Published Oct 9. 2015 - 8 years ago
Updated or edited Jun 24. 2016

The new GFF!

The Global FlyFisher has changed! And in a major way. The content is the same but the look and the system behind is very different. We do expect some glitches in the beginning, so be patient.

We have a long history. That story has been told many times and needs no repetition here other than saying that we have content back from 1994 and have been adding new articles and features to the site for more than 20 years. Welcome to the new and upgraded GFF of 2015!

Welcome to the new and upgraded GFF of 2015!

Article page
Front page
The new site
Martin Joergensen

Over the years the site has been patched together from numerous different parts, most home made and programmed by me, but some - like the forum and the video section - were based on different Open Source software adapted to suit our needs and integrated with the rest of the site. We now run a single and consistent system over the whole site.

'nuff talk! What does this mean for you?

Well, not much, actually except for a new look and a slightly different menu. All the old content has been transferred apart from a tiny bit, which may or may not come, depending on whether someone misses it.

- The articles are all there.
- The comments are there.
- The Forum is there.
- The user submitted pictures are there.
- The videos are there.
- The wallpapers are there.
...and not least...
- All the previously registered users are there

So if you were a registered user before, you still are. The username and password is the same as before, and you can log in here. If you forgot your access code, you can request a new one by entering your email-address on this page. New users can register on the registration page. It only requires a username, an email and selecting a password. The registration will give you access to some features on GFF like
- Posting in the forum
- Uploading your pictures to our user Pix gallery
- Commenting on everything
- Adding videos to our video section
...and more will come.

The front page
New menu
The new GFF
Martin Joergensen

Some articles need love

I have actually added a field in the editing form for the articles that's called "Needs love". I mark articles for some tender love and care when I find errors, missing images, odd fonts or whatnot. All this is left over from numerous incarnations of our article system and some articles were made a couple of decades ago and have been in need for some TLC for a long time. Now I can find them based on the mark and give them some attention one at the time.

What didn't make it...

In the process I chose to let some things die, which haven't been overly popular or successful.
- The News Section - it started out fine, but keeping an eye on the market and writing regular news stories is too much like real work. I decided to drop it.
- eCards - this was an old function that saw a little use, but was too cumbersome to move over. I might make a new eCard function... and then again, I might not.
- The calendar - it was running out of events anyway, and keeping it up to date is a lot of work. It might reappear, but I'm not sure it will.
- The hitlists - They were custom made from Google data and internal data from the old system and will need to be remade, which will be done ASAP.
- The store - it was built on the shopping site Zazzle's API and rather shaky. You can still go to our shop on Zazzle and buy mugs and T's. I might reinstate the shop at some point.
- The slideshows - few people noticed them, but they still presented a major pain because Chinese robots had fallen in love with them and sometimes carpet bombed them with traffic. Not a big loss.

A few more odds and ends had to go. Most is still saved behind the scenes and might live again when I get the time to look at it.

But for now WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get... and that's actually quite a lot!

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Comments

good upgrade...

worth the time and effort. great job!

Martin Joergensen's picture

Thanks Fritz! I'm pretty...

Thanks Fritz! I'm pretty satisfied myself.

Martin

website design/colours...

I have tried. Yes, I have really tried. Unfortunately, I am not enjoying the new website design, and particularly the colours. The glaring white is almost 'clinical' in its look, and does not radiate warmth. Perhaps someone felt it's the way websites are now, and is attempting to make it look 'cleaner' or sharper. But for me it's too 'clean', and where it's not white, it has this insipid washed-out green colour, which again is not attractive (to me). Of course there will be others who find this attractive. But for me the design does not make we want to linger, as i find it 'uncomfortable' and 'not pleasing'. I have been an almost daily viewer for years, but visit less frequently with this new design. This is probably disappointing for the staff to read, as i am sure a lot of effort has gone into this. However, as much as i love the content, I thought you should also hear that at least one of your viewers does not appreciate the website colours.

Martin Joergensen's picture

New design...

G.S.Marryat,

I'm sorry to hear that the new design doesn't become you well... I know it's question of liking and taste and that it's difficult to create something that everybody likes. You are the first person to criticize the new design - not that it makes your critique less valuable.

Oddly enough I did get several remarks about the old design being old fashioned, too colorful, messy and other remarks, and looking at it right now I have to say that it's just as glaring white as the new one (the dominant white background is the exact same white background we have now) and the washed out green was in stead a washed out yellow supplemented by a lot of different colors chosen individually for every single article.

I'm truly sorry to hear that the design will keep you from visiting daily as you used to, and I hope that lots of new content can convince you to reconsider that. I'm probably going to leave the new design as it is for now, but I'm certainly not totally locked on that and might consider changing it if more protests come in.

Thanks for your honest comment. It's highly appreciated.

Martin

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Since you got this far …


The GFF money box

… I have a small favor to ask.

Long story short

Support the Global FlyFisher through several different channels, including PayPal.

Long story longer

The Global FlyFisher has been online since the mid-90's and has been free to access for everybody since day one – and will stay free for as long as I run it.
But that doesn't mean that it's free to run.
It costs money to drive a large site like this.

See more details about what you can do to help in this blog post.