Heads up: Site improvements in progress

If you notice anything odder than usual this afternoon – a link takes you to a dead end, for example – please forgive us; our ace technical consultant has been working on some site improvements. Most have been very behind-the-scenes but there’s one you may have noticed already: After four years, we are finally getting rid of the default URL (website address) style that among other things had the word “blog” twice and identified each story only by number. From hereon out, URLs will include words from the story headline or page title, as they do on most websites, and the second incidence of “blog” is gone – so the WSB Forums, for example, are no longer at “wsb.blackfin.biz/blog/forum” but instead at wsb.blackfin.biz/forum. If you bump into any bugs along the way, PLEASE let us know by posting a comment here or e-mailing editor@wsb.blackfin.biz – thank you. A few other improvements are in the works, so thanks for your patience, and stay tuned.

Mark January 11, 2010 (3:18 pm)

can links NOT “open in new window”?

WSB January 11, 2010 (3:37 pm)

Re: opening new windows/tabs – That is a topic about which we feel very strongly, realizing that some folks disagree. Since unlike many news sites we usually include a copious quantity of links to facilitate exploring, it’s left us acutely aware of a problem that’s bedeviled us time and time again in our 16 years of Web-wandering, getting stuck way far away from the original site. So that is why it is part of our site design. I’ve seen some sites where you can check a box on the home page to choose how you want links to open; not an option for us at the moment but maybe sometime down the road … tr

Diane January 11, 2010 (3:34 pm)

I actually would prefer everything open in new window
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that aside; will we be able to access old story links that have been saved?
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that are many past stories and forum posts that I have saved with original links; would really hate to lose that

WSB January 11, 2010 (3:42 pm)

Yes. That’s what I was trying to say above and if it didn’t come out that way, forgive me. We’ve been working on this with the very specific intent/expectation that nothing will break – between the Forums, the news items and comments, there are more than 160,000 individual items on this site (not to mention images and other components with distinct URLs), and EVERYTHING should still work. If you encounter anything that does NOT work, please let me know!

Diane January 11, 2010 (3:39 pm)

the site currently seems to be working much faster than usual; that’s outstanding

Brian January 11, 2010 (3:42 pm)

I appreciate tr’s concerns, but web coding standards are on Mark’s side. New windows are to be chosen by the user, not the server.

Jason January 11, 2010 (4:39 pm)

If you want a link to open in a new Tab, just hold down the CTRL key while you click the link (COMMAND on the Mac). Problem solved!

Digidoll January 11, 2010 (9:08 pm)

Still a little buggy on the mobile/iPhone version, especially the forums layout. The forums are pretty obviously broken, so I’ll just point out on the blog side there is a missing date above this comments box (“Comments will be closed on 4:39pm.” is what it says), and let your code gurus look at the forums for themselves (on an iPhone, of course).

And, you guys are gonna DOMINATE on the SEO side (not that you don’t already) with your switch to using words instead of numbers in your URLs!!! Such a minor change (isn’t it just a setting in WordPress?), with huge benes! It’s really amazing what goes on behind the scenes to make a web site great, aside from the obvious breadth and depth of the content, and how that is generated. Way to be proactive (and report) on the less obvious side of what we all take for granted when we read this site!