I’ll go over all the changes and enhancements with you soon. Right now I just want to know about the problems.
If you see that something isn’t working correctly, post up a comment here and we’ll look into it.
Thank you!
January 19th, 2010
Whisky Advocate Blog
News and views from Editor & Publisher John Hansell and the Whisky Advocate Writers
John,
The new design looks nice. I especially like not having to deal with two scroll bars That was always a battle on my netbook.
However, the links to the pictures seem to be currently broken (only within posts).
john, on the mainpage (maltadvocate.com), i get “Error Retrieving Recent Blog Posts” message on the top left corner of the screen.
also, the indention of the graphics is off on the right side of the main page. there is also a lot of blank space on the right side – definitely uneven with the left. for what it’s worth, i have a 24″ widescreen monitor that i’m looking at.
JWC, have the issues been corrected?
Aside from the error JWC mentioned, I don’t see anything wrong from my point of view. But I’m not using a netbook or a 24″ monitor. I’m just average.
Looks great!
I don’t see this post in my blog reader. Did the RSS Feed URL change?
M
The RSS feed is one of the glitches we’re working on. Thanks!
Ok, scratch that. I see the scroll bars that BEN mentioned. When I link to the blog from the MaltAdvocate main page, the blog is inside a left/right up/down scroll box. Display size doesn’t seem to be the cause.
This is an update from my tech guy:
1. The loading slowing comment is probably due to caching. We will add caching to the template code, so common elements with pull from the user’s local cache which should increase the load speed significantly.
2. The image load issue is related to some hard coded links within the WordPress database. We are updating these links presently and this will be resolved soon.
Thanks everyone for your comments.
Hello everyone,
John, If the banners on the site are linked to another webpage, these links are not working, it just leads to the top of the page… Just an observation in case you need the publicity links.
Good work on the new website!
John, good to see the forum on its own domain name at last and a bit wider than before. An initial thought – the name of the poster and time and date all being the same size and colour isn’t so easy to scan. I would prefer a different colour and possibly bigger font size for the name of the poster in each comment, as before. It makes it easier to scan and see who is commenting. Also there’s nothing differentiating between the name of a poster who has a link in their name and those who don’t.
Butephoto, I REALLY appreciate your feedback. I’ll see what we can do. Thanks!
No problem at all. Looking MUCH better already. Thanks!
The names are all uppercase, so I’m MRTH instead of MrTH. And I see we’re back to the double scrollers…hope that’s temporary. I’ve always hated those.
I’d prefer to see more topics per page, so that topics will hang around on the top page a little longer.
I have left comments on other threads that don’t show up, but when I try to leave another, it says it is a duplicate. (example: Find a great whisky deal? Let us in on it.)
Thanks,
Agree with MrTH about getting back more postings per page. Otherwise, a nice look.
Would it be possible for alternating posts to have a slightly different background color? An example would be how your replys have a slightly different shade of background color in the comments section.
This would help eyes see where one story starts and one ends and would lower the ammount of scan time.
Where’d the tweets go?
Michael
Mr. Manhattan, the tweets are up and working.
Brian@12 I second that. The current design is a little visually fatiguing.
I just want to let everyone know that we’re working on implementing all your comments. Thanks for the feedback and please be patient. We hope to have everything reasolved by the end of the day.
How about an optional location field along with the name.
Yay, the second scroll bar is gone!
I notice that threads with more than 50 comments begin numbering at 1 again on each new page.
Might have already been mentioned, but the latest blog posts on maltadvocate.com don’t match what is actually on http://www.whatdoesjohnknow.com
Hi John, great change. Didn’t see it in the RSS feed, so I got over here and pleasantly surprised.
Looks good, mine was the need for sidebar that shows most current comments – that helps get to things faster in my view
Hi John
The new blog template is working well. Its clear and visually not over-complicated, a good honest design which suits the content. Typographically it a lot easier to scan.
Good work.
Ugh! I find it really hard to follow discussions when the comments are displayed as they are now: last added displayed first.
Is there as way to set a preference so the comments displayed oldest (first added) to newest (last added), as they were on the old site?
Michael
Mr. Manhattan, this wasn’t supposed to happen. My tech guy is sick, but we’ll change it back as soon as we can. And yes, everything is running slowly for me too!
Thanks! (And I didn’t remember the comments being displayed this way a couple of days ago.)
I went in and fixed it. Everything should be working fine now. And I think (hope) that things are slow because of some of the “behind the scenes” work we’re doing.
Time for a drink! Thanks!
Michael
P.S. The site is also very slow today…and pages are not loading for me (OSX/Firefox).
Michael
No problem for me (OsX/Safari). Could be a temporary hiccup anywhere in the big world of internet.
But the other comment of Mr. Manhattan is very good. Please do the oldest on top. More natural.
Fixed!
Much better, so now it’s 8:20 PM, time to taste my newly arrived Lagavulin 12 CS 2009 bottling.
Hi John