CHAITGEAR 2.0 is coming… Is this mike on? [tap tap tap]

Lots has been going on behind the scenes, thought I’d give CHAITGEAR readers a quick peek behind the curtain…

We’ve been busy with a TON of things, and trying to keep up with the constant barrage of technology news fell off the radar screen as compared to other stuff just to keep the site running (and improving!). Folks probably didn’t even notice the relocation to our new server (on site5.com), as thing went just smooth as silk – and site5 stability has been pretty stellar so far as compared to our old host. We hope to be with them for a long time, or at least until CHAITGEAR outgrows well-managed shared hosting. 

The site code is about to get a major overhaul, with two years of cruft getting cleaned up and rewritten. The new CHAITGEAR 2.0 will emerge, the site URL will finally change to chaitgear.com, allowing me to separate CHAITGEAR from my private consulting work (which will stay on at chait.net). The design will get a minor spit and polish, and we have some awesome products in the pipeline for reviews (and I do mean awesome…).

Speaking of reviews, the feedback we’ve gotten is “love how in depth they are”, balanced with “geez, they are so long!” So, CHAITGEAR 2.0 will be the beginning of a new review format, featuring more basic ‘got to know’ points, fewer pictures and lengthier ‘blow by blow’ analysis, opting for more quickly getting you to the thumbs-up, thumbs-down – after all, that’s really what folks are looking for! We’re not eliminating the details, just giving you the most important product pros and cons… as, frankly, we’re an opinion site like any other, we’ll give you our opinion, but the only thing better than an opinion is actually purchasing a product and using it yourself!  Also replacing the deeper/lengthier reviews will hopefully be more fervent discussion and Q&A over each product, so the community will interact at a deeper level, and we’ll answer more of the particular ‘burning’ questions folks have about a product.

We’re also going to be activating more community features. Comments might get replaced with a full-fledged forum system (testing the waters on that…), we’ll turn on email-notification of hot stories and discussions you are interested in, and make it easier to vote for articles you like on CHAITGEAR at your favorite multi-source news sites (Digg, Fark, Slashdot, etc.), as well as potentially flipping on more ‘personalization’ features like customized homepage filters, emails, private messaging, article tagging/flagging, and more.

With the push for more great content, we’ll also be segmenting the site better. Categories will get a heavy overhaul, moving towards major groups that most users are familiar with, each with their own subdomain and landing page for easy filtering of the content you want to browse for, and URLs for articles will finally be migrating over to ‘nice URLs’ based off the post topic and title. All in all, should make it easier to navigate, easier to search, and easier for search engines to index. 

If you have site-features you’d like to see, please let us know! But suffice it to say that the ‘re-launch’ of CHAITGEAR 2.0 is very important to us, and the site should start seeing some steady new content as the kickoff happens and the year progresses. Bear with us!

- David Chait, Editor-in-Chief