A New iSoaker.com

[isoaker_com]

Nearly 10 years after the site was started (previously known as Aquatechnology), iSoaker.com has come a long way. iSoaker.com has just been updated; completely re-organizing and rebuilding many elements site-wide. This update was initially planned for 2009, but due to the speed and ease of re-development, I decided to upload and launch the site earlier and fix any lingering bugs after it goes live.

The main thing I haven't gotten working yet is a Flash-based product browser and comparison applet. Hopefully one of these days I'll figure out why my test codes aren't working and be able to restore that aspect of the site's functionality. For now, all else appears to be running as it should.

Hope you guys like the changes!

[Ben]

I already posted a few things on iSoaker.net. Here's a page with a broken link: http://www.isoaker.com/Armoury/Galle...armoury01.html

The first link shown is broken.

Let me reiterate that I really like the new organization. I've already noticed a few pages I hadn't noticed before. The landing pages organized by year are really helpful too.

[Silence]

Wow, the new site is even more polished! The only thing that strikes me as weird is the breadcrumb trail above the site header. It's also interesting that there are some CSS menus and some plain links in the header.

You may also want to add a search button to the search box. There are a ton of people who don't know that you can just press enter there. You may also want to use Google simply because they allow for easier integration with websites (I think it might even allow custom CSS stylesheets for the search results).

The "buy online" link is also rather...uh, weak. Instead of just giving an affiliate link to Amazon's front page, wouldn't it be more profitable and convenient to link to the appropriate page from each review?

And finally, to nitpick a little, you may want the four SS 50s on the front page to point to the left. As it is, the only one with a visible sticker has that sticker upside down.

I haven't checked out the iSoaker.net forums in a while as my computer's still down. I'm having trouble keeping track of more than a few sites at once without the All-in-One Sidebar and a few other extensions . But I'll post there once I upgrade my motherboard and CPU.

Anyway, it looks like a good update!

[isoaker_com]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions!

I have a long debate with myself about whether to include a button for the search box or not. From an purely aesthetics point-of-view, it just looks better without. I'm not too worried since there is also a specific Search page for those who need buttons to press.

The Buy Online page is old and hasn't been updated fully yet. It used to once contain links to review pages as well, but I had gotten lazy. That will be fixed in the near future.

As for the SS50s hanging, those aren't mine so I cannot retake the pic. I'll have to ask Cobralex297 about that one.

In the end, it's still easier to find the real bugs now that the site is up since everything always seems to work just fine on the testing server.

[Goldfish4209]

Anyone else having trouble with iSoaker today? The forums are apparently down

"General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Can't connect to MySQL server on '76.12.19.132' (111) [2003]

An sql error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact an administrator if this problem persists"

That's what I got when I tried the forums, and there seems to be something wrong with the Armoury as well. all the links in the armoury, whatever you click, on my computer it's not loading the full page. It just loads the top part and the rest is blank.

edit: yeah, it's working now. Never mind

[Ben]

Sometimes MySQL has a hiccup and doesn't work for a few minutes. Sometimes that happens when they update MySQL too. It's working now. When you encounter a database error wait a few minutes to make sure it's not the server having a hiccup because that's the problem most of the time.

[isoaker_com]

Twas a server hiccup it appears, but looking if there's anything more fundamentally wrong with a server setting. I noticed it, too, but things are thankfully up again.

[C-A_99]

One thing I forgot to mention earlier about the new setup: I liked it better when all soaker reviews were accessable by the string "http://www.isoaker.com/Armoury/soaker_stats.cfm?soakerID=" and typing in the soakerID. Unfortunately, it seems like the new system prohibits this for sake of organization. (though the redirects help here)

[Drenchenator]

Yeah, I noticed that many of our links to your articles don't work. If it's no trouble, could you please add some redirects?

Also, I tend to dislike landing on the "you are being redirected"-style pages. Could you make it so that it goes a little faster, perhaps not even saying that you are being redirected? Thank you in advance.

[isoaker_com]

http://www.isoaker.com/Armoury/soake....cfm?soakerID=

They still are, but after the re-org, I do prefer eventual linking to the 'static' review location. However, so long as the server supports it, the re-direct page for reviews should continue to work. I've reduced the delay so visitors coming through older review links shouldn't be too bothered by the redirect and have the option of clicking should the re-direct page fail to push the visitor through to the actual destination.

As for other articles, it is unfortunate that the re-arrangement ended up breaking pretty much all external links. However, with the ditching of the articles database (felt it was not worth maintaining) as well as moving the locations of more files that I wish to mentally keep track of, there is no simple way for me to build in a redirect page for "articles.cfm"-based old links. I understand the pain it is to update links, thus what I did was create a page that has links to the likely section a desired article has been likely moved to. I leave it up to visitors and webmasters to either explore to find what they are looking for or simply opt to not deep-link into iSoaker.com. I'd understand either way.

Otherwise, thanks for the thoughts and feedback! More changes are coming in due time, but I'm pleased with the full site rebuild overall.

[Drenchenator]

Okay, thanks anyway. I do like the organization more, so I guess it's worth the trouble of updating.

[Silence]

If you run Apache you could try mod_rewrite to do URL rewriting. Or maybe a PHP script to return an appropriate redirect. I'm not sure how you'd do it otherwise, though.