It’s time for a facelift

December 20, 2024 The AIM Network AIM Extra 62

If the site’s migration to a larger server wasn’t bumpy enough, then it was when disaster struck elsewhere.

You’ve no doubt all noticed it: our homepage is but a bare skeleton (see above image).

But first, some background.

Ten years ago we paid a web developer a small fortune to build The AIMN. We liked what he came up with and for those ten years we’ve put on the same face, so to speak.

Unfortunately the theme (template) we’ve for those ten years is being phased out by the creator, and hence, it is no longer supported. In a nutshell, if something goes wrong… there’s nobody to fix it. We’ve had a developer look at it but the word came back that it is irreparable.

So we now have a site that simply isn’t up to scratch. The obvious one is the lack of thumbnails on the front page with the annoying, offensive little message that “An error occured during creating the thumbnail.” Yuck.

That’s just one of the problems. There are more, but you don’t see them.

We have to get a facelift. There is no other option.

However…

We won’t be paying a king’s ransom to a web designer to rebuild the site… The AIMN doesn’t make enough money so we’ll be taking that task on ourselves and just go running to the designer for any finishing touches.

Over the next week or so we’ll play around with some new themes – we’ve selected a few – so we’ll continue to look different until we pick the winner.

There’s only one hurdle: reluctance. We hate the thought of saying goodbye to the old, but I’m sure we’ll all embrace the new (eventually).

PS: Perhaps you could give some feedback on the themes we experiment with.

Update 21/12/2024: I’m seeing that the homepage is now randomly starting to show the thumbnails (pictures). This tells me that the feature does indeed work but something is blocking it from working at 100%. It is worth investigating. I’ll get that looked at before going live with the new facelifts.

 

 

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62 Comments

  1. Glad it’s not just me!
    Best of luck with the new site – it must be a pain to have to go through this.
    Very happy to offer up opinions as requested

  2. Dear Team AIMN, you’re all so professional and this will be causing you great angst I know. You’ve done it before and you’ll do it again. I’m in your corner on this and the birthing pangs are felt this side of the net. I appeal to all readers and other contributors to keep the faith in AIMN and remain loyal and steadfast. Wishing Michael and Carol and the Team – and all our readers and contributors, Sweet blessings for the season and all the very best for 2025. May the world live in Peace.

  6. I’m going through similar on my ‘professional’ website, but my lame excuse is trying to save costs vs professional vanity, when the reality is I’m a retired pensioner, so in reality, there’s nothing pressing, and no entity reliant, except my ego.

    Finding AIMN has been one of my post-retirement joys – works well with gardening and feeding myself, and a saviour from more tedious, back-breaking and put-offable tasks like emptying boxes and clearing out my shed.

    Michael, strength to you, Carol and the team. Wishing you all well for the transition, and in the passing of time.

    Thanks, best wishes and peace from an admiring reader / participant.

  9. This is the theme we’re going to run with, mainly because it has the features to be redesigned to look like our previous theme. It will take a while though as there’s much to do.

  10. Great to see it up and running Michael.

    The opening screen was a bit of a shock though, a long, long list of words down the left of the screen until, Yahooo, the New Look AIMN.

    But that too will be fixed in the fullness of time no doubt.

  16. Today is the first time I have seen the new look AIM homepage and to be completely honest I preferred the old look. It is now very plain and doesn’t catch your eye, nor stand out from the crowd. As an ex IT web designer I find it lacking. Viewing the page source I see very little in the way of search engine promotion and optimisation. Doing a search on “news Australia” and other similar phrases I am already at page 5 of Google search and AIM is yet to show at all. Need to work on that to reach out to a larger audience. Not a criticism, just feedback to help improve what is my favourite news site.

  17. Hi John.

    We chose the new theme because it has the right tools to be built to look like our old site. It’s only Day 1 but it will take some time.

    I’ve temporarily put the old theme up again while we sort a few things out. Namely, the new theme didn’t have a login button (for authors and admin).

  18. The rebuilding is going to take longer than expected.

    Little annoying things as well, such as comments on an iPhone showing as justified instead of being left aligned.

    Once these things are ironed out we can get back to rebuilding the site to look like the previous version.

  19. I think this version looks great!
    I like the order of the articles and the general appearance.
    It seems like a tortuous process to get to this stage, but great work!

  23. That was actually me. I’d logged in as other admins on my phone, iPad and computer to see if they could fix a problem for me. Then, half asleep, I forgot to log them out. Hence I commented as Roswell on my phone (apologies to Roswell).

    We have a huge problem. The site has developed a fatal flaw which prevents any authors or admin from accessing our Dashboard (where we edit and publish posts, as well as being the site’s engine room).

    There are two options:

    1. Pay a developer zillions to fix it, if it is at all fixable, or …
    2. Build a new site.

    We have chosen the latter.

    The new site will be called The Australian Independent Media Network, just like this one, but with a slightly different domain name. It will even look like this one.

    The existing site will still be here, and over time we will be able to replicate all the articles onto the new site.

    I’m really, totally, absolutely pissed off about this.

    It will mean nothing new will be going up until the new site is live, which hopefully should be by the weekend.

    What has made us determined to keep going is the support we receive from everyone, and the generous donations some of you have made. It’s given us the opportunity to move forward.

  24. So, with AIMN going through mid-life crisis, what are you folk reading over the summer break?

    I have just started on Helen Garner’s The Season and as a long-time fan of Helen’s writings I am already relishing her narrative style – easy reading and available on Kindle at around $10.

    I like a bit of Australian history from time to time and the journals of Carl Lumholtz forming his published book “Among Cannibals: An Account of Four Years’ Travels in Australia and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland” is quite compelling and illuminating as an historical account written in the late 19th century. “The book details the author’s extensive travels and experiences among the indigenous tribes of Australia, particularly in Queensland, where he immerses himself in their customs and way of life.”

    Lumholtz put his name on the Northen Tree Kangaroo which seems to have been his principal objective in knocking them out of the trees to study their carcasses, seeking for himself a legacy in anthropological circles.

    Again, available on Kindle.

    Any books that you folk are reading while AIMN goes through its dramas – I still think Mossad are behind it !

    PS: we had a cassowary in our backyard on Friday last – I tried to upload a photo but was foiled by the insidious Mossad hackers, again.

    Happy Christmas to All !

  25. With the caveat that a ‘summer break’ is, for this scribbler, entirely fictive, given the status of retirement and the constant challenge to remain engaged…

    Hollywood’s Eve, Didion & Babitz [Lili Anolik]
    Dialogues of Gurdjieff, as well as And Kyroot Said…, and The Death of Gurdjieff in the Foothills of Georgia [Jan Cox]

    Those few aside, I’ve a shelfful of material awaiting their due digestion; in no particular order…

    When We Cease To Understand The World [Benjamin Labatut]
    Speed Boat [Renata Adler]
    Toxic [Richard Flanagan] (and recommend RF’s Question 7 as well)
    Entangled Life [Merlin Sheldrake]
    Donald Horne [Ryan Cropp]
    The Education of Young Donald [Donald Horne]
    The Plant Thieves [Prudence Gibson]
    Beethoven’s Assassins [Andrew Crumley]
    Mermaid Singing / Peel Me a Lotus [Charmian Clift]
    The End of the Morning [Charmian Clift]
    Her Mother’s Daughter [Nadia Wheatley]
    Catafalque-Carl Jung and the End of Humanity [Peter Kingsley]

    Anyway, I’m off to Broome for a spot of camel sniffing & pearl gathering, reading might have to take a step back in the imminent scheme of things.

  26. Not sure if it’s just me hearing it, but the music that plays when opening the recent “Seeing is Deceiving”, article is very irritating and imo not necessary.
    Tried several times and it is there each time

    Sorry to be a grumpy old so-and-so, but not a good look — hope it’s just a mistake.

  28. Once you leave the page it should mute itself, and stay muted unless you click on “Unmute” when you return.

    I am unable to remove or edit any comments or posts, thanks to the fatal flaw.

    The new site is almost ready.

    It’s still fairly bare, but you can check it out at theaimn.net

  29. We have a huge problem. The site has developed a fatal flaw which prevents any authors or admin from accessing our Dashboard (where we edit and publish posts, as well as being the site’s engine room).

    Well that explains why I can’t get to the dashboard today. God’s speed Michael and Carol – and try to stay sane at the same time. Hopefully you get time for a merry Christmas as well.

  30. Cheers Canguro and Michael – I was starting to think I was going as crazy as the people who believe that aliens from “out there” are amongst us and about to invade our world.

    When the music started, I just closed the page and didn’t notice the embedded link.

  38. Michael,

    I was subscribed before but have not received a message about Bert’s latest. Do we all have to resubscribe?

  39. leefe, yes, you’ll need to subscribe on the new site.

    I’ve done some researching and I can migrate 100 subscribers over to the new site. I’ll make sure – if I work out how to do it – that you are included.

  43. Merry Christmas!
    Just a minor beef with the new site ( .net) , in that I can only see the last 4 articles and there doesn’t seem to be a way to scroll to see any earlier ones. I like being able to look back at some of the comments especially, after people have had their say.
    Is it my browser – DuckDuckGo – or an as yet unresolved issue.
    Cheers, Tim. (I’m sending this from the .com site as I can’t see this article on the .net site))

  44. Tim,

    The reason you can’t stroll down too far looking for articles on the new site is that only five articles have been published on it. That’ll be fixed over time.

    This article isn’t on the .net site, btw.

  45. Ahh goodo. Silly old boy here assumed that you’d tansferred all the articles across too.
    I look forward to continued enjoyment of this site.

  47. Facelifts?
    Yes, you see the results on the dials of dozens of ageing hollywood starlets.
    Botox, fillers… collagen, scalpels. Then you get to see the miracles of Facelift.
    See, not a dicky bird of chauvinism here?

  48. Paul, the blokes do it too, thety just don’t get dragged for it. You really think Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt (just for example) still look so young without assistance?
    So, yeah, plenty of chauvinism.

    Michael: I couldn’t link through the three most recent emails – got a security alert each time.

  58. Ta Michael, seems OK now on DuckDuckGo.

    On Chrome Google, the AIM site can come up, but if clicking through (email and/or) website gives ‘400’ error message:

    ‘Bad Request

    Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
    Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

    Additionally, a 400 Bad Request error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.’

  59. Hi Michael

    I managed to get a post up on the new site so thanks for nudging the security.

    The new security sought to establish that I was a human being and then gave me the benefit of the doubt and allowed me in – 2025 could be looking up.

    I noticed that the facility to edit and correct a contribution after posting doesn’t seem to operate ??

    ‘Best for 2025.

  60. Hi Terry

    Good to hear.

    I’m not 100% sure what to do with the proof of being a human. It is a bit annoying, but at least the site isn’t inundated with spam. At one stage in the past this site was getting about 1,500 spam comments a day.

    The edit facility… I’m working on it. That is a priority.

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