New Art of Drink Website

Well, some of you may have noticed that my posting frequency has plummeted, but for good reasons, I assure you. I spent all of that time upgrading and redesigning this site, actually now called artofdrink.com, I dropped the "The". I probably would have been done quicker if I just did a basic make-over, but no, I had to upgrade the whole internal system, which was an absolute nightmare. Other than that I'm very happy with the new design, which should provide a whole lot more flexibility in the future. For all the new features and benefits please read on, but if you are reading this via an RSS feed, you should check out the main page, at least once, to get a look at the redesign.

This is a "Beta"
The first thing that should be noted is that this site is currently in a "beta" state and there are a number of things that still need to be worked on, like links. But, I decided that I could at least get back to posting about drink related stuff, instead of focusing all of my time on the redesign. So, I'll be fixing things over the next month or two, but in the mean time please don't mind the small errors. For the most part the site should be fully function.

More Frequent Updates
One of the goals of this redesign was to enable me to do more, but shorter, updates. I've now included a "News" section and a Question and Answer column. They will be available on the main page and currently I'm including them in the RSS feed. Even though some of the shorter updates will probably be "news bites" I think anyone subscribing to the RSS feed will be interested in my views. The Q&A column is way to recycle a lot of the questions I answer via email or in the comments section on posts. I figure if I'm going to spend the time answering, I'll share it with everyone.

Name Change
I was contemplating a name change, but the feed back for the current name has been positive, so I'm sticking with it. But, I've made one small change and as I noted above, I've switched the domain to artofdrink.com and the sites name to "Art of Drink", even though the modified name has been in place for a while. I figured the "The" was superfluous.

Feel free to update your links, but with the wonders of modern technology I've redirect the old domain, and all the articles, to the new one and the transition should be seamless. Most of the articles should redirect to the updated site without a problem.

Website Poll
I've decided to create some interactivity by including a poll on the site. This is just to see what people, mostly lurkers, have to say. I'll post the poll and then a week or two, maybe a month later I'll take the results and write a post about the poll. It is an easy way for me to squeeze one more post into this site.

Improved Photography
Another goal of this redesign was to highlight better pictures, and I think this site will do that. The main page can now hold a 468 pixel wide picture, without looking awkward. The individual posts can also hold bigger pictures. Now I just need to upgrade the photo gear and things will really get rolling. Everyone should email my wife, Caroline, and "encourage" her to give her stamp of approval on the purchase.

Trusted Commenters
The design also allows me to give regular posters added privileges. For example if you are a trusted commenter, your comments will be posted immediately. Down the road, I can expand that for additional features, but I haven't thought that far ahead.

Internal Server Error
If you are planning on starting a blog take a serious look at WordPress. I started with Movable Type and decided to stick with it, but really they should have called it "Error 500" or "RISE" (Random Internal Server Error) because it definitely seem to get a rise out of me. I've never spent so much time tracking down little software idiosyncrasies that can wreak havoc on a site. It actually makes my heart jump whenever I see that stupid error, I've seen it so much in the last month. I've managed to get the site working, but consider the next three months a "beta" since I'm not sure how the site is going to react to an actual load and I tend to "fiddle" with setting. So if the site disappears, it is only temporary and I'm working diligently, and swearing a lot, to get it functional again.

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