That's what we were estimating the rewrite of this site would take, three months of a year. After all, to me it's a pretty simple site, a few content sections, some date specific stuff, scheduling, a few admin tools, not that much, right?

It's September and while we were planning to release three weeks ago, we started in March or April sometime, so that's quite a bit longer than expected. While we're still fixing minor bugs and even found a few annoyances (not really bugs) this weekend, we've been pretty much done for 3 or 4 weeks. There were some late changes, some of them introduced by me, that delayed things this last month or so.

Not that I'm complaining. I've been working with the other site for almost 4 years, so it's not like it's been a big problem to me. The annoying things I had mostly fixed or just learned to deal with. But there have been a few long term bugs that bothered people and so I think this rewrite was long overdue.

And hats off to Steve D and Steve S at Red Gate. They have a done a fantastic job with the site and I'm pleased with the results. You won't see most of the changes because a lot of them are structural, giving us a good base on which to grow, there are a lot of administrative changes, and there's a real time scheduling feature that lets me go on vacation, having already put out a few weeks worth of content and editorials for you to enjoy 🙂

It's been an interesting process getting the site re-written and quite a few arguments. The classic developer v end-user arguments have ensued in many places and it certainly brings to light the issues of working remotely from the development staff. We've had cases where Steve and Steve built something that worked well for them and in limited use, but would be a problem in the daily production grind that I go through.

I certainly have to take some of the blame here as I'd gone on about my busy summer scheduled without really asking for or pushing for more frequent builds. The rest is really a process problem. We didn't manage the entire process closely enough to ensure that everyone, myself, development staff, marketing folks, etc., were all on the same page on a regular basis.

One of our biggest arguments was about the logo. The first alpha version of the site had a different, circular type logo, on it. Apparently quite a few people didn't like our dradle, straw box, or whatever it is. I argued that logos aren't really important. If you succeed, then the logo becomes recognizable and is a success. If you fail, it's not relevant.

Some of the most recognized logos on the world, Apple, AT&T, GE, McDonalds, NBC, they're silly if you think about them. But because of the success of the company, they're associated with that brand. It's the same thing here. So whether you agree or not, I guess it doesn't matter.

I won 🙂

So I hope you like the site and give us feedback, good and bad, as we move forward on this third version of the SQLServerCentral.com platform.