Hello EVERYONE! Its been a tough 3 weeks. I have been working on this new site non stop and it has been hard to sleep, eat and most importantly, take photos. When I started this site in February of 09 it was mainly for me to pass my time as I was unemployed and the wife told me to take a year off to do something I wanted to do. Well, most of you know the story but I started STEVEHUFFPHOTOS.COM with my Macbook Pro 15″ and Iweb. Yes, Iweb.
Over the past 8 months I worked on the site day in, day out but spent most of my time driving, shooting and editing photos. After all of that I would write my review and that would take anywhere from 6 hours to 3 days. All this time, what I did not really realize is that my site was gaining popularity. My e-mails started growning by the day and my Alexa ranking went from 3 million to 200,000.
Well, just as it was getting good and I was making just enough commission to pay my web hosting (I was using 500 – 600GB in transfer the last two months) I realized Iweb was not going to cut it. Many people could not see the site in Internet Explorer and others complained about the text formatting. It was a big fat freaking mess. Almost as messy as a hippopotamus rolling around in a pool of chocolate. Ha ha.
Then, during an upgrade from Iweb 08 to Iweb 09, during the upload Iweb 09 killed all of my comments and changed some of my URL’s which I worked my ass off to get ranked high in google. I spent 12 hours getting my site back to normal but still lost the hundreds of comments in the blog.
After a huge headache and deciding on how I was going to build a new site I settled on WordPress.org. After going through 6 themes and several rough drafts I settled on this design and look and I am extremely happy with it. The little but of cash I make from this site goes in to an account and I use that money to pay the web hosting, gas for when I go out to review cameras, shipping, etc. The little I had in that acct just got wiped out with me having to buy new hosting, a theme or six and to top it off, I am now negative. Why? Well, my Macbook Fried! After 3 years of faithful service it died.
Sometimes, when it rains, it pours. I did not have enough in my acct for a new Mac, but had to use what I had along with a credit card to buy a new MAC. In any case, I am happy with the new site and if all of you who read my site and enjoy the reviews would bookmark me or subscribe to my feeds it would help greatly! I now have to work hard once again to get reviews from this site ranked in google, and get traffic coming here instead of my old site.
Some have asked why I just did not use the same domain name for this site. Well, that was a hard choice but in the end I decided that since 75% of my reviews are ranked on the first page of google I would leave them at the old site as an “archive” and link to them from here. If I would have taken them down and put them here the URLs would all change and my google traffic would be gone. So from this point on, all new reviews will be posted here at stevehuffphoto.com (no “s” at the end) and all of my past reviews will stay at stevehuffphotos.com (“s” at the end).
Also, with this new site I have so many new features and the ease of use is incredible. Iweb was dog slow not only for you, but for me as well. This site will load fast and work with any browser. You will have up to the minute updates as my new blog is so much more user friendly. I will be updating the blog MUCH more and hope to become a source of info for Leica cameras (my true love).
So please, if you enjoy the site, bookmark it! Subscribe! If you buy camera gear, feel free to use my links to B&H and Amazon at the upper right of each page. I promise to bring you more and more reviews and they will now be even better as I can make the images bigger as the server is blazingly fast. So enjoy the site, and feel free to leave comments!
BTW, on the main page you will notice there is an image slider. That will showcase my latest reviews or important posts. Also, my next review will be on the very cool 50 1.1 Nokton by Voigtlander. I am shooting it now on the Leica M9 and expect to have a very cool review to kick off my reviews on this new site! Also in hand is the Canon S90 and Zeiss 25 Biogon ZM which will be reviewing on the M9 as well! Check back daily!
Thanks, let me know how you like the site. For now its still a work in progress but I will be working on it every day until it is 100%. Thanks again!
Steve
I’ve only just discovered this site, so I don’t know much about the old colour scheme, but this scheme is great. The old sites I used to frequent were dpreview and Luminous Landscapes, and though they’re both great sites, especially the latter, their colour scheme really hurts my eyes. This is much better. And the content is fantastic too – much prefer your “real-world” reviewing style 🙂
Thanks for the kind words guys! Yes, I decided to stick with the light theme mainly due to the fact that it is so much easier to read! Dan, thanks man and I love your site as well! Scott, I am working on the wife 🙂
Steve…the new site looks great, and loads MUCH faster than the iweb site. I am a devoted Mac guy, but don’t understand why Mac can’t fix their iweb problems. You have me hooked to your site, and I check every day.
Keep up the great work!! Will your wife now give you permission to take ANOTHER year off to do what you want to do?
Cheers,
Scotty
Jakarta, Indonesia
Love the new site – I’m glad you went with the black text on white background! Very cool keep up the good work, you are doing a great service to photo enthusiasts
Hi Steve,
congratulations to your new site. I have bookmarked both so far and consult regularly. I am impressed and thankful for your comments on the gear you report on.
Let me add to the color scheme issue though: A dark blackground lets pop the photos really magically, but the text, especially the red font, is not that easy to read. At least I would like to have the dark red font to be changed to something brighter.
Keep on going and regards to the windy city from Cologne,
Ronald
Hi Steve,
I was really *REALLY* happy when you changed the old site from white on black to black on light grey, it was much easier on the eyes. White on black is very harsh, white on dark gray is slightly better (like the alternate comments here). Sorry to be a bit negative, it’s only a comment about form, the content is always interesting !!
Congratulations on your new site. It looks really great!
I have bookmarked it and will drop by regularly.
Bravo Steeve (apologize my poor english .. i am french !)
Long life for your new site ! I saw it everyday and i am in love with your M9 revew (i own mine since a week but my shits are so different your shots !)
Only French prople apologize for their poor English, WHY ?
By the way, sorry, I’m French
Really nice website! Congrats and I will of course visit your site
regularly!
Thanks guys! Pompo, you may be thinking of wordpress.com. I host this site with bluehost, not through wordpress. Thanks!
Congrats on the new site and good luck, I’m sure it will be ranked even higher in a little time!
If you don’t mind asking why you didn’t get a different server instead of wordpress.org? I checked them out once and I remember they charge you for each and every additional feature…Like 1and1.com now has unlimited traffic for less than $8 per month. Hey did u see the new “expandable Ricoh cam?!? I love the idea of a replaceable/upgradable sensor etc…
I have a lot of Respect for this site and the struggle required too arrive @ this
time and place…………..
Continue on…………
Hilton…..
Steve
Really like the new site. I can make the print larger so it is easier to read. The iWEB site would not do that for me even though I was using my MAC. Anyway,
your new site is very well organized and I sure do appreciate all your hard work on designing it. So lets see some more “REAL WORLD REVIEWS”.
Keep up the great work you do, and by the way your photos are awesome.
BY GEORGE