Hi everyone, I’m Joe Fulgham and I’ll be your webmaster for the evening. I was asked by Steven, David, and Paul to come in and fix up ScienceBasedMedicine.org’s web site. Some of you may recognize me from the Caustic Soda podcast, but by day I’m a web consultant.
In addition to a complete makeover and a slight reorganization of content we’re also changing the way you log in to post to the site. I wanted to spell out what the changes are and why we’re making them.
As you may have heard, Science-Based Medicine has had some web-server troubles of late. There was a fairly nasty security breach and recovering from that on a rebuilt server meant a few glitches and some connectivity problems. After a few software upgrades and a lot of tweaking we now have the server running quickly, efficiently, and with greatly increased security. That allows me to finally move forward on the redesign which if not active right now will be very soon.
Redesign
ScienceBasedMedicine.org is sporting a cutting-edge new layout that’s reminiscent of the previous one but leaner, cleaner and responsive.
If you resize your browser window you’ll note the new design automatically fits to all resolutions and devices. Visitors will no longer see a wildly different “mobile version” on their smartphones vs. desktop browsers vs. tablet devices.
I’ve also taken this time to reduce the visual clutter on the site, pushing a clean, content-focused layout. A lot of the old sidebar information has been moved to links in the menu while important navigation and fundraising sections (support Science-Based Medicine!) remain in the simplified sidebar for posts, while static information pages have enhanced navigation on the left side.
When you’re done reading the content and the sidebar doesn’t have what you need the new footer area has several choices for additional information, from the latest Tweets to Recent Posts and Comments.
Commenting
For security reasons and to reduce strain on the server we’re changing the way you log in to comment here on sciencebasedmedicine.org. We will no longer require a sciencebasedmedicine.org user account, but instead allow logging in with either a WordPress.com, Twitter, or Facebook account. Shortly after changing to this system we’ll be removing the 46,000+ “Subscription” level accounts from the server. Yes, you read that right. Yes, that’s too many for us to administrate, sorry.
Reorganization
I’m also changing the “Permalink” structure of the site to a friendlier version, as well as moving a few pages around within that structure. Old incoming links should auto-redirect to the current address so nothing should become completely broken. If it does, or you see any other errors toss an email to [mailto][email protected][/mailto] with as much information as you can give me, including relevant URIs, browser, etc.
One more blatant plug, ok? Hi Vancouver Skeptics!
Enjoy the new site!