Since the new Macfilos theme went live on October 16, we’ve received a healthy stream of feedback from readers. For example, people have asked about the logic behind the home page structure. Others have pointed out that the restricted comment display block, to the right of the screen, is less informative than before. This update will explain how we’ve improved the comments section, share more about the site’s workings, and describe the mechanics behind the new home page.
The TagDiv Newspaper theme, now being used by Macfilos, has been installed by over 135,000 media outlets. You will notice similarities between our presentation and that of many media outlets around the world. It’s flexible, and we can address any reservations about detail (such as fonts, weighting, size) as we become more familiar with it.
For the moment, it is a work in progress and the site is under constant revision.
Comments
The comments block to the right of the screen contains the standard WordPress comments widget. This is now old-fashioned and relatively ineffectual. Readers prefer to see more comments and to be able to scroll down to catch up on what has been happening while they have been away.
To address this problem, we have created a separate comments page, which is accessible from the above menu bar. Here you will find over a hundred of the latest comments — helpfully including the first line of the comment. To the right of the page we’ve added a chronological list of posts, another good way of catching up with Macfilos.
Our comments section is clearly very popular. It’s a credit to our readers that tempers are controlled, and we seldom have to curate the posted material. Of course, our spam protection removes the dozens of spurious comments that arrive every day. Occasionally, however, comments are too long and, perhaps, would be better presented as articles. If you wish to provide a long, detailed response, please ask us to turn it into an article. Otherwise, please try to keep comments to a sensible few lines.
One possibility, which we have not decided on, is to remove the comments block from the right-hand column and replace it with a button to take you directly to the separate comments page. What do you think of that?
Home page layout
The bold new Macfilos site has come as a shock to some of our long-standing readers and, at first, it can appear confusing. For some, change is daunting. But for others, a change is as good as a rest. We tend to the latter camp.
Some readers have pointed out the single main article when, previously, five articles were presented in the top block on the site. However, if you look carefully, you will see that nothing has changed. Under the main article are the four earlier articles in chronological order.
The home page comprises flexible blocks and slider displays which we can change from time to time. However, these blocks have settings to allow the automatic running of the site. We can select parameters such as chronological order, most viewed, or most commented, to filter the information. Above all, selection depends on the categories we allocate when publishing an article. Please bear with us if some categorisation is too fussy in older articles. We will gradually work through making amendments.
Typography
We can tweak the typography if necessary, although the objective is to achieve a cohesive approach, so we need to word within the established framework. Already, we have reduced the size and weighting of the subheadings in articles because they are obviously too dominant.
The quote block now features a large red typeface
The centralised quote block, which now features a large red typeface, is useful for highlighting extracts from the text, rather than its basic use to present third-party quotations. Unfortunately, since we have used this format block in its traditional role in many older articles, the presentation will be unattractive. There is nothing we can do about that, and it is a major downside when rejigging an old site such as Macfilos, with over 5,000 articles dating back to 2007.
Do certain authors dominate?
Our editorial team, Jörg-Peter Rau, Keith James, Jason Murray, and I, are clearly the most prolific authors. Our job is to keep the site running and to feed its constant appetite for new material. Even publishing three full-sized articles a week is a challenge. And often, when breaking-news demands, we create more than that.
This dominance of certain authors is evident when you click on any of the categories in the “Choose Your Favourite Topic” block to the right of the home page. Every category creates a matrix of the eight most recent articles fitting the search. Since they are chronological, they will always over-represent the most prolific authors — that is our editorial team. There’s nothing unusual in this, and you can easily load more articles to appreciate the depth of Macfilos coverage over the years.
We are always delighted to have contributions from our bank of authors. But the trawl tends to be spasmodic and insufficient to keep the site going. Consequently, most of the sections will show a dominance of articles from the editorial team. If an author writes more articles, they will feature more prominently in the blocks on the front page.
For those of you still concerned about this, the answer is for you to contribute more. Please consider using the button beneath the article to read how to create content for Macfilos. As established authors have discovered, joining the Macfilos team brings many benefits. You get satisfaction from seeing your words and photographs on a professional (but non-commercial) site, and you will become familiar to the wider readership, perhaps making new friends along the way.
Highlighting older articles
One advantage of our new newspaper-style theme is the ability to highlight older articles and bring them again to the fore. The success of this is evident in the way readership of these previous articles begins to rise, and in the comments arising. Using popularity parameters, we can display slideshows of reviews, travel features, accessories and many more. All this promotes reader engagement and presents a fascinating front-page with a wide variety of topics and themes.
It also works well on the text columns. Take the top right column on the home page. We have currently titled this “Most Commented Leica”, but will change it from time to time. It is based on articles using the Leica category, but extracting those over the past ten years that have attracted the most comments. William Fagan’s Swiss Roll series will always dominate such a list. Another example is the adjacent “News Round” column. The system selects this from the News category, but ignores the first five articles to avoid clashes with the five latest articles to the left.
The trick is to keep changing the blocks, while retaining the overall style. We now have endless opportunities to maintain a constantly changing set of features to bring readers back time and time again.
Speed of loading
One corollary of the site update has been a slowing down of response. We are aware of that, and it is largely down to the sheer size of Macfilos. It is one of the largest non-commercial WordPress blog sites. This is because of the huge number of photographs we upload in the course of a year. In the past, we have been guilty of using larger files, but now we have discovered that a smaller file size is better for future performance. We have reduced most of the current images you see on Macfilos to around 500KB.
However, we have taken steps to improve loading times. The large staging site, used during the switchover, has been deleted, thus freeing up server space, and we have installed the appropriately named “WP Rocket” plugin to boost the speed of access. This is now in action, and we would appreciate any views on the speed of the site.
Automatic updates
Apart from our setting up the parameters and making occasional changes to ensure the site looks fresh, Macfilos works automatically. As more articles are published, the older articles shuffle around according to a pre-set algorithm. However, if you think that a particular item is in the wrong place, please let us know and we can adjust the categorisation.
Development
Thanks to the flexibility of the new site, Macfilos is a work in progress. We are still getting used to the way in which we can edit the individual blocks of articles on the home page. We intend to change the parameters monthly, at least, to maintain a vibrant image and to bring more of our vast back catalogue of articles to the fore.
Not only that, but we are open to suggestions, since our objective is to make Macfilos as attractive and informative as possible. We have no commercial interests to worry about, so everything we do is aimed at improving the site. Please let us have your views. Unfortunately, we have to stop short of returning to the old theme layout, even though one or two readers have suggested this.
As a team, we have invested some $1,000 in installing and fettling the new them — not to mention the gallons of midnight oil burned in dealing with the detail. We are still discovering snags, but they are being sorted out efficiently by our developers.
Apology: Yesterday morning we discovered a spam post which had been uploaded from Pakistan and contained political content. It was deleted within the hour, but the link may well have gone out to subscribers. Sorry about that. The cause of this security breach was an error in the setting of subscriber permissions on the new site. It had been set to “author” instead of “subscriber” and this enabled anyone registering to post an article. This open back door has now been closed and firmly bolted. It should not happen again.
Join the Macfilos author community
We are looking for new authors to contribute gear reviews (especially Leica, L-Mount and popular compacts), your photographic journey, travel stories, opinion, and more. You don’t have to be an expert. We will help you with the writing and presentation and will ensure that your article creates maximum impact. Click the “Write for us” button for more information. Become part of the thriving Macfilos community of contributors and authors.
Keep up the good work at MacFilos towers, the website is easier to navigate now and has a much fresher look.
Thanks, Richard. I think we can now concentrate if creating content. The last month has been dominated by planning and implementing. The site can now run itself while we do some writing! Mike
Hi, I am quite delighted with the new site. For some weird reason, I got an email yesterday that “appeared” to be from this site with links but the topic was totally not relevant to macfilos so I immediately destroyed it.
Brian, that was the hacked post that I mentioned in the article. It came from Pakistan and carried a common theme alluding to the Middle East conflict. We deleted it within the hour but, unfortunately, we can do nothing to stop the emails. The cause was a loophole left by mistake when the theme was changed. I hope we have taken the right steps to prevent a repetition. Sorry to all readers who experienced this.