All,

As you can see, there is a new look in place on the site. Clearly it is a work in progress, but I did not want to keep the site down any longer, and the other template was inviting a bunch of ne'er-do-wells to try and hack in.

The goals here were to use a much more efficient template for the site overall, to help deal with the load time issues reported by some, and to do a bit of back-end upgrading so that I can do extra caching of content (again with load times in mind). I will be tweaking the look-and-feel over the next few days, but if you have specific input please feel free to chime in.

I am also looking for some "dana" in the form of a logo for the site. If you feel creatively inclined, please post something here and we'll take a vote. If you take this challenge, I am looking for something around 320x100px.

Finally, while this bit of work should help with performance somewhat, I am still contemplating the hosting thing to see if we can get a better bang for the buck elsewhere. But that is for another day.

Looks nice!

Really appreciate the time and effort you guys are putting in to streamline the site.

Ona Kiser wrote:
Ditto. Just in case the feedback is useful, the ( new) flag in pale blue I find harder to spot on the page.

Ona Kiser wrote:
Indeed!

I liked having threads with unread posts in a different font color.

I know it's a work in progress, but I already really love having less stuff at the top of the page (announcements, banners, etc.) and the whole layout seems much less impenetrable perhaps just because it uses distinctive colors.

Tom Otvos wrote: Hi, I'll add my thanks to you guys for putting so much TLC into the site. I do prefer the boxes on the right, being at the side rather than at the top so there is less scrolling before we get to the reading.

The other thing I wanted to mention is your request for a new logo. I think any prospective artist/designer will want to know the colour scheme you want for your logo, including the background colour. These factors will make a lot of difference to the potential design. Also, is the logo to include the words "awakenetwork dot org" plus the tagline, "discussing twenty-first century dharma practice"?

Colin

hey, view-ability on my iphone is super improved. everything formats into a narrow width, so i don't have to turn my phone sideways to read. much better.

All,

I have been experimenting with alternate hosting and have found something (a) cheaper, and (b) dramatically faster for our little site. So sometime this weekend, between hockey and more hockey, I will be moving the domain to the new host. In order to do that I will need to take the existing site down so I can do a backup of the database without new changes coming in. I am not sure exactly when that will happen, but when it does you will get an "offline" message for a while. The migration will be complete when the site is...uh, no longer offline. I'll try and do some server voodoo to get you redirected to the new site even while the DNS updates worldwide.

The short version: faster, coming soon.

You rock. Thank you sooo much.

All this, and hockey, too!

If you are reading this, then you are accessing the site at the new server. I hope you notice a substantial performance improvement.

But also note your URL. If you are seeing "awakenetwork.org" in the URL, then your DNS is already pointing at the new site so you need to do nothing else. But if you see an IP address in your browser (starting with 75.98) then you are being forcibly redirected here from the old site because your DNS is not yet updated. Do not be alarmed, it will resolve itself over the next several hours.

Enjoy, and if you see any hiccups as a result of the move, please don't hesitate to contact me or Chris.

Flying fast now. Good job Tom!

speedy gonzalez!!

I'll just share this observation of this new template we are using (aside from its oh-so-zen-like simplicity). The old template was annoying me in the sense that, when I was reading topic threads and got to the bottom, I would have to scroll all the way back up to the top to click on "Recent Topics" again, to get a fresh view of what I still have not read. In this new template, the top navigation bar is pinned, so the "Discuss" menu item, which is linked to "Recent Topics", is always just there.

Nice.

And it loads so fast sometimes I reload, thinking it didn't!!

This is extremely nice, Tom, a great improvement in both speed and layout.

Congrats!

Tom wrote: Thanks Tom.

I also appreciate the PREVIEW button. Yippee!

I'm really enjoying the speed increase. I'm finding myself browsing around through old topics more than ever.

Thanks, Tom.

Wow! From an old jallopy to a new sports car! Dang, Tom, nicely done! This is sweeeeet

Tom Otvos wrote: Hi,
Just to start the ball rolling with the new logo challenge... Here is an initial bash.
Since there was nothing said about my previous questions I've made some assumptions about what you are after and what the background will look like. I also like the font you have chosen but do not know what it is called (or where you found it) so I've just used the closest in my present collection of fonts, for now.

Hiya

If you are willing to stretch the width of the logo-size (you can do this in the template configuration - ask me if you're unsure) I think this might look better than my previous attempt.



Although the font for the "awakenetwork" is OK (due to the size) I'll have to find a better one for the tag-line. If anyone can point me to the name of the font Tom has used on the site, that would be helpful.

I like not making the top banner any (much) deeper than it is - ie the second version fits nicely. I don't have any particular opinion on the lotus and such. But I like the overall style, text and proportions.

I have to be honest -- I kind of like the really simple look we have right now.

I like Colin's text/font treatment better than the current version... but it's a low priority thing, as far as I'm concerned.