What happened to the old DevArticles

This morning, I switch on my computer. It boots up as usual, Windows starts. KlipFolio pops up on my desktop. "DevArticles: No Data". Strange. I refresh. Same result. I boot up Mozilla, browse to the website, and instead of the DevArticles I know and love I get a child's failed attempt at imitating PHP/PostPuke. What happened?

Yours very sadly,
Nathan

First of all, the RSS link moved...
instead of the readable http://www.devarticles.com/rss.php that it was before, the RSS feed as moved to http://www.devarticles.com/index2.p...s_rss&no_html=1

Second of all, the RSS feed doesn't seem to work... where its supposed to read & its missing the semicolon... i saved the feed and openned it in XML Spy, and XML Spy reports 9 (i think?) illegal characters for the ISO character set.

Couldn't tell you which characters they are, hopefully its the &amp errors, but I do'nt know.

Nathan,

As we made clear when we took over Dev Articles, it would be made a core component of the Developer Shed network. All of our websites have a unified look and feel to make browsing through our network easy.

Also in the process, we have moved to a very robust CMS to make the continuing addition of news and articles maintainable. You will find that we have gone through great pains to ensure that all of the content is still available and easy to locate.

We have also made the forums easier to locate with their very own subdomain, at http://forums.devarticles.com

Rich

MadCow,

Are you using an RSS program to view the feeds? Something like RSSGator or such works fine with the RSS feeds. The new CMS we are using adheres to the RSS standards.

Rich

Rich,

When i open the link http://www.devarticles.com/index2.p...s_rss&no_html=1 in my Internet Explorer 6 browser I get an "XML Can Not Be Displayed" error...



I've had this problem at home and here at work, so I can only assume its not an isolated problem. Also, for some strange reason, I can't seem to open the XML file in note pad (via right click the error page and view source)... Not sure about that error though...

Another note, I ended up saving the XML file (right click, save as) and openning in XMLSpy (an XML editor)... after manually making the changes... Are all 527 DevArticle articles listed in the RSS feed?

I decided to open the RSS feed in Opera and encountered the following error: XML parsing failed: not well-formed (Line: 129, Character: 116)... Referring to the same line that IE6 gave me.

I ran the RSS feed through W3's Markup Validator and it shows the semi-colon errors and even the illegal characters that I mentioned earlier...

Check results here:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=h...s%26no_html%3D1

Something I noticed that may help you solve the problem is this... The error is encounted on the XML node referencing the article "Introduction to Objects and Classes in C#"...

The description reads: "In this article Michael introduces us to C#, as well as attempts to demystify the theory behind "Object and Classes" in OO Programming."

The description node in the RSS feed reads: "In this article Michael introduces us to C#, as well as attempts to demystify the theory behind &amp..."

Similarly, the article "PHP Interacting with J2ME"... the description node reads: "Did you know that you can use PHP to interact with J2ME to work with mobile devices? If you didn&amp..."...

It seems to me that your RSS feed generator is replacing any instance of quotes (single or double) with an ampersand.

As for the illegal characters pointed out by W3's Validator (Line 159, column 23: non SGML character number 150), I have no idea what your RSS generator is doing here, but I do have some better insight as to where the error is.

Well, thanks for the reply. It's a shame really, I loved the old design, it actually looked nice; and while not trying to slander the designer of the CMS you are using, it's nothing compared to it. I'll still visit the site as it is one of the best sites for code and tutorials, however I hope someone at the DevShed network gets the urge for a serious redesign.

Thanks again,
Nathan

With all-do respect to the Devshed designers, I understand your need for conformity... I also realize that you are probably not done with the conversion, and i understand your frustrations with the new CMS... I've been trying to save this rant, but rkunicki brought it out of me... =)

The new design must be a dial-up user's nightmare... I've yet to try it on dialup, but i'm sure those large banner ads are a hassel for dialup users, or even those on bandwidth-capped high-speed. Is it really necessary to have so many ads? Let alone two ads adjacent to each other for the same product/site? AND they're all animated... Typing out my thread response makes my eyes water watching this animated banner at the top of the page.

Speaking of the top of the page, many design&layout guides talk about keeping attention above the fold... When i click an article, why must i scroll to begin reading the article? I keep reading that text-ad under the title/author without realizing its not a part of the article. Why are the actual articles perverted by these double-underline text-ads? Also, the forum categories with the text-ad next to the category name? I keep getting confused as to what's important information and what's a shameless advertisement. Besides, I shouldn't have to scroll to read what I came to the site for.

Speaking of scrolling, forums! The single feature of Devarticles that used to keep so many people coming back... Devarticles forums are what kept us alive. The speed of responses to questions from others in the community amazed me, let alone the level of knowledge that many members of the community contribute. That's what keeps me coming here (and hopefully it hasn't changed)... however, what HAS changed is the accessibilty of the forums... it seems that what used to be a core element of Devarticles is now hidden in the background somewhere. It took me forever to find the forum link (the black text on the grey background on the bottom of the left panel).

What happened to the "Top Five" forum links? One of the features that assisted with the prompt responses in forum threads. Members were able to see the latest posts/questions right at the top of the first page.

Some things that I do find appealing about the new design. I like the feeds displayed on the right displaying the latest article titles from all of the Devshed network sites.

I'm trying my best to keep up during the transition. Again, I realize you're probably not done. Considering that Devarticles was based on the developer community, I felt my views should be heard.

At the vary least, I'm glad all the articles survived the transition =)




If its not broke, break it.

I'm going to have to agree with the previous posters on this. The design is a mess. It feels very 1998, as there is no real "style" to speak of - no-one uses Arial anymore as it is harder to read than Verdana. And what happened to all the nice headings, etc... CSS was invented for a reason. I totally understand you want some continuity between the sites, but the navigation on devarticles was a no brainer - was it really neccesary to change? Surely it's not difficult too change the template in your new, fandangled CMS.

The Ad's - I also understand that you need to make money - but the way you guys have totally "whored" devarticles with ads, I'm inclined to go elsewhere. You might want to look at your advertising engine - I regularly see TWO ads advertising the SAME PRODUCT on the one page. Crazy.

Usability has also gone out the window. There are way too many ads. Having only 5% of the screen taken up with ACTUAL CONTENT, and having said content at the extreme BOTTOM OF THE PAGE is beyond a joke.

One other small thing that has annoyed me - the buttons in the forums. I dunno if it's just the designer in me, but the new 2D flat buttons really suck - bring back the bevels!

C'mon guys, get with the times! Spice up your site with a bit off CSS, and remove HALF the advertising - it'll do wonders.

Guys, while I appreciate your feedback the new look and feel is here to stay. With that being said, we are looking into the RSS although it works fine on our end. We will also be looking into adding back the latest forum threads in some capacity. The redesign was just complete so give us a little bit of time to get some things together. Also, the ads are here to stay as that is what will support the continuation of this site and its content.

hey guys,

I've not been to the site for a loooooong time!! I last visited when DevShed first announced the take over. I was excited, and now I have a lot more free time on my hands, I thought I'd come back to the forums n see if I can help at all.....

my first reaction was, "what the diddly?!" when I saw the homepage. I honestly thought I'd typed the address in incorrectly. I've read all the posts above, and agree with everything that's been said.

As most of us run our own websites, we all know the need for adverts. but do you really need that many!? I've just read the article "5 Web Design Tips You Can't Live Without" and I couldnt believe it when I had to actually search for the article text. It was below 3 adverts. One ad even looked like part of the article.

I miss the "clean" , "fresh" look of the old devarticles. It was like a breath of fresh air when you looked at it!!

I do understand the need to be consistent with your other websites, and I have to say, it does fit in perfectly.

As you've already said, the site layout is here to stay, but if I had one wish, it would be that the number of adverts could be reduced.

Good luck with everything on the site etc, but I honestly cant see me sticking around long. Which is unfortunate, because I used to love being a part of this community!!

Matt, sorry to see you go because of the adverts - hope you decide to stick around!

hehe, after posting, I realised that the forums are not that different to be honest....!! the main site I am not really a fan of, but to be hoenst, I never used that much anyway.. its the forums that are the attraction to me!!

Plus I love that you've put the quick reply box on ... one of the best VB hacks ever IMO!

Great so stick around! I think you will see we will do our best to make devarticles a valuable resource to the internet community!

I do miss the old site, but I think we should all wait until the design makeover is finished.