ANX.com drama

Barry Chapman

It is not often that I make myself heard on here, but I feel that I should address some issues that have been popping up over the last few weeks since our new site launched.

 

As many of you have noticed, ANXeBusiness launched a new web presence early November. The launch went pretty seamlessly, thanks in great part to our operations, product development and database teams. A few exceptions however have popped up, as with any launch. These have affected the following areas: blog, login, registration, Google Chrome and some streaming media. I will address the issues one by one.

 

Firstly, the main premise of our new site was to be rich in social media. We wanted to incorporate the best elements of Web 2.0 into our site so that we can invite interested parties to join in on what we have to say. Now, in getting our message across, nothing showstopping has occurred; which is good. However, you may or may not have noticed some problems when reading some articles. This was due to some out of order javascript being loaded (which was another problem, to be addressed next!). However, we believe that this is fixed. Please, email the webmaster at webmaster@anx.com with any issues you find to persist.

 

Next, we had some pretty bulky javascript files, and quite a lot at that. We have implemented a method that will compact and combine the files, thus resulting in an improved user experience from faster page load times and so forth. Once again, this is a sitewide change that will be rolling out in the coming weeks. Please let us know if you find any section of the site that seems to be sketchy.

 

Login and registration go hand in hand. We also built a robust user management system comprised of access control lists to grant and/or deny access to certain areas of the site. In doing so, we have initially launched without using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) now TLS. This was because some requests were getting blackholed when redirects would occur to send the user to SSL/non-SSL. Needless to say, this was causing issues when logging in and registering. It is working in development, and we believe it will be ready to roll out in the approaching weeks also.

 

In conjunction with registering, some of you that use Google Chrome, may have experienced issues when trying to register. These issues are known, and a fix is being pursued. In the time being, we encourage you to use Internet Explorer 7+ or Firefox.

 

Finally, some of our streaming media may have resulted in problems when trying to watch them. This is partly due to the javascript problems aforementioned. We have switched our method of loading these files to swfobject.

 

 

While all in all, the website launch was a success by all counts. Once again, thankfully to our special teams! No rollbacks or delays were needed. Feedback has been positive, however we do welcome all constructive criticism so that we may serve your needs better.

 

I have received a few questions about the site, and I will address those questions in a blog sometime in the near future. In the meantime, keep the feedback coming!

 

-Your webmaster