Thank you for all the comments and suggestions on this new site. As with anything new, there is always a breaking in period. Here's an update on some of the things that have come up:
- Menus: In Opera and some versions of Internet Explorer, the menus are transparent, not opaque. I'm investigating what it will take to fix that. Unfortunately, this is something that's applied outside my database (e.g. in the theme I'm using), so it may be awhile before that gets fixed. Meanwhile, a number of you have asked about length of menus. This is something that's under my control. Look for me to slowly work towards aggregating items in the menus so that there aren't too many things in one menu. This means a deeper menu heirarchy, but one that should fit on most screens (can't vouch for smartphones). Short term fix for News/Views: just click on the News/Views in the menu bar (i.e., do not try to pick an individual menu item). This should give you a page with all the news/views with the latest item being first.
- Misspellings, missing page: I corrected a small number of words that were confusing or misspelled. The Contact Page is now present, though it hasn't been thoroughly tested yet. Also, I've added my email contact info to the footer for the time being.
- Missing information: A number of things haven't made it from my database to the site yet, as I haven't proofed them, or in a couple of cases, finished them. So Leica is missing in the camera, lenses, and accessories category, as is Pentax Q.
- Articles: There's a new article today, and there will be many more coming.
- Multiple sites: This boat has sailed. As I've noted in private messages to a few of you who asked for a single site, I don't think it's possible. Not in the physical sense, nor in the practical business sense, either. The sum total of what I've written and will be posted in the next few months works out to hundreds of long articles, hundreds of reviews, thousands of short articles, and much, much more. That sprawls across at least five broad categories of products, and that doesn't count semi-related things like travel. The question that some of you raise is "do I have to look at multiple sites to see what you've wrote?" Yes and no. Once everything is in place, I do have a strategy for making things more cross-visible. This is not a problem I alone have. Virtually every deep content site on the Internet has had to deal with what happens when the volume of material starts burying the trees for the forest. So I guess my comment is this: I actually tried the monolithic site idea. I didn't think it worked. I think this new approach will work better. Give it a chance. If it doesn't, it'll be back to the drawing board to find a better answer.
I've also been looking closely at the Google Analytics for the site. First, the site had about 11,000 unique visitors in the first 12 hours. That's refreshing to see. I hope that I can continue to provide enough interesting content so that you'll all return and that the site traffic will stay reasonably high. By far the two items that got the most reads were my Olympus E-P3 review and the few Nikon 1 things that are on the site (summary information, mostly). Those latter folk will be happier later this week when I get around to posting some more about the Nikon 1, including my review of the J1 model. Overall, it was a reasonably healthy launch. It's now up to me to make it stay healthy.
Again, thanks for the comments. I appreciate them all, both positive and negative. I do try to carefully listen to what my readers say, though I may not always act on an individual comment. So, keep the comments coming. Just try not to pile on to known problems ;~).
