Dec 30 2009
Dear Author Site Update
UPDATED: Our amazing hosting company has spent hours debugging the WooTheme. Apparently WooTheme had some very inefficient MySQL queries and today, on New Year’s Eve, Andrew from Esosoft tirelessly examined the code so that we could keep our new look. I can’t express my gratitude to the Esosoft staff. Obviously I would recommend them to any individual looking for hosting services. I know I was a problem child but Esosoft never once made me feel bad and they went above and beyond the call of duty to fix our issue.
Thank you, Esosoft. It’s really going to be a good year.
Our old new theme apparently caused untold problems for the hosting service so we’ve taken it down. Our test site doesn’t have the same database size or traffic so it’s extremely hard to test in an exact environment. So bear with us! We’ll keep posting new content. Just look below this sticky.
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Dec 30, 2009 @ 20:23:01
oh nooooo! Web site headaches. I don’t know if this is relevant, but if you’re using Godaddy, I found they had serious problems with a wordpress theme, and once I switched, the problems went away. That might not be what you’re dealing with, but I see you have a Wp theme. Good luck and Godspeed.
Dec 30, 2009 @ 20:31:23
GoDaddy is pretty much the worst at everything, so hopefully they’re not part of the equation.
Good luck Jane. We all know you’re not a web developer so I’m sure people will be patient.
Dec 30, 2009 @ 20:31:50
JAK is getting some bang for her advertising buck, her cover shows up like a spotlight with all this white. That woman never takes a wrong step even when she doesn’t know she’s in the dance.
Good luck with getting things the way you want them.
Dec 30, 2009 @ 20:50:15
Since I really loved the new site design, I hope you can get it back and running. Good luck.
Dec 31, 2009 @ 08:53:00
Good luck! Technology issues drive me insane, and I know how frustrating they can be. Happy New Year!! :-)
Dec 31, 2009 @ 10:27:16
And another thing that might be irrelevant: I noticed when I had a gravatar, which I’d done just that morning because of the link to that website, part of the loading process to get to DA included “waiting for gravatar dot com.” When I removed my gravatar, no message. Coincidence? Or was the prevalence of an image from many of us a contributing factor in slow-loading pages? Only the shadow knows …
Personally, as long as you’re here, Jane, I don’t care what the pages look like. I’ll take DA anyway you can present it to us.
Dec 31, 2009 @ 12:12:08
I really enjoyed the new design. I hope you are able to get the bugs worked out of it. :)
Dec 31, 2009 @ 13:05:40
I have to say I find the old design much easier to navigate. I like the recent comments and industry news function which seems to be missing from the new one?
Dec 31, 2009 @ 13:12:17
@Veinglory – Industry news? I think that was a while back. I don’t have that separated out anymore. Recent comments were also in the new theme.
Dec 31, 2009 @ 13:28:29
It’s back! I really like this design. Hopefully you’ll be able to make it work.
Dec 31, 2009 @ 15:33:53
It’s a good design, very workable. I’m having a bit of trouble with Bookbuzzr when used in Blogger. Any suggestions? If you take a look at my site, click on the Bookbuzzr link, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Dec 31, 2009 @ 16:15:17
I love this cleaner-looking design. Happy to see it back, even for a little bit :). Love the longer entries, love the layout and easy-to-see navigation links.
I’m sure your experts will work out the kinks in your new design.
Happy New Year, Jane(s)!
Dec 31, 2009 @ 19:03:31
You know, I find I’m really missing your bylines at the top of each review. I hope you’ll consider bringing them back.
Best wishes for the New Year!
Dec 31, 2009 @ 19:38:18
And the grades. I liked being able to see the grade the book got without having to click through.
Dec 31, 2009 @ 21:40:51
Jane, good luck with the website stuff–you’re brave even to attempt all the changes. (Which all look fabulous, by the way. Very crisp and easy to read!)
Happy 2010 all!
Dec 31, 2009 @ 22:54:08
We installed the author name. You can see the category and the tags underneath the excerpt on the front page. We will be adding numbered comments.
Jan 01, 2010 @ 10:55:55
Yay, Andrew!
Jan 01, 2010 @ 14:39:15
Hi Edna! Waving madly to an old friend! I hope everyone’s aware they don’t have to own a Kindle to read my new books. I don’t have one and downloaded the FREE Kindle for PC and am enjoying books on my NetBook.
Jan 06, 2010 @ 20:34:51
Just FYI: my DA page (especially the floating/streaming reviews at the top — which I personally don’t like: I don’t understand what the added value is to that for me) shake when I try to open them. It is taking me, on average, 3 tries, to open an article.
Jan 07, 2010 @ 17:53:22
Same problem as Janet W. Also for some reason when the review rotated to the next one the left side of my screen went up and down, maybe resizing? Anyway, it was giving motion sickness (like the hand held cameras in The Blair Witch Project!) so I turned off scripts for the site. I’m not sure what kind of problems the no scripts thing is going to cause me, but it was the best solution I could come up with.
Jan 07, 2010 @ 17:59:34
Yes, lots of page shimmying going on. It’s not great.
Jan 07, 2010 @ 19:30:00
@Bonnie It was the animation of the featured section. I turned it off. Need to get the developer on that.
Jan 07, 2010 @ 19:48:51
It’s a cool idea, but it does make the page jump around.