Our goal was to provide a cleaner look and organize content in a way that was better for readers. We also wanted to create a better mix of ads and content. This helps both readers and advertisers. Readers get a cleaner look. Advertisers get less visual burnout by both rotating ads and placing them in different areas of the site. Make sure to support our efforts by taking a look at what our advertisers have to offer!
We will probably do a bit more refining and fix some bugs that will no doubt appear. If you notice any or have any other feedback please drop a comment here or email one of us directly.
WhatTheyThink.com has more in store for 2009 so stay tuned!
So when I called Randy Davidson, our President & CEO, today to wish him a happy birthday I asked him how old he was getting. He couldn’t remember. He literally said “Let’s see. 1971. Uh…Um…I’m 37!” LOL. It’s that age, I guess. When you stop counting years and start counting grey hairs.
We decided to do a little video to wish Randy a happy birthday:
So Adam set up a “Dog Pictures” category so I figured I’d use it. Since I work out of a home office for the most part, everyday is “bring your dog to work day”. Dogen, our 7 year old English Mastiff, usually sits right beside my desk. He pretty much has to be where you are. He’s 225 pounds and makes a great guard dog. I have a two minute rule for thieves. Anything you can get in and take in two minutes flat is yours. After that I can’t guarantee your safety.
We recently made an announcement about adding a new forum at PrintPlanet dealing with lean manufacturing issues. In addition to Cory Smith moderating, we’ve added David Dodd who will both moderate and lead discussions on issues like 5S, TPM, Kaizen, and others.
Over the weekend we will be moving PrintPlanet to a new forum engine that will allow us to implement changes users have requested. The two most requested features:
We apologize for the site outage and inconvenience it may have caused yesterday. A problem occurred with our master database server that took some time to rectify. We were able to get everything back to normal late last night. There are a great many technical details that the guys worked through (thanks Wes and Adam). If you want to know what they were you can contact them directly.
Thanks for your patience and support through the downtime. We really appreciate all the thoughtful emails and phone calls wondering what was going on. It’s great to have a supportive membership and so many fans of WhatTheyThink.com! It’s clear what we do is essential to your businesses. We’re working to make sure interruptions like this are few and far between - as well as short!
If there is ever any issues with the main site or any other WhatTheyThink site, be sure to check this blog for the latest information.
We are experiencing some server issues which has caused us to take the main site at members.whattheythink.com offline. We are working on it and should have it back to normal soon. Check here for updates.
12pm: We have identified the problem and are working on restoring our primary database. We expect to have this accomplished in the next few hours.
5pm: We have finished checking the data integrity of our last database snapshot from 2AM this morning, and have identified the issue that caused the initial failure. Reviewing failure points and taking appropriate action to fix them. The site should be back up within the next 3 hours.
10PM: The site is back online. We are looking into the cause of the database failure that brought the site down today.
I actually got 7! Our friends and partners over at Bronto sent them along to welcome us and thank us for our business. We just signed on with them to outsource all of our email efforts. We’ll still keep a great many email functions in house, but all of our newsletters will be sent using the Bronto system.
We did this for many reaons. The first was deliverability. Our in-house solution was just at the point where we grew out of it, quite simply. We’ve had some issues with people getting their newsletters and since we know our emails are an essential part of people not only getting their industry information but also connecting to us and the website, we felt an investment was in order. So after many months of due diligence, we chose Bronto to partner with for email services. Their system also provides better statistics and tracking, which will help us make the newsletters more useful as we watch what really interests people.
I personally feel pretty good about it because Bronto embodies many of the same things that I think makes us a success. They are creative, hard working, and they also like to mix in some fun. The dinosaur in the mail backs me up on this. They even have a special email address I can send a photo of “Bronto” in different places I visit. Fun. Too bad I didn’t have one before drupa or I could have sent them plenty of great “German brat eating Bronto” photos.
So we’re happy to be partnering with another great company in the online media space and look forward to many good things to come. Hopefully you as a member will see our emails get better and better.
At what WhatTheyThink we strive to deliver the most up-to-date news and information on the printing industry. Earlier this week a new member included a note with their payment:
The 15 day trial definitely sold me. This is the most information-packed site for the print industry that I’ve seen. I actually feel a sense of anticipation every time I visit the site just to see “What’s New”
Comments like that from our members make it all our work worthwhile.
