Site Redesign and Content Changes
I haven’t thus far commented much on the workings of AAW itself here, but to change that: Â If you think there’s nothing going on with the rest of the site, you’re right in terms of what’s been publicly posted in the last long-while, but wrong in terms of what I have in the pipeline.
In particular, I’ve been working on an entirely new and drastically improved layout for about the past year (first draft was in Feb 20 of ’09, looking back reveals—wow that’s a long time), and it has just hit the final-candidate stage at which the design is pretty much finalized and the work switches to implementing said design in a manner that works in a reasonable variety of browsers (Internet Explorer, how I hate thee: Let me count the ways… but at least IE5 is functionally dead, a different state of affairs from the last major redesign). Then comes the even more daunting task of making sure the roughly 300 official reviews and 100+ reader reviews, hundred-or-so other pages, dozens of supplemental pages, this blog, and the forums all get transitioned properly into it.
Yikes.
This may take a while (there are still things that haven’t been converted into the last redesign, which I intend to remedy), and while the bad news is you won’t see any of it until I’m actually finished, the good news is the site should be significantly improved for it. I’ve learned quite a bit about design, coding, backend structure, and most importantly believe I’ve come to a better understanding of how to best serve the people who actually read stuff here. I intend to apply all of this, along with every optimization trick I’ve picked up in the past four years, to give AAW as good of a foundation as I’m able, and one that should carry it through a nice long while before I start to get bugged by how much better I could do with new tools and techniques. I’ve also, I think, come up with a somewhat more coherent, and more fun, overall site concept that I intend to do something more major with in the mid-distant future when other life circumstances permit.
Bottom line is the site will be faster, easier to read, prettier, more coherent, more fun, and have less loose ends and mistakes than currently. I’m also planning on having some fun with new and more creative contests once everything eventually goes live—got a whole shelf full of not-entirely-crappy prizes lined up.
In terms of, you know, content, I’ve not been lax on writing reviews, I just take a (very) long time to prune and polish them—there are about a dozen in the pipeline, with a half dozen all but ready to post. I’ve also got a bunch of Japanese lesson stuff in the works for a little farther out, but I’m making some layout changes so am holding off on that until the new look is done so I’m not doing the formatting twice.
I’ll probably wax technical once things are more finished, for those who care at all about such things (being a geek, I do, so even if that audience consists entirely of me, I’m still going to), but in the mean time wish me luck if you’re so inclined.
February 12th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
I think you should have an archive so people could have a look at previous entries on the blog if they wanted to. There are a few things I wanted to respond to anyway but never got the chance. Your entries seem to vanish to Never-Never land or somewhere like that.
I was also wondering something. What was your opinion about some of my comments on your earlier stuff like with bilingual anime or my comments about “Strike Witches.” What did you think about them?
February 16th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I saw “Ponyo” and I liked both “Ponyo” and the Disney movie “The Princess and the Frog.” My hope is that one day,both Studio Ghibli and Walt Disney Studios make a movie together. I’d like that and I think any animation fan would like it too.
February 18th, 2010 at 12:24 am
You’re absolutely correct that my template doesn’t handle the archives properly, a problem I’m well aware of and am going to remedy with the new site look. It was an oversight in the current template to not allow for a larger 2nd tier submenu, as is necessary for a blog.
I’m assuming you noted that because you couldn’t find the prior post on Ponyo (I’m thinking I should also post a corresponding note here to allow comments on main-site reviews, something I gave up on long ago after the hail of spam and incoherent stupidity that happened back when I tried that feature originally).
Getting off topic, I only respond to things when I have time (anyone who’s emailed me knows how awful I am about correspondence), though I will note that there are animation fans who don’t want to see a joint Disney-Ghibli production. Disney did some wonderful things in the past, but let’s not forget they previously shut down their entire 1st string hand-drawn animation department, and nearly everything of any quality they’ve released in the last decade was either by Pixar or Ghibli. Don’t even get me started on the fact that they single-handedly ruined US copyright law to protect the profits generated by Mickey Mouse souvenirs or that they have one of the most greedy and customer-hostile video release rackets in an already abysmal field (“Buy now before it goes back in the vault until the next generation of suckers is ready to buy!”). The fact that they’ve done such a good job with their Ghibli releases is due as far as I know entirely to Miyazaki insisting on proper treatment after the Warriors of the Wind debacle. I wonder if John Lasseter of Pixar also had some sway (he did do those intro clips on the original wave of Ghibli releases). I’ll end the rant there before I get more worked up.