New Front Door!

Whoa, wait a minute. I don't get a "welcome" page. What welcome page? Where? And a front door? Does it have a doorbell or somethin'?

stormie said:

Whoa, wait a minute. I don't get a "welcome" page. What welcome page? Where? And a front door? Does it have a doorbell or somethin'?

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I think she means this one: http://www.absolutewrite.com/

I don't usually see it either since I go directly to the forums.

Oh, shiny!

me likes it a bunch

Thank you, Mac, for linking me to the front door! Finally I realize that there's more to AW than the forums.
(Kidding. AW has pubbed me twice, and for that I'm thankful.)

Oh yeah! That's really spiffy. I was just thinking earlier today that the AW main page looked kinda dated. Now it's uber modern! Nice job, guys.

I'm working on stuff in between my real job, so let me know if you see weirdness.

It's going to be changing fairly rapidly; we've been working on it for quite a while.

TheRightEyedDeer said:

Oh yeah! That's really spiffy. I was just thinking earlier today that the AW main page looked kinda dated. Now it's uber modern! Nice job, guys.

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Thank you!

The old pages were so non-standard that they wouldn't work at all for a lot of browsers, and people using reader technology because of visual problems were completely shut out.

Last year we worked on getting the forums to work for people with screen readers, but it's going to take a while to clean the various Web sites up.

I generally come straight to the forums, too. But I just checked. Absolutely LOVE the new look.

Well-done, Mac, and very inviting.

Ooh, love the look but where are the articles?

bsolah said:

Ooh, love the look but where are the articles?

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They are still there. Keep in mind that I have to hand-convert the pages--they have ads that are pretty awful looking, and don't actually generate revenue, and HTML that would make a cat sick. I have to remove that by hand.

There are thousands of pages. Almost every page has a link to the Zinestar subscription service, which stopped actually adding new newsletter subscriptions a very long time ago. That needs to be removed as well.

If you've got a favorite you want me to prioritize in converting, let me know. Otherwise, I'm just going directory by directory.

Wow, Medievalist. That's one HUGE job. Are your eyes crossing yet?

Yeah, best of luck with that huge job!

TheRightEyedDeer said:

Wow, Medievalist. That's one HUGE job. Are your eyes crossing yet?

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Heh.

I was born with crossed-eyes!

In all seriousness, the crufty HMTL has meant Google simply ignores a lot of the pages, so one of the things I'm doing is generating a Google site map for the files; this will make the content--and there is some really good content mixed in with some not-so-good stuff--easier for people and Google to find.

Clean and crisp, love it!

Whoa - had a brief moment of panic - wondering where my precious AW was - then I realized what had happened and came straight to this thread. It looks GREAT. Nice job!

Medievalist said:

I'm working on stuff in between my real job, so let me know if you see weirdness.

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Looks good!

The alignment of the links on the Resources page is off and the link to Home is wierd.

Roger J Carlson said:

Looks good!

The alignment of the links on the Resources page is off and the link to Home is wierd.

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I'm working on that even as we speak.

Haskins sent me copy for Author Scoop.

I just saw the new front door today, which is odd because I usually just come straight to the forums. It looks very sharp.

I don't see anything different. *scratches head*