The MacDeskBlog

It is clear to me that I need to redesign the site now, as in very soon. I keep receiving emails from people who think the site is broken because they keep seeing just the message box at the top of the page, not realizing that the pictures are still there, just a little bit lower. This is an extremely clear indication that the expanded message box is causing problems for users, and is therefore bad design.

I’m wasting too much space at the top, and creating a false bottom by the clean break all the way across the page below the message box.

Anyway, I have big big plans for the redesign. I’ll try to break them into manageable chunks. Whenever possible, I’ll rollout incremental releases. Hopefully, this will mean incremental improvements over the coming months more than it will mean constant change and confusion.

My impending ability to work on the redesign is directly related to the improved stability of the server since yesterday. I may have fixed that bug right before I posted about needing help isolating the bug. The bit of code that I changed really shouldn’t have been able to cause the behavior I was seeing, so I’m not declaring the bug squashed yet. However, the simple fact that there haven’t been any slow database queries since I made the change yesterday, compared to a few dozen per day since I moved onto the Linux servers in early May, has me hopeful.

Also worth mentioning is that I have not cut over to the new, beefier server yet. It’s merely awaiting my copying about 20GB of pictures and site files over to it, and configuring the database and web server. Maybe this weekend, or maybe next week.

Recapping:
1. Scroll down
2. I am aware that the site design desperately needs an update
3. I actually think that I’ll be able to start that soon
4. Server stability and performance is improving, but
5. The never-responding-search bug might still be out there, so tell me if you encounter it!
6. New server still on the way, and soon.