, is a nice improvement over the previous design. The site is broken into five main sections: News, Videos, Database, Galleries, Boards and Store.

The news section of the site has launched with a number of articles, with the emphasis so far being recently announced Star Trek products. This emphasis is not surprising as the site is now being run out of the CBS Consumer Products group. There is one news item announcing a new licensee, Earlooms, who are now making a Star Trek branded bluetooth earpiece. And of course the site still continues to integrate an official store

The site also promises to add more exclusive news content in the future including interviews, event reports and more. And in a welcome sign that CBS is embracing the fan community, the site is now integrating non-official sites by featuring headlines "from the blogosphere" from TrekMovie.com, TrekToday.com and TrekWeb.com. There is also a page with links to a number of other specialized fansites. Another way that StarTrek.com is embracing the fans is with the Galleries section, which now allows fans to upload images. And of course the discussion boards are still integrated into the site, but previous users need to reset their passwords to use the forums.

The Star Trek Database is back, now enhanced with info on the Star Trek 2009 movie and a new intro to Star Trek. The Database is pretty thorough, however it needs more updating, especially the biographies of real life Star Trek celebrities. Memory Alpha, with its team of dozens of editors, will likely continue to be a more extensive and up to date source. Also, I wonder if new fans and non-regulars will know to click on the ‘Database’ button to learn about episodes and especially about the new movie (and inexplicably this beta version sorts episode descriptions alphabetically instead of in airing or production order).

Probably the biggest enhancement to the site is the videos section. It now includes  full episodes (ad supported) from the original Star Trek and Star Trek: Enterprise. The episodes are organized better than they are at CBS.com, however unlike CBS.com the episodes are not available in HD (at least for now). There are also previews for all the episodes for DS9, Voyager and TNG, plus the previous library of interviews and documentaries. However, once again I wonder if “Videos” is the right term or if there needs to be a “Watch Episodes” tab or button at the top level of the site. The term ‘videos’ is often thought of as a place for clips and shorter features and not full episodes.

Overall this ‘beta’ version of the official www.startrek.com is very welcome. The addition of full streaming episodes and fan content is a big plus. Also, the new design is simple and clean, although it may be a bit too simple. Hopefully this is just the beginning and we will see more from the official Trek site in the future.

 

POLL: So you like the new StarTrek.com?

What do you think of the new design for the official site for Star Trek?

[poll=604]

 

 

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Farewell old star trek.com design…. You will be missed.

Well, it’s time for the collective here to analyze the crap out of this! Proceed!

I prefer the old sites layout for Episodes. It provided a nice sleek list of all the episodes with quick 1-2 sentence summaries. I can’t find it in the new layout. Can anyone help me find the lists of episodes ? Or should i rely on memory-alpha ?

Nice to have the site back in living condition! Now bring on a new Star Trek TV show! Its more than time!

@ 4

HELL YES. CBS should hire Ronald D Moore to develop a new Trek tv series !

Sgrunt.

We can’t watch Star Trek.com’s episodes from outside USA

Justin.tv has a system so that the commercials shown to you are commercials from your country. I can only hope that startrek.com ends up using a symilar system in the future.

I get very angry when the press says that USA has very less piracy of tv series and movies than Spain. Of course you do. You can watch lots of tv series on Hulu, CBS, and plenty of other websites legally with commercials whenever you want.

It looks really good. You can watch a ton of episodes. And the little behind the scenes clips are nice.

From a news standpoint, the old startrek.com too often wasn’t on the ball in staying up to date with its content.

And, honestly, THIS site has been a far more informative and entertaining Star Trek news site than Paramount’s official one ever was…! So I’m not sure why we even need the official startrek.com site anymore.

Where is the Widescreen Wallpapers with all Crew Members from all Series ???

Those “exclusives” look interesting. I know what I’m going to do this weekend.

But what happened to the old interview transcripts? I tried the search button, I found a bunch of links, but I get redirected to the same page.

The Database articles’ layout look messed up, tho.

I thought the old Trek.com was really fun. It’s a lot more fun than the Official Star Wars site which is so jumbled.

Ha! great point david g! Anthony and his awesome staff make trekmovie.com much more of a living breathing excellent site than startrek.com ever was–and the easy posting of opinions by us fans also make much more lively n fun dialogue as well–oddly enuf i stopped going to startrek.com soon as i found trekmovie.com-thnx anthony sir we cannot say thanx 2 u 2 many times–

I would spend a ton of time at startrek.com if it had all Star Trek episodes on it. TOS and ENT are ok, but DS9 or TNG would be amazing! Get to it, startrek.com!

Still, when it comes to news about Star Trek and scifi, I’ll always come here. It’ll never leave my Google Reader!

I’ll always go to startrek.com!!!

And as I expected … the videos can’t be viewed by fans outside the US :(

Notice how the site is TOS centric.
Not that is a bad thing, just pointing it out.

The main thing I used to like on startrek.com (until they broke it and never repaired it) was the section that listed all the episodes with a JPG, synopsis, and video preview.

They removed it completely on this new site (or at least I can’t find it).

While it’s no longer the franchise-embarrassing zombie site its last incarnation was, it’s still not bookmark-worthy like the version previous. I’d check in at that site weekly or daily for content like The Trek Life and the fictional columnists (Pelgar, K’Plett, Whatsisname from the mobster planet, and Kate). I dearly loved the short-lived series of quasi in-universe articles like “What happened to the Romulans’ ridges?”

Ah, well. I’ve long since mourned that incarnation. As I said, the reactivation means the site regains some dignity, and it’s still almost as good a reference as Memory Alpha.

Well, first of al it needs a comic strip like “The Trek Life”.

Don´t know, while it´s not bad, it feel´s kinda souless, generic, not nerdy enough, Trek is more than “Kirk and Spock” old and new.

Needs more okudagrams and infos on pocket books and comic books.

Needs to be more like “Trekmovie.com” or “Theforce.net”.

ah, good thing i no longer see VIACOM around suing the fans over fansites or fanfictions.

Anthony, you left an option of the poll:

“Who needs it? We have TrekMovie!”

I guess I’ll get around to checking it out this weekend.

– Harry

I’m glad the official site is updated and running again. For the last 2 years now I’ve been looking to this site and Memory Alpha for news and updates. Star Trek needs an official site. I will keep an eye on it for official news, as well as Memory Alpha and trekmovie.com for other tidbits and news.

#16–It is probably more original series-centric because that is what is current right now, with the new movies and such. The other series, while just as important to me and other fans, are not currently in production, so they are not likely to the highlight.

What I don’t understand is why we have one site for the movie and another for the rest of Star Trek. Why not just make startrek.com the number one place to be for ALL Star Trek.

Whilst this site is better than the old site, it still doesn’t really do the Star Trek universe any justice. People come here and other Trek news sites for news, so what is startrek.com really for?

I believe the site should be far more interactive, kid friendly, free online games and far more colourful with a layout similar to the movie site, corridors and digital sets from the Enterprise and other ships – for example:

The home page could be based on the new Enterprise bridge – since this is current Star Trek, click your mouse to go to various information about the 2009 film, characters, watch trailers, clips, TV-Spots all the stuff that you would expect. then say you wanted to go visit the classic Star Trek era – click on the navigation button, it spins out into a galaxy on the new Enterprise view screen, you click to go to TOS and it takes you to the TOS galaxy, same kind of thing, corridors of the original Enterprise, click on the doors and it takes you to different information and interactive stuff.

and well you get the picture. also why don’t they have interactive features showing you the ships of Star Trek, similar to the HD DVD box set to TOS where you could see the Enterprise – lets see that on the site.

Also i know they have added the blogs such as trekmovie.com but i think they should work closer together because having CBS news as well as trekmovie news just doesn’t make sense unless CBS Trek.com news is first in breaking news.

Whilst this new site is a vast improvement on the old one, I still think that whilst Paramount are willing to spend money on Star Trek, CBS are still looking for the cheaper option with Star Trek which isn’t going to work in the long run

all in all i wish that Paramount owned all of Star Trek and CBS just stuck to what they do best – which isn’t Sci-Fi.

23.
You´re totally right. I mean, where´s the bloody Starships?

In the Star Trek games, like “Star Trek Encounters” they make good use of the federation ships silhouetes as icons.

They need to put some heart into it.

I would like to see the return of The Trek Life. That was a feature I enjoyed on a regular basis.

I also have to agree about the wallpapers. Where are the wallpapers I can post on my computer at work?

Like the videos, I wonder when full episodes of TAS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager will be available?

I wonder if the RSS feed will work on the new site?

Great stuff. I’m glad we have a new, revitalized StarTrek.com to visit.

This site redesign took forever. I hope it was worth it.

#6, I agree with you. The episodes are only available in the US, not available to other countries… What about the rest of us??? Another Rip-Off…

Too much ToS design.

Yay! It’s up! Time to abandon TrekMovie!

Yeah right. I’ll visit both, but TM will continue my main source of Trek/scifi/movie news as it has been for 3 years.

I am That One Guy, and I am a TrekMovie.com regular.

The Star Trek bluettoth is kinda cool, but they should have also made one trhat looks like Uhuras earpiece and also a Bluetooth Communicator Device that syncs with your cell phone.

Now all they need to do is bring back David Reddick’s “Trek Life”

Looks ok but with my designer hat on it’s a bit rough around the edges. No address bar icon yet (e.g. the lil trekmovie icon to the left of the address in your browser above). Content on the homepage is too centralised with gaping bars of space on either side causing a heck of a scrollbar to get to the content further down.

If I was doing it, off the top of my head I’d space things out better using more of the available page at the top and the sides and try to minimize the need for a scroll bar, at least on the homepage anyway. Switch the main links from a vertical nav bar on the left of centre to a horizontal one across the bottom of the banner image. The mirroring of the banner image either side of the content is pure lazy design and a complete waste of available space. It looks akin to a wordpress/ joomla layout.

Ok, web/ graphic designer hat off, it’s good to have it back!

Episode guide is in Alphabetical order & no longer in season order. Thumbs down!

THIS HERE be me Starry Trek webbysite.

Lord Anthony- only when filled wit’ gin (which be often) wills I ever stray from thee and me bankeroo Trekmovie.com site. Asides, fur’ me internalnet connection, I hooked me typewriter up ta’ me tv so I only gets this one webbysite.

‘Nuff said.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

@16. Phobos

“Notice how the site is TOS centric.
Not that is a bad thing, just pointing it out.”

Yup, CBS/Paramount are focusing on the TOS era again. I bet if they even produced a new TV show, it would be set during that era. At least until they over-do the TOS era, then they’ll move over to the TNG-rebooted era.

@ 34 Star Trek 12 : Klingon Rising

“Episode guide is in Alphabetical order & no longer in season order. Thumbs down!”

I’m really angry about this. I always loved look at the episodes in season order.

#16 – Every Trek-related thing should be TOS related. ;)

#23 – The Blu-ray box set has the Enterprise tour.

Best to pretend HD DVD never existed.

For me it’s too late. When startrek.com went dormant, they left a vacuum–one that Trekmovie.com filled in very nicely. I really have no need to go there because:

1. Trekmovie.com covers all things Trek new and old, not to mention the whole genre and real science.

2. I can already watch Trek episodes any time I want be on disc or CBS.

3. Memory Alpha does a better job covering Trek history.

What can startrek.com offer is not already done elsewhere and done better?

As good as Star Trek.com is. It does not compare to Trekmovie.com. This site is by far the best and I believe it will continue.

@33: From the abrupt image-switching when the central banner slides to the next image, I get the impression that it’s a bug — besides, other pages have a repeated delta-shield background at the top. May as well report it, since they have an email address listed for site issues.

It sucks, looked forward to the new site for a long time and it is the same ols dhit in a new wrapper. No downloads or wallpapers…..BIG LET DOWN!!

I think it’s just fine – plenty of content, spanning the entire history.

Good Lord, some of you people complain a lot. About everything.

Considering the millions we paid along the decades to keep Trek running, we have every right to complain as much as we please.

Maybe TrekLife can move to Roddenberry.com if Startrek.com no longer wants it.

Interesting. I get a 404 “Page Not Found” when I click on one of the links above. But type it manually and it shows up in all its glory. Go figure.

I don’t know about this new site, it kinda just looks like a corporate facade to me. I mean it looks good, but looks are not enough. I don’t think the official site could ever have the in depth, news, and content that a fan made site has. I’m really glad to have it back, but I did get along without it, between trekmovie and memory-alpha, all my needs were met. For the most part i really think they just brought it back to sell stuff.

“TrekMovie.Com” will always be the place for everything Star Trek. Plus we get weekly science, sci-fi tv and sci-fi movies. Being an independent site allows for dissenting opinions which CBS would never allow on their site. TrekMovie.Com is a much more welcoming site.

“45. Victor Hugo – July 15, 2010
Considering the millions we paid along the decades to keep Trek running, we have every right to complain as much as we please.”

Well put. Touche. That reminds me, anyone want to buy all the Columbia House VHS tapes I bought for like, $500 at the time? Sheesh.