Whew, after an intense day of learning new widgets (and kitten training) I think we have all systems go for the Beat V. 4.0. The response has been great over all.
A few people miss the all-in-one page layout—I think it’s possible to create a page that presents it all in this fashion and in the next round of tinkers I’ll look into that.
In the meantime, we’ve developed these top areas to spotlight breaking news and columns and other above the fold stuff, but all the posts in their posting order can be seen just by scrolling down a little, so you won’t miss a nice art or a joke or one of those posts about how to buy a mop that everyone is a fan of.
Speaking of that stuff, one of the great things about this new beat is that finally ALL of the content from 2006 on is in one place! For a long time I had a mirror site called whenmonkeysattack.com for the old stuff that couldn’t be imported here, but that site will be phased out, and that url will be used for something else new and exciting.
Another big improvement: the mobile version looks great on an iPhone and the regular site is very readable on the iPad. All part of this bold new world of mobile I keep hearing about.
I want to thank everyone for sticking with us through all the crashes and outages and 400 error messages. It’s been incredibly frustrating at times, and I’m incredibly grateful for everyone who hung in there.
And now, if I can just ask for one more way to help The Beat: if it isn’t much trouble, like us on Facebook, tweet us, and give us a Google+ link. Especially the latter as Google really loves those popular Google+ links. Of course we’ll be presenting as much top notch content, breaking news, thought provoking analysis and pictures of lovable kittens to earn these social media thumbs ups, but all of it will definitely help the site recover from the dark old days.
In the future, I’ll be stashing away a special fund for site maintenance, so when problems crop up they can be quickly fixed. The longer I do this, the more I learn about what goes on under the hood, but the web never stays the same. But hopefully everything will be stable for a good long time — meaning about six months in internet time.
Of course if you have any other suggestions or complaints or general words of praise, the comment box is OPEN. Full speed ahead!
Well, I tried searching for an old article to reference, and the Google result led me to a 404 error.
https://www.comicsbeat.com/&sa=U&ei=5FxbT_vZHIqcOsyviJsN&ved=0CCMQFjAGONIB&us/page/148/www_comiconn_com/page/24/
(Why didn’t it index the actual post? Dunno.)
But then I scrolled down, clicked on the May 2012 link, and after scrolling backwards, found the actual post. Where is the old calendar?
(And where is the Comics Beat Google Plus page?)
Good looking site and good features, too. Well done! And yes, I will click the Like Button and spread the love.
It didn’t index the actual post because the long outages have removed search results for now. Part of the reason the site will need to be reestablished in search results.
I really like the new look. I’ll post your blog on my Facebook.
Nice! I love it! Great job. I actually can find more of your recent articles than before. I also like reading text on a white background. Haven’t tried it from a mobile device yet, but I’ll take your word for it that it’s nice. The effort is appreciated.
I read this site primarily on my Android phone and the new layout cuts off a few letters in down the right side of my screen.
Looks great on my computer browser, but when I followed a link off of Twitter on my iPod touch, everything was cut off slightly on the right, and I couldn’t zoom in or out to adjust.
I kind a miss the old template to be honest. More homey & cozy in a way. Could have just been tweaked to look nicer. This is clean but a bit antiseptic… like iFanboy or Comic Book Resources but with out the crinkled blue paper background. It does fits the ads more cleanly now but there are so many & widgets etc., I get confused. Perhaps consider making it 2 columns (1 big, small)instead & de-widget it a bit. Hire a guy to just tweak things in the child theme, fonts, columns, css styles. all adjustable and its not a fortune…Or if you a re going to pack it all this stuff, expand the page size another 300 pixels, it’ll just wrap in mobile anyways.
Love the new design!
Just like what every comics blog should look:
A twitter feed without all the annoying artwork to get in the way!
Well done!
Congrats on the successful server move!
It’s nice to finally have something a bit more mobile-friendly, and I just want to say thank you for letting the old links redirect to the new ones. (I’ve linked to many articles here over the years.)
On that note, my link checker turned up about a dozen links here that are 404ing or (in a couple of cases) redirecting to another article. I’ve only tried to track down a few of them manually, but haven’t had any luck – I wonder if a few articles may have missed the transition. Would you like me to send you a list of the links?
Kelson — that would be great! There seem to have been a few things lost. I’m not going to drive myself nuts but I’m going to try to restore a few of the important ones.
Cool. I’ll send them to your Gmail contact address.
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