Hey Everyone!
We have been teasing a redesign of KnifeMagazine.com for quite a while now, and the process has been a bit more complicated then expected. But as of Friday afternoon, the relaunch has taken place, and we are back and ready to get things going again.
That said, the site is more than a bit rough around the edges. Here is a little rundown from our Developer:
Things that haven’t changed:
- You can still order back issues and books just like before.
- You can purchase or renew a print subscription the same as before (menu item)
- We still will have contents (the latest contest will be moved to the site)
Things that are turned off temporarily:
- There is no membership access at all; the magazine flip books and vault databases are coming soon but are in the process of being rebuilt on the new site.
- There is no paywall content at the moment. For the next few days, you can access any article or post on the site (even ones that you couldn’t see before if you weren’t a member).
- You will not be required to log in for anything – not even for leaving a comment.
- You’ll see that a few articles and their comments section are missing (from about mid October to about mid December).
- For contests right now you will get 1 vote or 2 votes – the extra entry for memberships is temporarily suspending. It should be back in time for the next contest
Things that are updated or work better:
- The calendar has a new updated look and feel; we are now able to add events again, so it will be gotten up to date
- You can still order back issues and books just like before.
- The mobile version should work better than it did
- You can now find the recent posts and all post categories in the menu (so if you want to look at a specific category, you can)
Things that are coming (in the next 1-6 months)
- The premium online membership and paywalls will comeback once we finish building the magazine archive pages. If you are a paying subscriber, we will make sure you get some extra time to make up on your membership
- We are looking at several new features to add for online members, including forums, individual blogs, profiles, private chats and much more! Some of you may be asked to beta test (if you’d like to be included in that group, let Clay know).
- An entirely new way of showing advertisements that our advertisers will love and that will make the ads a little more relevant to the part of the website you’re looking at
- The library of books will also come back, but in a different, easier to view/use format
- We’ve changed hosting companies, so things should load faster
- We will be adding a Help Desk/FAQ section for the website as well, so it’s easier to figure out how to do things and to reach us if there is something wrong
- We are working to backfill the missing articles from Oct-Dec
- Potentially a classified ads or buy/sell/trade thread
- For databases such as the Knifemaker database, knife makers will have the ability to add themselves to the directory for FREE; we are planning to add the ability to purchase a listing with other added stuff (they may have a colored background, they may be the listings that are seen first, they may be able to add other stuff to a premium listing)
Is there something that you’ve always wanted to be able to do or have on our website that you don’t see in the list of additions? Tell us about it!
One other thing Lisa forgot to mention – the Search function works about 1000% better. Don’t believe me? Give it a try. It was so broken that the best way to find something on the old site was an organic Google search. If this were the only improvement, I would be overjoyed. But getting a glimpse of what’s to come has me more excited than at any point since just before the original website launch in 2019.
We hope you are too. If you find something broken, drop me an email at clay(at)knifemagazine.com.
If you have thoughts on the new site, suggestions, rants, etc., go ahead and leave a comment. They may be held in moderation for a brief bit, but that should rapidly sort itself out for our regular commenters. Thanks for your patience.