We’d like to welcome everyone to the latest and best incarnation of Real World Tech (RWT). RWT started 16 years ago and has grown to become one of the leading venues for deep technical analysis of the computer and semiconductor industries. Over the years, the internet has evolved considerably and our new website design is a shift to a much more modern approach. Here is a guide to the changes and new features in RWT 3.0.
Articles
The articles have been organized according to both categories and tags. The categories are shown in the first navbar, while several tags are shown in the second navbar. Generally, the categories are broader and more high level, while the tags are more specific.
The front page shows the most recent articles, along with a count of forum posts discussing that article. The category and tag pages similarly show the most recent articles, within the respective category or tag. The first navbar contains our search box, as well as membership controls. The second navbar has obvious links to our Facebook page, Twitter feed, and RSS feed. Any existing links to RWT articles will redirect automatically to the new and much easier to parse URLs.
The sidebar contains Editor’s Picks, a rotating selection of some of the best articles, along with popular articles. When reading an article, these will be replaced by links to related articles. In addition, the sidebar contains a Facebook box and the official RWT twitter feed, which we encourage everyone to join and follow.
Membership
One of the new features is a membership system for readers. The initial functionality is basic, but will grow over time. Currently, you sign up with a user name (which cannot be changed), an email address and other fields. Once complete, a password is emailed out. When logged in, you can change account settings. The membership system currently is used for forum posting, but the functionality will be expanded over time with additional features.
Forums
Our new forums are integrated with the articles and maintain the same general functionality as our previous forums. There is a main forum for discussion and a second for site news and feedback. All forum posts from the previous site have been migrated into the main discussion forum and as with the articles, existing URLs will automatically redirect. As with the previous design, we continue to enable anonymous posting.
The forums also include a couple of new features. First, any email address is obfuscated to prevent email harvesting. Second, the membership system makes posting more convenient. After 15 days, members will bypass the security question for posting. Members also have the choice of posting with their real identity or anonymously. When posting with the real identity, the name and email will be automatically populated, and the email obfuscated. When posting anonymously, members manually enter in a name and email, although they continue to bypass the security question.
For those who are curious about the technology behind our new site, we have an article that describes the website architecture and choices in terms of implementating and hosting.
Again, thank you for reading RWT and welcome to the new site. We hope you appreciate the redesign and if you have any suggestions or comments, please post in the feedback forum, or contact us.
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