DJWORX launched 5 years go last week. And that seems like as good a time as any to give the old ship a new coat of paint and some shiny accessories to see it into the next 5 years and beyond.

BUT FIRST…

This was due to happen towards the end of 2015. The development work was done, and it looked pretty hawt. But it turned out to be a hacker friendly hot mess, and was a wide open door for three months for hackery. The upshot was wiping the dev site clean, and becoming a WordPress security geek.

So I put the rebuild on a back burner, and with 2016 being my 50th birthday year, I deliberately slowed down with… well everything, a subject that I could write book about and almost bored you all with. But instead of a cathartic spewing of my feelings into your collective laps, now is the time to get back in the chair and shape DJWORX for the future.

CHANGES

I’m not going to cover the obvious changes. Instead I want to talk about key new features.

A unified experience
Mobile is 42% of our traffic, so it makes sense to optimise the site for smartphone and tablet users. We’ve done that, and will continue to improve it too.

Removing bottlenecks
Having analysed traffic, it’s crazy the amount of data that comes and goes from the site without us even knowing. Being more mindful about security and privacy than ever before, I’ve made some changes.

Firstly I’m ditching Google ads and bringing ads in-house. The sheer volume of data that comes and goes is staggering and I’m unhappy with that. So now you’ll only see DJ and related ads that we control.

Disqus is also history for similar reasons. This may be unpopular with some, but it’s a good move from a longer term perspective. All will become clear. And trust me when I say that it just looked wrong on such a distinctive site.

Finally, I’ve also installed an SSL certificate to encrypt your data. I care about your privacy, especially as mine was laid bare by hackers.

Content is king
You’re not here for ads right? So the words and pictures fill the screen, and never looked so good. There’s also a new short news section for those stories that don’t need a full story, as well as things we’ve seen on other sites that we think you’ll like.

There are still ads though. Unless you’re willing to pay for DJWORX, they’re essential to our survival. I’ve written a page about whitelisting DJWORX in your ad blocker. Please add us to your whitelist.

Reviews, ratings, and readers
Ratings are back. You love them and so does the industry apparently. They’re a visual quick look and numerically pitches product against product for comparison. And building on our outstanding community are reader ratings, more specifically owner ratings. They only mean anything if you’ve bought something and can comment from experience. Your distaste of the look from a render has zero value in this respect.

I’ve added this new rating system to the MK Stands review so you can see how it works, and may add it to older reviews too.

ONE MORE THING

There will be a forum. Nothing special, but it will be fully integrated into the site, with the same login for forums and comments. The exact format is yet to be decided — I want to make sure it’s a valuable community resource, so simply throwing up yet another barely trafficked subform ridden affair isn’t the way to go. Given me a month to work out the details. In the meantime, you can comment without registering.

SUMMING UP

There’s probably more that I’ve forgotten about, but the site has been offline for long enough. Feel free to have a look through, and come back with any comments you might have. But please bear in mind that this is still a work in progress.  I hope you enjoy the new experience.