Welcome to the 2009 version of writeups.org
Context
This is the message that was published to announce the 2009 evolution of writeups.org going live.
I’ve eventually decided to keep it as a post of its own.
For a history of the site, see, well, the writeups.org site history page.
Writeups.org is now gamma-powered!
The beta of the fourth version of the site can now be seen at http://writeupsorg.free.fr. The writeups.org domain will soon point toward the beta site (give it time to renew and propagate).
Now sporting a fetching green hue and massive superhuman strength and durability, writeups.org is green green green and has the following super-powers:
- *Much* more pleasant, smooth and professional-looking layout. Also, more green.
- All inset images now have stable links and are easily backuped. They won’t be destroyed or fail to display ever again. Hopefully.
- Full production server (and not a test server as with the previous version), so no more service overload error pages. Normally.
- The new entries can now be more easily explored – through a simpler access both to the update archives (“New” button) and to the result pages with the latest changes (“Updates” button). The later was previously broken, and many readers clamoured for its return !
- Faster queries from both the buttons and the search engine, more powerful navigation across search result pages
- Will be fully Googlable (see the caveats). WORG now has a working Google search engine, and the pages are going to come up in mainstream Google and other search engine result pages, which should result in considerably enhanced traffic.
As always, do feel free to link to favourite entries from your own web pages (blogs, myspace pages, posts in forums, etc.) – but see caveats. - Full, detailed, copy-edited FAQ with *tons* of content. New page with useful links.
- New display mode (“Alpha” button) offering long, unbroken lists of entries starting with a given letter. Those are also great to gain a sense of the amount of data on the site. And the best way to find the entry for people like X or V.
- More tips.
- New feature showcasing selected, clickable illustrations on the homepage
- Entries are now more pleasant and easy to read. And billions (well, it *feels* like billions) of minuscule edits have been done, and are being done, to make everything more polished.
- As part of our continuing efforts to make it easier to read long text sections, this version of the site includes the possibility to have sub-sections. Which will be used to break some history sections into chapters.
- Extremely long entries (such as Hominid’s campaign timeline) are no longer cut short.
- The “debris” files the search engines kept indexing have been search-and-destroyed.
- The bug that prevented the Bil’s Campaign entries to be searched beyond the first page will be fixed soon-ish.
- No data regression as far as I can tell.
- Lots of illustrations have been added. See the next update message.
- Google ads, which might even offer useful things when enough people are using the site.
Important caveats
A few things ain’t over:
- The reformatting of the entries is not finished. See the next update message.
- The site has not been fully tested yet (I just spotted a glitch in the search engine).
- This is a *temporary* server. Tests during the months revealed it’s not a viable for long-term use.
While we are preparing to migrate to a better machine, take note of the following:
- The domain is really writeups.free.fr — whereas the previous server had been tinkered with so that the domain seemed to be writeups.org on every single page. We will fully go back to the writeups.org domain on the next server.
- The Google search engine is going to be rather confused by all this domains tomfoolery. I’m not sure how it is going to react, really – we’ll see.
Closing note
The site should now offer appropriately slick presentation for the content written up by the ever-lovin’ DCH Mailing List contributors. And a much enhanced experience both for habitual readers.
Hopefully, it will attract further readers and contributors. Especially if the entries do show up more easily in search engines. It might also encourage contributions and comments. Getting published on a professional-looking site feels much more like an achievement.
Of course, all comments and requests for change are welcome. Whilst the coding phase is largely over, some aspects of layout and readability can still be changed in the CSSes.