Stamp Smarter Website Upgrade

http://www.stampsmarter.com

The Stamp Smarter website upgrade has been rolled out, the entire site is now 'responsive'. In other words, it can be displayed and viewed on any size screen; from a large desktop flat screen all the way down to a tiny smart phone. All the primary features and pages have been ported but there are a few that have not yet been completed. There are also a few new features and improvements.

Please note that if you have previously 'bookmarked' any page (other than the opening page) your bookmark might no longer work. I tried to retain the file naming conventions but the reorganization drove some directory changes that could not be avoided. To a large degree the reorganization was driven because responsive design demands simplified navigation/menus. One additional improvement is that you can now directly link/bookmark any page in the site.

If your browser has cached any of the old site of pages you may see errors for a day or two. Please try refreshing (F5 key) your browser if you get any 'page not found' type errors.

I will be adding more 'interconnectivity' (links) between related pages and a new powerful search feature in the next week or so. I also have some work to complete on the Illustrated Glossary and the 'By Year' feature of the 1847usa section. Over the next few months I am sure that I will be making many other improvements and adding some other new features. Any suggestions/input welcome.

This upgrade required a complete rewrite of every single page, at last count I had recoded over 3000 pages. (I started on this Oct 1st, spent endless hours, many late nights, and at times my eyes were crossing!) As such, I am sure that I have made some errors. If anyone spots any mistakes please let me know and I will address them in real-time.

I choose to learn how to write responsive code from scratch as opposed to simply using an existing cookie-cutter, 'made-from-template' website design. This helps give the website a unique look and feel instead of being like every other site our there. But this also may have introduced potential issues in that I have only performed limited testing on the thousands of possible browser/operating system/device combinations. If you are reporting any issue please try to include the browser name and operating system name.
Don
APS #094826

awesome
its a nice free site for beginners

Don, what a wonderful resource you have created. You should feel proud of what you have accomplished.

One thing, I was going to make a paypal donation to help keep it going, but got the infamous "404 - File or directory not found."
message.

yakboomer,
Thank you for the feedback, the missing page has been fixed.
Don

Don:

BUYING ON LINE - SELLER TOTALS

"Seller Totals

Cras justo odio, dapibus ac facilisis in, egestas eget quam. Donec id elit non mi porta gravida at eget metus. Nullam id dolor id nibh ultricies vehicula ut id elit.

Seller list is arranged alphabeticlly."

No comprendo the lingo. Alphabeticlly is missing an "a"

Those crossed eyes will get you every time!

Sorry, that is my default gibberish 'place holder' text. Fixed for now but I'll be improving a lot of these pages over the next few weeks.
Thanks
Don

Thanks Don and Merry X-Mas and a great 2017 !

Don thanks for all you do with your site. It has differently helped me and I'm sure it will help thousands of other stamp enthusiasts. Its an AWESOME site.
Thanks so much!

You have a wonderful website. Clearly a labor of love. Having seen many nice sites come and go over time - yours strikes me as fairly important to preserve. Have you considered a way ( a long time from now ) to bequeath this? That is also a general question for good stamp sites.

txstamp,
Thank you for the kind words. Your point is well taken and especially true given that my doctors currently rate my survival chances at 25%. I have previously interfaced with APS at several levels to see if they accept digital donations. After poking around some I came away with the understanding that they would accept digital donations. But unfortunately I did not get a level of confidence that they would be able to commit to keeping anything online or published.

Plan A - I have setup the site to accept donations and have those donations applied directly to the hosting fees without any human intervention. This means that my wife would be able to keep it published even though she has no IT skills. There are already quite a few other folks who are also contributing to the site and this would not change if my wife had control.

Plan B - I was planning on asking on this forum if there was anyone who might want to assume control of the site to keep it going if I am no longer able.

As you mention, there has been some great sites that are no longer around. (The 'Wayback Machine' is pitiful and often cannot archive much of a site's content.) I truly wish APS better supported accepting digital donations and keeping them available.

I am a bit baffled as to why we seem to place a lot of value and emphasis on philatelic hardcopy publishing but have left web publishing out in the cold. Is spending 2000 man hours writing a book somehow more valuable than spending 2000 man hours writing web code?
Don

Don, the work you continue to do on Stamp Smarter is amazing. Thank you for providing this resource.

It has lots of interesting topics from different collectors; thanks for the website.

Thanks for the hard work. It makes the APS site look ancient. I wish Scott English would take notice.

Is there a specific reason that a phone number is required as part of the member sign-up?

dkabq8,
It is meant as a way to check to ensure that members are who they say they are. Since members can enter Reviews, I felt it was a good field to screen anyone from simply using bogus info to establish an account. (Anyone can generate a fake email account in seconds.)

I will look into changing this to also accept a APS or other organization membership numbers since this info would also serve the same purpose. There is a privacy statement link at the bottom of each page. As the current members can attest, their personal info has never been used to any way. Stamp Smarter does not 'spam' or send anyone any automated emails.
Don

redwoodrandy,
Oops, fixed. Sorry but thanks for catching this!
Don