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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

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MFO will be briefly off-line Saturday morning

Dear friends,

On Saturday, Chip and her staff are unveiling two major upgrades to MFO. The ceremony takes place about 10:30 a.m. EST, Saturday, September 24.

We are moving to a more powerful, more secure server at a new host. While our experience with Green Geeks has been pretty positive, our current shared server is not a state-of-the-art piece of equipment and customer support is ... hmmm, clunky.

We are changing the layout of our monthly issue. Currently, we're one, 35-page long scroll. That's an artifact of our early days where the first cover essay I wrote for FundAlarm was 2.5 pages long. The new layout will function much more like a magazine with a table of contents that has the stories laid out in a grid and a separate homepage for each author, so folks interested in scanning everything that, say, Sam has written, will be easily able to do so. We know that some folks have grown fond of the scroll, so we'll maintain that option, too. On the right-hand side, you'll see a "view as continuous page" option for each issue.

The new style looks pretty nice and we think it will made it easier to navigate and use. With time we'll also offer a Kindle e-book version of each monthly essay as part of the ongoing effort to broaden our reach. The new layout will make that transition easier, too.

The appearance of the discussion board is not changing. The most radical thing we're contemplating for the discussion board is slightly widening the blue and green header since, on some monitors, it's only about half the width of the screen. Likewise, the rest of the site (about us, contact, search tools) won't be touched.

Chip and her guys intend to push the button around 10:30 a.m. Saturday, weather and the spirits of the internet permitting. Our new server will be online within 20 minutes or so. The hangup is that we need all of the backbone servers on the internet to notice that we've moved to a new I.P. (internet protocol, if you care) address. At the moment we switch servers, the team sets off a sort of cyber-flare that calls out "over here! Over here!" Some of the servers will notice us almost immediately and begin rerouting traffic to the new location; others might take a while. Folks whose "go to mutualfundobserver.com" requests get routed through those servers will see a static "we're moving, hit refresh or try back in a few minutes" sort of message.

Our Premium Site will not be affected.

We've been working really hard behind the scenes on this one. I hope you like.

David

Comments

  • Thx for your work on this!
  • edited September 2016
    Jeez, all this whiz-bang gadgetry, phew! Remember the rebellion when someone proposed changes to the old FundAlarm discussion board? (just between you and me those discussions were easier for me to follow). Ok, this dinosaur is headed back to his cave. However I do respect and admire all that you and your staff do to keep this board vibrant and running.

  • Thanks to David, Chip, and the MFO gang for an ongoing job well-done.

    Speaking as someone who's been involved in this kind of stuff on many a mission-critical system, may the gremlins take the weekend off and your migration happen seamlessly and without problems!!! *fingers crossed*
  • edited September 2016
    Thanks all. Can't wait to see the result. By the by, I use accessibility font overrides in IE11 and my green ribbon actually wraps around in order to fit the page.

    Edit to add that I went back and looked at the blue vs. the green ribbon with my settings. The wrap inside the green seems related to the actual width of the blue ribbon. If so, widening the blue ribbon without changing the text might remove the wrap around inside the green ribbon. (i.e., I'd better stay out of this for now.)
  • edited September 2016
    Be careful with your background coloration choices. For example, I'm pretty sure that the special blue box in the left column--- "statement of the obvious" disclaimer--- would appear to someone with blue-green colorblindness as just a box shaded grey, and none of the print would be visible.
  • Hello? Hello? It this thing on?
  • Hello, we're here.
  • We're live. You can check out our September issue in the new layout at http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/issue/september-2016/

    Please let me know if you have any problems with it.
  • @chip The new layout looks great but the labels on the green menu bar could be a little larger - right now the label type looks too heavy for its size making the text less clear than on the old layout.
  • The new layout is fantastic - looks more professional than the New York Times!

    I did notice that the "Search MFO" does not seem to work from the new layout of the monthly issue.
  • @MrRuffles Tweaked the menu bar a bit. See if that helps.

    @FundStudent I think we fixed the Search, too. It's not perfect, but it's working again.

    Thanks for the feedback. It sure helps a lot.
  • I am not sure many folks appreciate the many, many hours of work Chip, David and their team put in for MFO. Not just the daily grind, but the much time spent on the upgraded look. And keep in mind that they have full-time "real" jobs, too. This is a labor of love, one for which we should all be most grateful. The new look is indeed quite nice and refreshing. I know folks will concentrate on the many good features and let Chip and David know of suggested/needed changes in a respectful manner. Now, back to MY full-time job.
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