(news and commentary)
Thanks for all the feedback on the new site. So that I don't have to go into detail in responding to every email I've been getting, here are a few things to note:
- As I find real problems (missing links, wrong links, etc.) I'm fixing them in place. You may not even notice that these are being done unless you're an eagle eye. I've already done about a dozen of these.
- For the next week or two there are still going to be some disruptions to the new site. I've got to move some things from one server to another, there are still a few lingering DNS and Web Filter issues that are lingering, and I haven't yet deprecated the old site, so in some cases you can be flashed back and forth between new and old and back to new. As you might imagine with thousands of pages, trying to do everything all at once is nearly impossible. It'll take me a bit more time to get these low-level things all iterated correctly.
- My major goal for the coming week is to get the byThom books back up and available on the new site. That probably means fewer articles this week than would be normal, but this is a short-term disruption.
- A number of comments have been about things that are controlled by CSS (cascading style sheets). While I'm collecting a list of things I'd like to address in the CSS code, I won't be making any CSS changes until I'm absolutely sure that structure and content are all settled down. Some of the CSS changes are also getting outside my expertise, too, so I'll probably need to get a consultant in to make all the changes I really want done. That will take a bit of time to get right.
- Now that the structure is in place, I'll be bringing over even more of the old content that should be here. Yes, as some of you have noted, a couple of things went away temporarily. If they belong here, they'll get here eventually ;~).
- The one thing that seems to have stumped a few of you is that lens reviews seem to be missing. See this page, scroll down, read what it says, and get the reviews from there if you need them. The problem is that I don't want reviews that haven't been thoroughly checked for the current state-of-the-art cameras (24mp DX and 36mp FX) to live in the new site structure or format. As I update those reviews, they'll get moved over here.
I'd also like to give a shout out to all the folks I work with at B&H. They've been fully supportive of me as I made all these changes, and I appreciate that. They've even changed and modified some of their tools that we site providers use behind the scenes when I pointed out that they weren't optimal for what I needed. I really appreciate their support, and hope that you at least follow some of the ubiquitous B&H links on the site once in a while.
As the exclusive advertiser on my sites, B&H's support is one of the reasons I can keep my content free and visible to all. We had a number of discussions along the way on how to integrate their advertising without it being a visual nuisance or detract from the content. I hope you agree that we've found a pretty good compromise, and we're trying to keep the advertising relevant to the content being displayed, too.
