Over the past couple of months, Tech Realty® has gone a couple of revisions as I have tried to determine the direction for the future of the site. About 2 months ago, I changed from a blogging platform to an E107 Content Management System (CMS). Many of our readers sent in feedback on the new site and most of it was not pleasant. The various feedback I received was:

• It is too bogged down with information - it seems a little cluttered
• The front page has too many options
• I don’t like having to create an account to post comments - what if I want to leave an anonymous comment?
• Get rid of the forums - no one ever uses them anymore since you have to be logged in to even see them
• LOVE the new site, keep up the great work
• I miss the categories and such. it was nice to be able to click on a category and see all posts that were relevant to the one you just read.
• I think the old site looked better and was easier to navigate. Remember that everyone does not have the technical expertise you do so when things get too clustered, it seems unorganized.

I did have some more positive feedback on the site but most of it was just the typical “I love the new site” with nothing constructive. The negative feedback was enough for me to decide to change the feel back to a blogging platform. I have added a few extra tools to make the site “fun” including Gravatar avatars. If you are not familiar with Gravatar, it stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. When you create a comment or post with an email address associated with your gravatar.com account, it will automatically put your picture in your comment/post on this site. It also works with numerous other Gravatar-enabled websites and blogs.

I will be adding more tools and eye-candy as we progress forward and look forward to hearing your comments/opinions!

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