I’ve been working with Ron and Bambi on a number of tweaks to Mac360; throwing out old code, inserting new code, and adding new graphics and links to navigation.
We’ve added a few tweaks to the Forums, too.
There’s post anchors, permalinks to each post, new features in the user control panel section, new member search on the member list, and more. Navigation should be easier, too.
The whole site still runs off a Mac, and we hope to have additional goodies over time. Some of the code remains from the beta site back in early 2004.
We have fairly recent (Bambi?) photos of everyone at Mac360 except for Jack and Ron. Men!! I have to admit Ron’s is the best of the group.
We have one major feature we’d like to employ-- more frequent daily updates. Our current process is legacy from the early days when Bambi and Tera would write something, send it to Ron who would produce the graphics to match, then publish the article. That’s a laborious process for Ron as each graphic can take 15-minutes to half an hour or more to produce.
So, we’re looking for a better way to add articles, reviews, and commentary without graphics, yet integrate the pieces into the Forums. Any ideas?
There’s more to come. Thanks for helping us out on the forums.
The changes you’re making to Mac 360 are subtle but obvious when you look closely.
For example, on graphics, I’ve noticed the graphic photos on the home page, article pages, and forums. The navigation bar has been updated, too. The forums have a couple of handy items that I like, particularly the post permalink.
The site stays familiar after Tera’s death, but continues to improve and change.
I especially appreciate the distinct personalities of the Mac 360 staff. Looks like Kate is as sassy as Tera, and I’m glad to see the others step in to help out. Running a popular web site is work.
As someone “special” often said, ”There’s no improvement without change.” I look forward to, and welcome, the changes already implemented here, as well as those on the horizon. Some will work, others not so much, but the time and effort put into them is very much appreciated, at least by this member / reader . Kudos and Thanks to All of you keeping Mac360 on track and focused!
There’s a few new items this week, and if my To-Do List from Kate is any indication of the future, there’ll be more changes.
We’ve modified the Forums a bit to include a special Members Only section, which will be moderated by Kate and Ron (that would be me). This is a bit risky, but we hope to provide sufficient “personal response” from the Mac360 team to make it worthwhile to members, and entice other readers to register and login. The Members Only section is visible only when you login.
Obviously, the Mac360 Home Page is a bit different. There are now links from the home page to special topics in the Forms, and photos of everyone on the Mac360 staff.
By the weekend, I’ll have a Members Only home page completed. If you’re a member and logged in, the Mac360 home page will be different than what non-members will see.
Thanks to Kate for some of the colorful graphic touches here and there. I have one major item for reconstruction, and that’s to move to CSS layout, instead of basic XHTML layout with tables. Frankly, that’s a bear and I’m halfway there. Anybody out there a CSS whiz?
I’ve noticed a thing, lately. The causes might be two, but the result is one… the forum pages get generated in more time, up to twice as before.
The two causes might be more cpu load due to new visitors, or more cpu load due to heavier code.... :-|
It’s still a low time, but i think it’s a good thing to point out this kind of stuff before it gets noticed by everybody with big slowdowns…
Alex, I haven’t noticed any change in the Forums page-load times on my Mac, but I’ve got broadband cable. I know there haven’t been changes to the Forums code other than graphics and a couple of links here and there. That won’t affect page-load times.
The only thing I can think of is page-caching. Ron tells us that the Forums pages are NOT cached at all, while the rest of the site caches pages for an hour at a time, except for ads.
*shrug*
I woke up this morning and noticed more graphics changes to the home page, and I know Kate is working on adding photos for Jack, Carol, and perhaps Jeff.
I’m not talking about loading time, but about generating time
At the bottom of the page, there is a counter (just above the RSS and Atom links) and currently it says “Script Executed in 1.2128 seconds”, while before it was something more like 0.6-0.8 seconds.
Those values are indeed small and won’t dent the loading time in a noticeable way, but planning on growth, that’s a bad sign…
Alex, that’s probably a combination of two things. The first is the move to a Mac vs. a Linux server. Mac OS X, even on a G5, is not a fast server, espeically with uncached MySQL requests. The second may have to do with increased readers on the site. The main site actually speeds up during heavier loads as pages and queries are cached, but not so with the Forums. I’ll stick the same counter on the footer of other pages so we can compare.
Update:
Done. I’ll leave it up today to check status. Uncached home page should render in about 3 - 4 seconds, half that when cached, even less under load. Uncached article pages should render in a couple of seconds, and about a second when cached. SQL query caching makes a big difference, and improves page render time when the site has plenty of hits, as opposed to fewer hits. Server rendering time is different than browser rendering.
With just an exception or two, we’re done with the latest round of updates to the Mac360 site. Code is fully XHTML and CSS compliant. The home page has links and articles integrated to the Forums. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, there’ll be an extra row of Forums links on the home page. I’m still working on a few Members Only tweaks, but won’t put those out until Bambi’s finished with the new iPod contest details.
Prior to these changes, each visitor to the site used about 225k in total pages and graphics (not including ads), and that’s down to less than 150k per visitor, so bandwidth usage and server effort is greatly reduced. With extra links here and there, each visitor reads almost two pages per visit.
The only serious layout issue we’ve run into with all these changes is an attempt to use a pure CSS layout and retain the same look and feel. That’s a challenge. Doing the standard head, foot, and three columns is easy enough, but dropping in CSS layout for the home page rows is a bear. We can get the code to validate standard CSS for the home page, but it just looks like crap in Windows Internet Explorer. What doesn’t?
Most of the Mac360 folks do their vacations early in the summer, so we’re expecting to continue work on the Mac360 redesign by end of summer. Color scheme is likely to remain similar but more functional, wider to handle wide screens.
In the interim, we have a few site surprises, too, especially from Alexis, who wants to create a Mac site like NoodleMac but featuring only free Mac software. I hope she expands it to include free software for iPhone.
Most of the Mac360 folks do their vacations early in the summer, so we’re expecting to continue work on the Mac360 redesign by end of summer. Color scheme is likely to remain similar but more functional, wider to handle wide screens.
In the interim, we have a few site surprises, too, especially from Alexis, who wants to create a Mac site like NoodleMac but featuring only free Mac software. I hope she expands it to include free software for iPhone.
This site has undergone a number of changes through the years, starting as a blog by Tera, now a full-fledged web site with multiple writers. I like the color scheme. It’s unique. So is the layout of the home page. Please keep both when you do a full-on redesign of the site.
. Kudos and Thanks to All of you keeping Mac360 on track and focused!
