Welcome To The New GottaBeMobile.com
Well, you are probably noticing that things look a little bit different today!
I am pleased to announce the launch of our new website redesign, using a much more powerful publishing engine by WordPress, a new design theme by SoloStream, and many new features that we hope you will come to enjoy over the years. There is still a large amount of work left to do, so we are considering this new launch to be “beta” over the next week to two. However, I promise that we won’t be in beta near as long as some Google products!
Before I go any further, I need to thank Matt Faulkner, Cary Philips, and Warner Crocker for their invaluable help in making this transition happen. There is no way I could have done this by myself. Between the four of us, we have put in a ton of hours and I’m proud of the team effort that was shown.
With over 6,000 articles published over the last 2 1/2 years, we had simply outgrown our previous publishing engine. Because of the recent server outages, we made it our top priority to port the existing content over as soon as possible, then address outstanding issues as a result of the move.
There are some conversion issues that you will notice right away, but we hope to address them as soon as possible:
- Links to old articles are currently broken. We are working on 301 redirects, but it will take a few days to get those in place. Even then, there will likely still be some broken links. We’ll fix those as we come across them, too.
- As hard as we tried, we could not get the blog comments ported over this weekend. We utilized a number of different BlogML conversion utilities to get the comments and experienced problem and problem with the utilities. We are not going to give up on porting those comments over, but we deemed it a higher priority to port the article content over and get the site running under a stable and more powerful platform. Your understanding is greatly appreciated.
- Most of our articles have the author byline of “admin” . We’ll be getting this addressed, too.
- Search isn’t quite as robust as we’d like, but we need to get the 301 redirects in place before implementing a Google search solution.
- The forum look and feel still matches the previous design, but we will take care of it later in the week as well.
- A drop down menu for easier navigation to find the InkShows and other news stories you want to follow.
- A redesigned logo and color scheme to match our new look and feel are also in the works.
That is just a short list of items still on our to-do list. Do let us know of things you find that are not working or any other suggestions you’d like to pass on.
On behalf of the entire team,
Rob Bushway
Editor In Chief
GottaBeMobile.com
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About the Author: As the Founding Editor for GottaBeMobile.com, Rob oversaw the growth and overall direction for content, advertising, and management of the site. Rob continues to contribute news content, InkShow video reviews, and participates in its growing forum community. Rob has been a Microsoft Tablet PC MVP since April 2004.
mohammed yousif | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
This is an excellent move and i really like the new look
keep up the good worki team GBM
kadaro
petr siska | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
A great step forward!
Michael | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
The new layout is really nice. Looks a bit slashdot’ish :-)
Just don’t forget to monitor for security issues in wordpress and patch your installation really fast. I haven’t checked where (what OS and Server) you are running this blog, but if it’s apache you might want to consider using mod_security.
@Rob: would you consider to update your review of the motion LE1700?
As you proably already know there was a minor update from core solo ulv to core2duo ulv and also the displays got updated (or just renamed?). might be time to do some comparison!? :-)
Keep up the good work!
Jim | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Pretty layout and seems really fast compared to old set up. Thanks.
Gavin Miller | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Well done on the move, site seems faster and I like the look, although the old site would stretch to fill the full screen.
Hopefully you’ll resolve all your snags soon and look forward to what the future brings!
Suzanne Shanks | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
It looks great! Thanks for the continual work you 4 guys do for us, your public!
Vasanth Dharmaraj | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
The New Site looks good.
maximilian | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Sorry to be the spoiler here but on a high resolution laptop like the T60p this just became one of these blogs with a huge amount of wasted real estate. There is more ad space widht wise on my screen than content. And as much as i love your content, presenting it in white letters on dark beackground or even green on darker green??? I am not at all afiliated with that blog but a look at http://ilovetypography.com/
might help in choosing an alternative style. I realy loved your blog because it was on a white background and not one of those many style over substance enterprises out there.
Sry for being so negative but you spoiled us all with your excellent work so far…
ouzome | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
It sounds like it was the hardest move to Wordpress ever! Comments and author names usually port over to wordpress easily…thanks for all the hard work.
JohnL | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Wow! What can I say but excellent! Thank you for all the effort went into maintaining the excellency of this site. Its no wonder most of you are MS MVPs.
Best regards,
johnl
Harry | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
The previous site was too slow in my experience. This is much faster than the older one. Design looks nice too. Good job!
Taxman | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
I’ve always liked the articles at GBM and I really like the new layout.
Mark (K0LO) | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
I like the new layout also. Dark backgrounds are easier on the eyes for those who do a lot of reading.
One small appearance glitch, however; your banner ad (Currently for Motion) is placed weirdly. As you grow and stretch the browser window horizontally the ad moves around and sometimes ends up part-way off the page to the right.
Rob Bushway | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Thanks everyone. It is good to read your comments after all the hard work.
@mark - yeah, I’m trying to fix that today - a layer issue that I don’t have set right.
MiKeN | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Love the new layout guys. Good work.
Joe | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Any reason it has to be fixed width, the way that it is? As mentioned above by Maximilian, it just doesn’t look good on a high resolution/ widescreen display.
On my 1080p desktop display:
http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=site1lw4.jpg
It gets even worse once you scroll down past the sidebar:
http://img293.imageshack.us/my.php?image=site2pn9.jpg
Cory (patecd) | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
I also like the new layout, but my feelings mimick maximilian’s on the real-estate. That Google Ads panel on the left-hand side of the front page really throws me off. When I first visited the site, my eyes weren’t drawn to the articles at all. They looked like ads to me and I overlooked them.
Overall though, I like the new look. You all have done a fantastic job.
Cory (patecd) | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
I was reading a few more posts and I was wondering…what if the Google left-hand banner on the article pages were a horizontal footer (or maybe even header) instead of being vertical on the left-hand side? Sorry…don’t mean to sound like I’m being picky.
Rob Bushway | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
I totally understand regarding fixed width vs 100%, especially when viewing the site with widescreen monitors. The theme is designed to be fixed width / centered, and unfortunately can’t be changed without a lot of work. We liked this design because of various features it offered us and felt comfortable with the fixed width aspect. We also knew that some folks wouldn’t like the fixed with.
We’ll be playing with various placements for the google ads. There are some changes we can make to the 3 column homepage, but we want to be careful in balancing ad revenue potential and readability.
Cory (patecd) | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
No worries. I entirely understand regarding the amount of work and especially the ad revenue aspect. I’ve been balancing both of these for one of my sites lately too.
The Motion ad seems to be acting much better now. Being an obcessive-compulsive person, I like its centered placement :).
GoodThings2Life | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Hey great look guys! I’m really liking the style. I do agree about the advertising real-estate, however, but with any new design comes a period of tweaking and adjustment.
Xavier | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
Looks great guys! Welcome to the WP club.
Rich | Oct 14, 2008 | Reply
I miss the time of day being posted with each entry on the home page. It helps me figure out which posts I’ve already seen. Is there any way to get it back?
Thanks in advance,
Rich
Rob Bushway | Oct 14, 2008 | Reply
@rich - I miss that, too. let me see what we can do to add that in.
Rich | Oct 15, 2008 | Reply
Rob,
Thanks very much!
Rich
quesadillaap | Oct 15, 2008 | Reply
I LOVE LOVE LOVE the new layout, so much easier to read through. Also I just wanted to say, I love your site and I get so much in depth information, keep up all the good work guys!
DBear | Oct 15, 2008 | Reply
Sorry, but I agree with the naysayers on the new look. I find the entries quite cramped compared to the previous ones (I’m using a Lenovo X60), and I miss the ‘all in one’ feeling from before–where I got more text, pictures, and the author of the post. I found the previous layout much more engaging and usable.
Scott | Oct 16, 2008 | Reply
I also have to agree with some of the others in saying that I do not like the look of the new site. For me I have to put in more effort to find which stories are new and that I am interested in reading.
tjalm | Oct 21, 2008 | Reply
New Layout:
First impression: wtf, please no!
Then I looked around a little and still, I just hate it.
Sorry to say so guys. I’ve been involved in a lot of website engineering and this is just not good enough compared to the old layout. Maybe it makes things easier for you, but I bet most people have a hard time figuring out where exactly the content is and why everything is so narrow and confusing.
Dark backgrounds, not the best thing to do.
Just had to add this comment, even though the post is outdated.