Welcome to Blairwatch V2

She flies...!

Many thanks to Andy Ramblings for all the hours he has put in on the upgrade, and his infinite patience in getting this together.  If anybody is looking for high quality, professional website design/support, you can reach andy via the email link on the above link, I can't recommend his services highly enough.

Any probs, feedback or issues with the site re-design in the comments here rather than via email if possible, unless they are to do with individual user accounts. Thank You.

I had a hell of a time getting the website to load up in IE - seemed to be timing out.

"We would like to have your views / comments on the new look,
Anything you would like changed? "

"Bliar"

the site loaded a lot faster (safari/mac), funny colour bar on top/bottom of posts (is this deliberate to show current days posts? lilac??)

John-
It seems to be working in IE now, but having spent a couple of days re doing the site,and the rest of the week trying to get the bloody thing to work in IE6, a browser that doesn't understand CSS, my best advice is to go and download Firefox!
If you are using IE because you are at work, talk to the ID dept and get them to install Firefox!

Lovejoy-
Andy's web design/tech skills are good, but not that good... ;)

RickB-
THe different colour bar on the top post is just to denote [or remind us] that it is sticky - ie remains at the top of the front page and other new content will appear beneath it.  But you are not the first to ask why, so I guess I need to find a better way...  I'll add it to the todo list, thanks.

It'd be really nice if you could get it to use valid xhtml, as at present, it reports itself as being valid.. however if you go to

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blairwatch.co.uk

If you need some help doing this, I'll be happy to help.

"...to get the bloody thing to work in IE6, a browser that doesn't understand CSS, my best advice is to go and download Firefox!"

It would help if, as someone pointed out, you used valid xhtml and also valid css. At the moment many tags are not even closed!!

You should either set the doctype  to html 4.01 or fix it. Yes, M$ sucks but so does blaming someone else for your problems.

Performance improved, good. And Well Done !

Now the opposite to my usual problem of hard-to-read typeface, maybe experiment with a smaller one ? This one seems excellent for the visually impaired --- it's so big.

Also no timestamp or posting number, which would make it easier to refer back to earlier posts ?

That would assist my much-repeated suggestion for "long-running  threads" which would stick to a TOPIC and avoid the archive-memory -hole problem.

Robrob -  thanks for that, 64 errors, I need to work through that list... As a ignorant amateur when it comes to css, most of the mistakes are in my tweaks of the theme.
But, I just put news.bbc.co.uk through the vailidator, and they get 156 errors, so it isn't just ignorant amateurs who's sites fail validation. [though I accept that description might apply to BBC news output at times, I assume they employ a professional web designer or two].  Putting in a few more random urls, whatreallyhappened.com gets 813 errors, the guardian front page comes in at 76 errors...  That obviously doesn't mitigate my errors [and they are mine because I dealt with most of the css], but it made me feel a little less incompetent 

Aurelius - most of the tweaks [and my errors] were to get the theme to work in IE6 - there were very few probs in IE7, and everything worked fine in Firefox [which does appear understand css].  My experience of web design is pretty limited, but everything I have ever been involved in, the problem has always been to get things looking right in IE6...

Frog - all good points - the font size/style is up for debate, and we will go with what people think on that one.

re timestamps and or posting number, the subtitle of a comment is a permalink, will look at how we generate timestamps.

re the 'archive memory hole'  problem - we're trying to sort it.

Minor bug: https://blairwatch.co.uk/ does not correctly redirect here though, as it used to.

that is correct, I will try and fix that within the server. It is for search engine optimisation that we have only one blairwatch. ie, blairwatch.co.uk.

That Tony picture gives me the willies! And thanks for altering the epilepsy inducing 'Servage' strobe show. If I may, can I suggest the font for leading articles and comments is darkened a bit? cheers. Here's to the success of the new site, imaginately named 'Blairwatch V2'.

how about some effing content?

It is not obvious how to contribute new threads. Maybe someone could enlighten us...

I also find it difficult to understand what's being said on any subject.

Wouldn't a discussion group be more appropriate? 

(I've given up trying to 'login')

Great that the captcha validation is fixed. Except we now need some decent stories so we can can all coment on them. Oh well, New Labour will undoubtedly have a few more disasters any day now.

Change the typeface; it's so old fashioned.