A Common Reader has moved today from its old address at www.acommonreader.org.uk to its new one here at www.acommonreader.org
However the old address still works fine as I’ve done something called “domain forwarding” to point the old address at the new one. However, it would be best if any regular readers could update their bookmarks and feeds.
I’ve not transferred all the old posts over yet – but will be completing the job over the next couple of months. While doing the transfer I’ve done several things
- a new design (of course!)
- a new About page
- made all the categories and tags consistent
- spell-checked everything
- put ALT text on all the images so visually impaired people can at least read a few words describing any illustrations
- Introduced Book Depository affiliate links on all the books – I am certain that anyone buying books via this website will now get the best value possible including free postage.
The downside to this is that anyone linking directly to an article or a review will find that the link no longer works.
I have spent a lot of time over the last few months preparing this new version of A Common Reader. The main change is a move of hosting platform from Typepad to WordPress, and my reasons for doing that are partly to do with cost and partly to do with my ability to have more control over the site with WordPress.
Looking good – nice and clean … I will try to fix any links I have made to you. Good for you re ALT tags – I went back recently and tried to fix mine as I realised that I hadn’t recognised their importance when I first did them.
Hurrah! I can access your new site from work. I could never work out why your old one was blocked, some glitch in the software I imagine. Always a frustration as you cover interesting stuff.
Well, I hope to be a more regular visitor in future. Nice clean layout too, easy to navigate.
Max
Great ! I’m pleased it has some benefit to someone then. The problems of moving it have been immense I wouldn’t try it again
Tom,
If I could throw in one thought, one thing I would find helpful (though I of course understand if you wouldn’t) would be a recent comments sidebar – where I could see if older posts had new comments attached for example.
Best,
Max
Thanks Max – I’ll do that straightaway.
Hurrah! Just saw it, many thanks.
Excellent stuff, Tom. If only all book blogs were on WordPress. Never understood TypePad.
A few things: you should turn on the mod_rewrite feature in the admin screen. It’s probably called Rewrite URLs, or something there. This Takes better advantage of search engines as their robots will read text URLs (eg myblog.com/reviews/2010/02/milton-hatoum/ ) and be able to pick the words out of it for indexing in a way that myblog.com/?p=23 will never do. It also offers a bit more protection ad the current methods makes your parameters public.
Also, your About pages has a different Amazon Reviewer rank than your home page.
And a warning: be careful having the same domain registrar hosting your site. There can be a downside to this. I tend to register my domains with namecheap.com and point their DNS to my host’s servers.
Thanks Stewart – I’ll look at your suggestions and work out how to do them. Yes, Amazon have just changed all their ranking alorithms and I’ve jumped up 75 places – I’ll check all references to it. I’ve used GoDaddy for years and never had any problems with them – I have about a dozen domains, but I take your point.