Uncategorized

New Look & New Digs

6 Comments

Well, after a couple days of intense computer time and the scorn of Mrs. Billfer, DTW has received an upgrade. In addition to the redesign which is glaringly obvious, I moved the blog from Blogger to WordPress. Here’s what I’m hoping the benefits will be:

  • Improved readability: The site is now optimized for a 1024X768 resolution, as opposed to not being optimized for any resolution before. For the 85% of you with monitors bigger than 800X600 this should mean more usable real estate. Oh yeah, the humongous banner is now smaller.
  • Better integrated commenting: The comments will now appear right on the page with the post. The pop-up is gone. Hopefully this will make it easier for you guys to participate in the discussion. The benefit to me is that your comments will appear on the page – which gives the site more content for search engines to puruse. Thankfully, I was able to import all 1353 of your comments so none were lost.
  • Improved Navigation: It should be easier for you to find things on the site. It will be easier to move between posts, and there will be better searching. Additionally, WordPress offers category support. Now currently nothing is categorized (and the chances of me going back through the various posts is slim), but newer posts will be categorized logically.

The benefits for me are that everything becomes easier. My blog had simply outgrown Blogger, so even simple changes had become cumbersome. The new design also allows for more & better ad placement. I hope the ads don’t offend anyone. However, I spend a great deal of time on this site, so if I can make a couple bucks I’m going to try.

Now the drawbacks of major overhauls are that sometimes things break. If you have a 800×600 monitor, and go to an older post with a bigger picture/table, things will be screwy. I apologize for that, and please let me know if you see anything. Also, the import didn’t treat some tables kindly. I’ve manually fixed some already, but again, if you find anything let me know the post that’s giving you the problems.

I think that all the links to old content should still work. If you’re coming to really old content, you may hit a page that looks like the old design. I wasn’t able to line up all the links exactly, so I kept a couple old pieces around.

With that, I look forward to your feedback.

And most importantly, have a great holiday season! I’ll be back with more posts next week.

6 thoughts on “New Look & New Digs”

  2. Site looks nice. The ads are no problem, either; visible but unobtrusive.

    By the way, hi, not sure I’ve commented here before, but I read regularly.

  3. Very nice upgrade. I was beginning to wonder why you guys were still on blogger… I’m liking this, very much so. Happy Festivus/Merry Christmas/Happy Chriskawanzakah Holidays.

  4. Thanks for the feedback guys. Cathryn, I’m glad to have you here and feel free to comment more.

    Rip, the reason I was still on Blogger was inertia. Blogger served me well for a long time. Plus, I was apprehensive about losing content and comments in the transistion. I was also worried about permalinks still working and screwing up being the #3 SERP when googling for Detroit Tigers. All that said, I’m glad I made the switch.

  5. I guess there were some display issues for 800×600 and 1024/768 screen resolutions using IE. I hope I’ve taken care of them. If you experience any problems, let me know.

    On a side note, I really, really recommend Firefox instead of IE 🙂

Comments are closed.