A reader reports that he is having problems entering the site’s URL manually (i.e., http://www.bsreview.org) or any of its subdomains (/blog, /forum, and so on). Internet Explorer 7 (under Windows XP) displays the banner image and some text, but then an error message pops up (“IE cannot open the Internet site http://www.bsreview.org. Operation aborted.”), and the page cannot be displayed. Also, with Firefox 3 (under Fedora) he is unable to see the New Topic button when he logs into the forums.  And this is all happening from a Comcast connection.

Now, I cannot reproduce any of these problems. The site, the blog and the forums have been extensively tested under IE (versions 6 and 7), Firefox (versions 2 and 3), and Safari, and found to work just fine, as far as I can tell. Since I have not received any other reports from visitors about display problems, or any other problem for that matter, would you mind reporting back to me what your experience browsing the site is like? If you do, it would be helpful to know your OS and browser, and you can either leave a comment here or contact me directly. I will update this entry as I receive your feedback. Thanks a lot!

Update (August 11): The issue is fixed now. Some obscure configuration setting related to the custom style I am using for the forums was the culprit. Everything else seems to be working as it should. Let me know if you come across any further glitches.

As you can see, the site and the blog have undergone a major redesign. You may or may not like it, but I think they look much better than before. But don’t get fooled by the appearance. The real improvements are to be found in the code. You can’t see it, but it will make my life a lot easier, and you will be able to profit from some streamlined features.

I will not bore you with all the details, but I do want to mention a few of the improvements:

• A number of system-wide anti-spam features have been implemented. This means that the website, the blog and the forums (soon to be reopened), will be easier to manage. It also means that the time saved in running them can be devoted to creating new contents.
• The calculations used to assign an overall rating to the products reviewed have been changed, so that even if a certain area is not applicable, the merits of the available features is what counts towards the final score (see a real example of the kinds of problems I run into in the past.)
• The new layout is more readable, and leaves plenty of room for the use of audiovisual media.
• As far as possible, links have been thoroughly updated. As for incoming links, please notice that any links pointing to the old blog URL (“domain/weblog/post.html“) or the first incarnation of BSR (with static htm files) will not be redirected anymore. There has been plenty of time to update those links, and the server structure was getting very confusing trying to keep this sort of “backwards compatibility.” I’m sorry for any inconvenience, but it is something that had to be done.
• Most changes have improved the “team-friendliness” of the site, so that it will be easier to have others involved in writing, blogging, participating in the forums, etc.

Last, but not least, I am greatly indebted to my son Andrés, without whose help these changes would have not been possible.

Finally, I want to encourage you to keep supporting this project by emailing me news, links or any other information that you think might be useful to the many readers of BSR. Okay, enough for now. Have a nice day and see you around!

As the most perceptive among you may have noticed, I have now migrated to WordPress. To be honest, Movable Type was a pain in the neck, and I had all sorts of technical problems trying to update it.

Changes will be introduced gradually. For one thing, the website and blog are going to undergo a facelift, but that is not quite ready yet. For the time being, as far as the blog is concerned, I am still working on getting the permalinks and archive files properly formatted, so please do not link to any of the current pages until I get that sorted out. You may, however, comment to your hearts content.

Update (July 17): I think I’ve got it right now. You may link to any post or comment as usual. Thanks!

Forum spam and blog spam are on the rise. Ideally, we would all like to keep spammers out of our virtual life, but absolute protection is impossible if you want to have some degree of feedback from your readers and interact with them. For instance, it would be very easy to put all comments on moderation, or force everyone to register and get approved before posting a comment or participating in a forum thread, but since I don’t want to do that at this point (at least not right now), I have to spend some time every single day cleaning up the forum and some blog comments, which is quite unfortunate.

Receiving lots of spam emails every day is a real pain, but getting spam in forums and blog comments si simply nauseating. I really hate it, and since I don’t read any of those messages – be it emails, forum threads and/or registrations, or blog comments -, please be sure to use a real name and a meaningful subject line, or else your post will be immediately and unmercifully trashed.