Welcome to the new ZooBerry!

Over the past few months, we’ve been working hard to bring you a new and improved ZooBerry experience. We’ve updated the site to freshen up the look and make it easier to navigate. We’ve also added new features and content to help you get the most out of your Zoo Tycoon experience. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new:

New Design

We’ve given the site a fresh coat of paint with a new design that’s cleaner and more modern. The new layout makes it easier to find what you’re looking for and hopefully offers a better reading experience.

Contributor Lists

Team Pages

Not completely unfamiliar to the old site, but we’ve added a team page to list all design teams and their files. From there you can find brand new design team pages that list all of their mods in one place along with some quick stats.

Author Pages

Every author gets a dedicated space that enumerates all of their mods along with some quick stats. This is a great way to find all of the mods from your favorite creators in one place.

Stats available on author pages include:

• Total mods
• Languages published in
• All websites the author has published mods on
• Years of activity based on mods published
• Tags associated with the author’s ZT1 and ZT2 mods

Additionally, every author page gets a banner. By default all banners are random and will be different on every website update. If you’re an active modder with a page, you are welcome to send us a custom banner to use on your page.

Website Pages

Each website page has a bit of a nostalgiac flaire to keep the spirit of their original website alive. These pages list all of the mods that were originally published on the website along with some quick stats.

Mod Navigation

We’ve added a new mod navigation system that makes it easier to find mods using tags. You can filter mods by a major category, just as before, but any mod can now have multiple tags associated with it. This makes it easier to find mods that fit your specific interests instead of wondering wether the animal you want is in the packs section or in the animals section.

Tags

As you click through the different major categories, you’ll notice that the tags change to reflect the mods that are available in that category.

Note: Tags are still a work in progress and we’re still working on adding them to all mods. If you notice a mod that is missing tags or has incorrect tags, please let us know!

Blog

ZooBerry now has a blog: ZooBerry Blog. We’ll be using the blog to keep you updated on monthly mod archive summaries (as usual!), new features, OpenZT updates, and more.

Light Theme

We now have a light theme for you crazy people who like to burn your retinas. You can switch between the light and dark themes using the toggle in the top left corner of the left sidebar.

What’s Next?

As you can see, we’ve been a bit busy! But we’re not done yet.

Knowledgebase

We’re working on a new knowledgebase section that will contain tutorials, guides, and other helpful information for Zoo Tycoon players. We’re also planning to add a section for archived tutorials from old Zoo Tycoon websites that are at risk of being lost, or whose images or links need to be fixed.

Download and View Counters

This is an experimental feature for now and not yet live. ZooBerry is, of course, a static site, so serving dynamic information like download counts is a bit tricky. We’re working on a solution that will allow us to track downloads and views for mods. It’s not a top priority, but it might be a fun feature to have in the future.

Additions to the Archive Schedule

Recently there has been motivation to seek permission from modders directly, especially those who primarily host their mods through Google Drive and the like. For posterity, we’ve obtained permission from a few modders to archive their Drive to ZooBerry:

• Hawkkeye007
• Hendrix
• Zarawatto

Additionally, we’ve recently gotten in touch with Quivaz, one of the ZT1 modding OGs, and have been given permission to archive their mods as well. We’re excited to have them on board!

Mod Hosting

If you’re interested in hosting your mods on ZooBerry, we have a new submission form!: Submit a File. We’re also available on Discord if you would like to chat with us directly. Shoot Goosifer a message. See the footer or the sidebars for a link.

Archiving is Back!

Overall, we’re excited to finally release the new ZooBerry and we hope you enjoy the changes. Know that in this first iteration, there might be some bugs or issues that we haven’t caught yet. If you notice anything that doesn’t look right or if you have any suggestions for how we can improve the site, please let us know!

A few things to note:

• The website is in massive need of optimizations (CSS/HTML/Backend code). Nothing you can see, but it’s a bit of a mess behind the scenes.
• Mod tags are incomplete. You’ll notice that the smaller more obscure tags hardly bring up much. We’re working on it!

See you all again next month, hopefully with a new mod archive summary!