Tomorrow morning (around 10am Eastern) we’re going to start to transition the blog over to a refreshed site.
There’s not going to be a lot that’s substantively different, at least at first. The biggest changes are to the ‘guts’ (yes, that’s the, um, technical term) of the site. It will let me:
- Better organize information and allow it to be searched
- Be more responsive for mobile devices, only about 55% of you are reading this on a desktop of laptop and the site hasn’t been redesigned since around 2009.
- Build more features in the future.
For now thought all you’ll see is a bit of a fresher and more modern face. I’m sure there will be a few hiccups as I learn how to work with it.
My goal was to make it readable, not to make it too much ‘busier’ than the current site and in fact to make it a bit less busy with links that aren’t scattered all over the place.
What this means for Saturday morning:
- The site will remain up.
- In fact, I will continue to publish new content, so keep reading!
- Comments will be turned off briefly. That way nothing gets lost during the transition. (If you left a comment on the old site, after data starts getting moved to the new one, we’d have lost your comment. And that wouldn’t be fair, plus I might not see what you wrote.)
Anything different will seem strange at first, especially for the most loyal readers out there… those of you who remember the blog like this:
Or even like this:
(Oh who am I kidding? Nobody read my writings back in 2002..)
Regardless, the content won’t change. I’ll do my best to cover the things I find most interesting each day, broadly conceived, and I’ll keep loving every minute of the fact that so many of you keep deciding to read it.
Just think of this as a heads up, for those who don’t like change, that the website will look a little bit different at some point on Saturday, and that nothing’s amiss if comments are turned off for a couple of hours. Back soon!
I’m no expert on website design, but VFTW seems to load my old computer much more than a typical web page. I don’t know if it’s too much Javascript or too many high-bandwidth ads, but whatever it is I’ve learned to keep only one VFTW tab open at a time.
I hope the new site reduces the computer overload.
I remember 2004 version very well with “Hi, this is me” pic!
Will miss the minimalist look. It added underground cred.
I know you discussed a refresh last year. I thought you decided against it. Better searching ill help because sold of the older articles just seem to disappear into the current website. I am sure it will be a good improvement for you.
I like the new site Gary, congrats. Looks very nice and organised indeed. Awesome job.
Love the new look!
@Gene – heck, even *I* had forgotten that!
Really enjoyed the “heads up” post last night about your new look. Instead of being surprised, I woke up looking forward to viewing your site. Thank you and it looks great.
I like it, a lot. Crisper, with clear demarcation lines between the posts…and the post YEAR of each blogpost is now provided! 😉
Looks good Gary, Keep up the good work!
@DJP_707 thank you!
@DCS – i did listen on that… 🙂
@Daniel – thank you very much..!
@Charlie & @Elena – appreciate the kind words!
On the previous site, I was able to “spread” the webpage on my iPad so the letters were larger and easier to read. The one big advantage of reading on the iPad was the ability to adjust the page larger but now it is “stuck” on some standard format, and every blogger on boardingarea seems to be doing this, and without making the print larger, making it harder to read.
Looks great, Gary! Well done!
@Karen apologies, I always just adjust the size of my browser zoom, so never noticed this
Please please allow the full post to show up in an RSS reader. Blogs where I Have to click through to the website causes me to read far less of their posts.
Agreed on RSS, formatting is all screwed up and no full posts. Miss the old format.
Love the new design including mobile responsiveness.
Hate the truncated RSS feed. Far less likely to read the posts where the headline doesn’t tell me it’s super-relevant to me. Takes much longer to click through to 10 posts/day instead of having it all on one “New Posts” scroll in my RSS feed. If you’re worried about as impressions, just insert the adds into the RSS.
Ugh, autocorrect. “As” and “adds” should be “ad” and “ads”.
Gary, the location of the “Featured Articles” section is really distracting. At first glance, it makes it look like a bunch of posts were lost. Other than that, I like the new look, though.
Very nice/clean redesign! And the mobile version looks great too. Two little nits…. (1) I agree with the commenter above that the “featured articles” are distracting and out of place. They sort of interrupt the reverse chronological flow of you posts. (2) I’m sure you’re aware of this already, but all formatting gets lost on the main page, which results in a screwy preview of the news and notes posts. This seems to be a very frustrating aspect of many wordpress themes, though hopefully your technical team can find a way for the main page to retain formatting elements.
Gary – I’m a new follower of your blog. Been actively reading for 6 – 8 months. Someone above referenced the addition of the year to older posts. Great idea as when I go back I have no idea how “fresh” the blog is I’m reading – information may well be outdated. Do you have an index that is collated so if I enter revenue based FF program v mileage based FF program I get sent to all the previous blogs dealing with this topic in descending order (most recent first)? This would be very helpful as I try to learn about the business. Now I find I’m saving every daily summary so I can go back and find pertinent articles when I need them.
Thanks for all the info and ideas the past 6 – 8 months. I’ve taken some incredible trips!!!
New site looks good Gary! Keep up the good work!
I will be in the minority here but please, please go back. It was so much easier to read in the prior format.
Refreshed site looks great, Gary! Haven’t look at it yet via mobile but nice to hear it’s going to be better.
Uh, I think some of us WERE reading back in 2002, no?
I’d like to cast another vote for allowing RSS readers to display the full content (as it did before the
redesign). Not doing so is a significant efficiency loss for every RSS reader, every time they read one of your posts — must add up to lost lifetimes within a day….
Like the design. Hate the truncated RSS. More likely to read similar info on other blogger feeds instead of coming here first like in the past.
Let me join the chorus on the RSS truncation. I tend to skip blogs that don’t display their full content.
Please return the full posts to the daily emails / RSS. I read most of your posts on the plane or other places with no Internet, and this literally precludes me from reading them. In all honesty, I don’t really care what the site looks like as I read most of what you write on my phone – via RSS. I know you need to monetise traffic to the site, and people like me are probably sucking your ad revenue because we don’t go to the site to read it.. but yeah. Please put the full posts back.
Looks great but…
+1 for fixing RSS feeds. They’re truncated, and what text there is has no formatting. I would much prefer the complete, formatted post, which is how it used to work.
But if your goal is to require (rather than merely encourage) people to click through, you need to at least provide a summary of the post. Your CMS probably supports this out of the box. Of course the first few words of a post, without formatting, plus one of your Upworthy-style headlines is *not* a summary.
p.s. you seem to have developed a liking for Upworthy-style headlines. Every site that uses these headlines is demonstrating contempt for its audience (“If You Want Real Consumer Protection for Frequent Flyer Programs, Here’s the One Change We Need”, “One Simple Upgrade Trick I Just Learned”).
Another +1 on RSS. Just received my daily e-mail and was so disappointed. Lucky switched to this way of cutting posts and I certainly read much less of him since then. It’s so inconvenient that I can’t just read the full articles in my Outlook or on the mobile phone but instead have to open up each article that seems potentially interesting. Please allow full posts in RSS.
I have a pretty strict policy of not following blogs that truncate their RSS. I realize that everyone wants page clicks, but I already apply through affiliate links as a way of giving back. I’d be sad to stop reading VftW as you were the very first travel blog I ever started reading six years ago; but I’m not going to get annoyed every time a post comes up that I want to read. Please change back!
Gary, I’m just going to echo what a few other people have already mentioned and ask that you stop truncating the RSS feed. I often follow through to read or comment anyway but it’s really annoying to be forced to do that. Do like the clean look of the site though.
I do not read sites without full RSS as I have Google Newsstand pull the data for me to read on the bus (where data service is not 100% reliable).
+1 for bringing back full text RSS please
The truncation also cuts off in the email newsletter….
+1 RSS reader feed fix!!
Truncated RSS feed means unsubscribe is pending. Was that a conscious change?
+1 for fixing RSS feeds. There are too many blogs to follow and I’m unlikely to click through and wait for a page to load. I also like to read blogs offline sometimes, for example when I’m in the air, etc. Are you after readership or ad revenue? If the latter, I’m sure you can insert ads into RSS feeds. People will still click through to comment or read comments on stories that interest them.
Another +1 for full posts in RSS, not abbreviated posts. I appreciate your work, and I believe you should profit from it (sincerely!), as such, I have gotten some credit cards from your links and I have sent the same links to friends who have also used them. But I read frequently updated sites (i.e., blogs) from an RSS reader exclusively and if they don’t have the full post, it’s inefficient, I slowly stop reading them, and I start reading other blogs in the same space…
Going to echo the complaints about RSS truncation. Big negative for me, and also a bit disingenuous of you not to mention it in this post. Please bring back the full feed. Will definitely consider unsubscribing if that doesn’t get restored.
@Zach – as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this was a bit unintended, and it’s really been two different issues.
Not being disingenous, I had understood the existing settings would carry over. However,
(1) the formatting was screwed up, I think we’ve got that addressed going forward (it was pulling from an ‘excerpt’ field, not finding the excerpt and so just pulling the beginning of the post’s texts without formatting). Apologies for the delay in this over the weekend, that was my fault in getting it sorted.
(2) Showing partial posts. Again, not what I intended but now that we’re a couple of days into it I want to look at whether it increases or decreases engagement withe the site. It’s actually net net giving up revenue to truncate posts (as I explained in more detail in another reply) so question is whether users overall engage the blog more or less and I’ll know soon, since there’s this natural experiment anyway. Stay tuned.
Another +1 for full posts in RSS. I’m another one who does my blog reading exclusively through RSS, and I generally tend to skip over the truncated ones when I’m short on time. Frustrating because I’ve found your content to be really valuable. It appears to me that the formatting is still pretty bad, even though your comment indicates that it was fixed.
Gary: I read vis RSS feed and posts since the change are truncated – any way to revert to full view in RSS? Thanks!
another +1 on RSS full feed – not that you asked 🙂
Rest looks great! Thanks as always.
I’m pulling you from my RSS; let us know if you end up fixing your formatting and getting rid of the click-bait headlines. It’s an insult to long-term readers. Spare us the “experimentation.”
“So much so that I’ve decided to rename this website… Continue to see the new name!”
Give me a break, dude.
With only the partial post in RSS, I have to evaluate the story on 40 words to decide it is worth the now considerable hassle of reading to the end. I’ve dropped most of the feeds that do this, it is a CONSTANT reminder of the drive to convert ad revenue from readership.
http://viewfromthewing.com/2015/04/06/tsa-we-actually-know-you-arent-a-security-risk-but-pay-us-or-endure-screening-hell-anyway/
The entire text of your RSS summary of this story was:
“The TSA is about to make big changes to PreCheck that may prevent you from getting expedited screening. You’ll never believe why they’re doing it, and what you might have to do to keep it.”
You’ll never believe how quickly I unsubscribed from the RSS feed when I saw you were doing Upworthy-style “you’ll never believe what happened next” ledes. They’re shabby and manipulative, and they demonstrate contempt for your readers’ time and intelligence.
OMG, the new design is really ugly. It’s even worse than recent The Point Guy’s blog redesign. Please, please, please, reverse it back to good old look 🙂