Welcome to Bitchery 3.0!

There's no place like 127.0.0.1There was some database mounting and database shifting and some cursing but the new site is built and ready to rock. Taa daa!

I hope you like it. My goals with the redesign were to make content easier to find, from features to book reviews to really active discussions, and to make participating in the site easier, with more options and fewer obstacles to joining the conversations. I've said many times when asked about the website that the content up here is maybe half of the reason people come to the site – the other half is all of you and your conversations. 

(Squidgy moment: holy crap I missed y'all). 

Some of the new features include:

  • Subscribing to comment threads by RSS or Email (by request)
  • A new comments system that lets you log in via Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, Disqus, and possibly your driver's license number
  • Summaries on the main page, with full entries on their own pages
  • A calendar of events on the main page
  • A special area for the podcasts on the main page
  • The ability to like, share, tweet, flirt with, simmer, dogear, question, and shake your groove thang in the vicinity of the comments. Well, some of those, anyway.
  • All sorts of upgrades that aren't visible but should make the Bitchery more speedy and lithe, like a Regency heroine dressed in boy's clothing.

There is still little bits of work to be done, but if you notice anything truly and utterly out of whack, please let me know, either in the comments or via email at sarahATsmartbitchestrashybooksDOTcom.

Comments are welcome, too! I hope you like the new design — and that you read something awesome while the work was in progress!

Categorized:

General Bitching...

Comments are Closed

  1. Becca says:

    That’s Kelly at 114 who is having problems with Chrome. I use Firefox and have no problem.

    Thank you so much for unthreading the comments. I do like the new site and look.

  2. Becca says:

    ARUGH! reply puts the comment right under the comment you’re replying to, and the numbers all change, so it’s still threading.

  3. Yes, the title. It was always fun when someone looked over my shoulder while I was reading something here. Also… well, man titty.

  4. SB Sarah says:

    I am working on both the site title and the threading. I’ve turned it off, but somehow you can still reply. ARGH. Disqus, why are acting this way? Perhaps it needs coffee.

  5. Lisa says:

    For what it’s worth, I’m using Firefox as a browser and know nothing of this mysterious speedy slideshow people are mentioning. I too am death on threaded comments, especially when you get reply after reply and the thread is literally one word wide. So, I’m glad they’re gone.

    I love the new design! I love that the meaty content takes up the middle two-thirds or so of the screen and that it’s all clean and easy to see. I know there’s the whole “people view web pages like capital Fs” deal, but I like exiling the ads to the right and little snippets to the left. Anyhow, change is stressful all around, but I think this particular change is for the better – at least for me.

  6. Sessarego1 says:

    So!  Much!  Pink!  Also, Death to the slideshow! Other than that, welcome back, SB Sarah, the Internet missed you!

  7. Sarahtq says:

    Love, LOVE, Love the new website! It looks great. And I really like the new tagline.

  8. nurcat says:

    OOH Shiney !

  9. Guest says:

    Nice design for the most part.  Now that comments aren’t threaded anymore (every site I’ve seen go to them ends up switching back) the only somewhat complaint is the big honking rotating marquee at the top of the home page and the stuff directly below that (Bitchin Books, Dear Bitches…).  It makes for too much scrolling before getting to the meat of the site, which for me is the blog posts (I know there’s a menu option at the top, but it was nicer when they were the focus of the home page).

    Also having some serious load time lag on images in IE9 at the moment…

  10. cleo says:

    I’m enjoying watching the final site tweeking.  I’m glad you got rid of the threaded comments, but I’m sorry you got rid of the Reply button on the comments.  That was nice – so you could easily see what the original comment was.  They have a similar feature on Dear Author, and I like it.

    Also, I’m going to expand on why I miss the recent comments sidebar on the homepage.  Sometimes, when there’s a meaty discussion on SBTB and I’m working on something that’s really dull, I will check back regularly – like every 30 minutes, like do 3 more whatevers and then I get to check SBTB, and I’ve been in the habit of just pulling up the homepage and looking at the comments to see if anything’s changed since my last visit.  I suppose I’ll get used to pulling up the blog page instead, but sigh, change is hard.

  11. CK says:

    Like it…except for the Pepto pink background.

  12. It’s lovely to have you back, and looking so young and fresh! Having just fiddled with my own site, I know what a huge process this is and your site has a million more moving parts than mine. I think it looks great, clean and easy to navigate. Thanks so much to you and Joelle for putting in the time and energy and $ to renovate the place we all come to and to congregate and talk about the stuff we love.

  13. Cindy2paw says:

    Bah, Google Reader’s subscribe says it can’t find a feed at all. I didn’t know you were up and running again, only clicked through by accident.

  14. Kathleen O says:

    Very nice… I look forward to some great things to come from this blog….

  15. shel says:

    I’m liking the cleaner feel and looks, congrats.

    Is it possible to add the grade for reviews to the snippets on the main page?

  16. SB Sarah says:

    Shel: you mean to have the grade for the book on the main page summaries? Let me see if I can do that.

    Also: if you click reply, the comment will appear temporarily under the comment to which you are replying. BUT upon page reload, the comment will line up in the order in which it was received and be numbered accordingly – it won’t screw up the numbers after refresh.

  17. Ros Clarke says:

    Hey, Sarah, is there any way to have the comments numbered in the order they were posted?  I don’t mind seeing the newer comments at the top, but it really throws me out of whack to have the newest comment be number 1, and the oldest comment changing its number every time a new one is added.

  18. SB Sarah says:

    Hey Ros: That is strange. The 1 comment should be the oldest one, and the comments should be running oldest to newest at the bottom. Is there a dropdown box on your browser that allows you to change the order?

    Thanks for the heads up.

  19. Ros Clarke says:

    I have them running oldest at the bottom and newest at the top, with the newest one numbered 1.  I have no idea whether there is a browser setting that relates to this but it seems unlikely to me.  I’m in FF.

  20. shel says:

    Yes, the ability to see the grade on the main page, to help determine clicking through to the whole post.

  21. Ros Clarke says:

    It seems to be working now!  I don’t know whether you fixed something or my browser did, but hooray!

  22. SB Sarah says:

    AWESOME. Glad it’s happy now!!

  23. Lynda Ryba says:

    “Fishwithsticks: if you move your mouse over the slider, it should stop moving. Does that help?”

    OMG Yes! Thanks! LOL. I also found the little hearts I can click on to go to another snippet.

  24. SB Sarah says:

    Yes! The hearts too – they correspond to the posts in the slider. Lots of ways to bend it to your will!

  25. Kate Frowzy says:

    Looks great! So glad to have you back. Can’t wait to poke around.

  26. Anne A says:

    There is something seriously wonky going on with the RSS feed, now that Google read has managed to find it again.  I keep getting the same posts showing up as new over and over again, and none of the links to the posts themselves actually work (even to the new posts that aren’t dulicates).

    Eg: My feed reader currently shows (‘posted’ in the three days) two ‘The Power of Julie Garwood’, two reviews of Shades of Grey, two November 15th podcasts with Sarah Mayberry, three news articles about ‘Penguin, Amazon and the Kindle Library’, five(!) Bitchery Glossaries…  Maybe it’s updating the reader every time you edit a post, or something?

    Also, every time I hit ‘load more comments’ (I’m in IE 9), it breaks off the comment numbers and starts at 1 again.  It seems to load 40 comments at a time, so it keeps going 1 2 3 …. 40 1 2 3 … 40 1 2 3… etc.  Refreshing doesn’t fix, as I have to hit ‘load more comments’ multiple times again.

    I am another who’s not really (by which I mean ‘at all’) a fan of having to use one of my non-book-blog-affiliated IDs/log-ins to participate in comments here.

  27. SB Sarah says:

    Oh, boy. I thought I’d fixed it! I’m looking at it now – I’m sorry.

    You shouldn’t have to use a non-bookblog affiliated ID. You should be able to login as “guest” and enter whatever name/email you like. Is that not an option for you?

  28. Kcardascia says:

    Hey—I like the new look a lot, but I really miss the old way that you could expand to see the whole post without navigating to an entirely new page.  Any chance you’ll bring that back?  It’s so much nicer than ending up with a dozen post teasers started and half a dozen extra tabs open.

  29. SB Sarah says:

    Thanks for the compliment on the look!

    Alas, the ‘more more more’ is gone, but there is a similar version of the old index here:

    http://smartbitchestrashybooks…

    It doesn’t expand but there is a lot more preview content there. Part of the problem was that the expand/contract (hur hur) wasn’t nicely playing with every browser. You should be able to open one entry and navigate between them using the sidebar or the links at the bottom of the entry text, though.

  30. bookstorecat says:

    Where…how…what? My gravatar is gone, where do we sign in to get it back? My original login doesn’t seem to work with DISQUS.

  31. bookstorecat says:

    I can’t figure out how to log in on this new site. I tried DISQUS—but it didn’t recognize my username or password. What happened to Gravatar? I used to be automatically logged in.

  32. bookstorecat says:

    Still trying to figure out how to log in to the new site. It used to just recognize me. What happened to Gravatar?  My previous login info does not work with Disqus. I keep posting as Guest, but I miss my pic. Do I have to create a new account, because I can’t see how to do that either.

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