Pilot ready to fly

The migrated website is nearly ready to release, so it's time to invite comments, criticisms and improvement suggestions from some trusted colleagues - donors, friends, gurus.

I will email them a link to the pilot site, today.

Depending on the feedback, I can hopefully complete the final tweaks and release the website to the waiting world next week, with some launch publicity.

Meanwhile, I will continue indefinitely looking for and tackling inconsistencies, awkwardness, errors, omissions and unduly excessive lah-di-dah fancy verbiage (like this!).

There are still a few loose ends on my snag list, such as:

• Some way to highlight recent updates to the site (aside from mentioning them here on the blog), so regular visitors don't need to hunt for them;

• A site search function would be very useful;

• I need to check and update all the internal and external hyperlinks: those carried over from the old website mostly referred to specific URLs which have now changed, and all the hyperlinks should be clearly underlined;

• Various images could do with being updated into a more consistent theme relating to the site's topic;

• Checking the mobile site on an actual mobile;

• Checking the website security, monitoring and metrics to track uptake and figure out which bits visitors like the most and least.

Nothing terribly important there: the site serves its purpose even in the present state. It's already "close enough for government work", and will continue evolving just as the old site did, only quicker, easier and better than before, thanks to Wix.