If you can read this, then you know that the move is underway. I think I’ve got all the Permalinks, internal links, and images fixed. I still need to work on the category links and archive links (if there are any). Plus a little tweaking of the UI. If you have any comments about the new look, leave them here.
If you made a comment on this or the old blog this weekend, I will repost it for you. Some comments were lost in the move.
Rather than bore you with the gory details, I will just say that moving servers was about ten times harder than I expected it to be. I think it will be worth it, but time will tell.
I should be back to regular postings tomorrow.
Mostly looks good from here.
Perhaps this comes under the tweaking you will do, but in both Firefox 1.0 and IE, on desktop and laptop, your pages are wider than the screen. I’m seeing “Daily Dose of Ex” until I scroll over. Also, before the page loads, there is a green background for a bit – if there’s an equivalent of “Screenupdating = False” it would make the loading more attractive.
I was holding the good thought and hoping for only 2 to 3 times harder… hopefully you’ll have smooth sailing from here on out.
Dick, in the #rap id change the width way down – like 800px or even 700px or something. See how that looks. It does display way too wide. If you need any help this week – shoot my an email. I’m travelling for work and stuck in a hotel with nothing to do, so I’m happy to help!
Doug: I reduced the width, but now some of the images go off the screen. I’d like to make the side bar static and the content fill the rest of the page. I get the same thing with the “refresh” but I haven’t found how to fix it yet (other than scroll down and back up).
If anyone’s using IE, could you check it in that browser. The menu disappears in my IE, and I want to see if it’s just me (it should be on the left). Thanks.
Dick,
I can’t see the sidebar in IE, as you describe. It’s still there in Firefox.
The side bar is still there – scroll all the way to the bottom – whoops. The image showing the tiled sheets is pushing the menu too far out. Yuck. I’ll look into a solution.
Good catch, Paul. It shows up properly on the comments page.
It looks great in Firefox now. Fits the screen just right, all the links I tried worked, and no green background (that was not your color imho). Pretty fast too!
Looks good Dick – on the surface, it looks as though all the issues have been worked out.
I use IE6
Using Maxthon (which I think is an IE 6 based browser) there’s no menus on the front page but there’s a full set of links (the menu?) down the right hand side of the comments page.
Text and layout all looks nice and clean though.
Also, I had the old link on my favourites and that’s dumping me into an FTP type screen now. Not sure if you could have left a “divert” message there or not?
Had same issues with width. Now fixed, like the new look, change is as good as a rest and all that. Well done Dick, and well done in the Tech Blog thingy, “Just slightly less popular than Slashdot…” indeed!!!!! LOL!
Dick – your site looks pretty good to me using IE6. Seems to be much faster too.
If you haven’t yet, you might want to consider running the site through the XHTML validator that is linked on the bottom right side of your template. It will help to find any other template errors.
TJM – I’m still working on the menu thing. I’m trying to get it on the left so that large images don’t push it down like that. You’re getting the ftp type thing because you’re pointing to http://www.dicks-blog.com/excel/ (I know because I got that too). I will create a redirect that will fix that tonight, but just remove the /excel/ and it should take care of it.
Thanks for checking it out everybody. I will take your advice, John, and run it through the validator.
Somewhat releaved to see you back, Dick! New site looks good from my old IE 5.5. One point from an international perspective – how about changing the date format? I’m too old to constantly convert US dates to European. Name of the month would do – or you could convert to the ISO standard (YYYY-MM-DD) and confuse most of the planet! Keep up the good work.
Dick – clicking on your link in my favorites folder leads me to an index page, from there I clicked on “Parent Directory” to get to your home page. Something I’m missing?
The left side panel is not showing in IE or in Maxthon (yes, it is IE-based, but adds tabbing and other nice stuff). Other than that, it seems an improvement, at least in terms of speed. I used to load it, and come back to the screen in a while, but now it comes right up.
– Jon
Hey, it now remembers my name and stuff! Another improvement.
Any way to show a list of recently commented threads? Now all I see is that a bunch of people have commented on this one, but no way to see which other threads have gotten any recent attention.
– Jon
Graham – consider the date issue added to my list (ostensibly meaning that will be done soon)
Kevin – the old home page was http://www.dicks-blog.com/excel/ Just remove the /excel/ from your shortcut and it should work.
Jon – on my IE, the menu shows up on the right, in Firefox on the left. I’m still trying to figure this one out. I prefer it on the left so I don’t have to be careful with the size of my images. It seems that large images push the menu to the bottom, but if the menu is on the left, that shouldn’t happen.
I’m glad the speed is improved. That was a major motivation to moving.
Comments – I made a conscious decision to show recent comments instead of recently commented posts. The decision was to flip a coin because I couldn’t decide which would be better. With your comment, I now have a 1-0 vote in favor of the latter. Barring any other votes, I’ll switch it.
Dick – hey, thanks for listening! The site now looks very slick and I cannot believe the increase in speed
Dick –
I know you worked hard on the move, and the improvement is tremendous. You’ve also done a great job of incorporating, or at least acknowledging, all the suggestions of your loyal audience. This is what has led to your well deserved showing in the bloggers choice poll.
Keep up the good work.
(btw, can you make the comment box taller, or are you trying to encourage shorter comments, he he?)
– Jon
Yikes. That may be too big. What do you think? I set the comment text area to be 600px.
Dick –
If this is 600, then 450 might be about right. You want a rectangle with the proportions of the Golden Mean. It’s how I size all of my charts and drawing objects in my work. (yeah, right!)
Hey, it no longer remembers my name and other info. I don’t see a checkbox.
– Jon
Like the new colors! It’s really shaping up. Looks great all around, although as Jon said the comment box is now a bit too long. I would shoot for 400 or so.
Yellow left (nav) bar, white main body – nice fonts.
Looking good on Firefox.
Dick –
It’s looking very nice. I don’t even mind the tall comment box. And the last several times I’ve come here, I haven’t had to re-enter my name and email address.
Great job.