Please don’t adjust your dials.
Hey, friends. Some good news!
First up, I finished my “intro to FIRE” course course for Audible and turned in the manuscript. Once the script is approved, I'll head to the recording studio. Not sure about any projected release date, but we're moving along.
At the same time, it looks like development on the brand-new Get Rich Slowly site design is done. Well, mostly so. There are still a handful of tweaks we'd like to make — but we'd like to do them after the new site is public. To that end, we intend to push the new design live in the next 24 hours or so. This shouldn't cause any hassles…but you never know.
Once the new site is up, please please please give us feedback. We need to know what works and what doesn't.
Behind the scenes, Tom and I are both very excited about the future of Get Rich Slowly. We've been doing so much background stuff for the past year that the actual front-end has been a little neglected. That's about to end.
HOWEVER…there's also a bit of bad news.
For the past few weeks, while she's been furloughed from work, Kim has been handling all of the home and yard chores while I finished my course. She's excited for me to be finished so that I can lend a hand.
As part of that, we went to Home Depot this morning to buy a wood chipper. When we went to load it into her new RAV4, my left elbow went *crunch*, then my bicep and forearm instantly became sore and tight. Kim insisted on driving me to urgent care (because we Roths don't do that kind of thing — we just suffer for weeks). X-rays found nothing wrong, so the doctor put me in a sling and put me on muscle relaxers. I'm supposed to use my arm “75% less than normal” for the next few days. If things don't improve then they want an MRI.
So, while I'm mentally ready to go, and while the new design will roll out shortly, actual new articles may be a little slower to follow than I'd planned. But they're coming.
I hope all of you are doing well. And I hope you like the new layout. Once we have all the kinks worked out, it should be much more usable for everyone. Bring on GRS 4.0!
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Hi JD. Long time reader (like, from before the site changed hands the first time, that long), first time commenter. I am very sorry to hear about your elbow. Whenever people experience pain and the doctors can’t find anything wrong I ask them if they have heard of Dr. John Sarno. Have you heard of him?
Congratulations on getting the manuscript done! I’m so glad this year is going better for you. Belated Happy Easter! Looking forward to some good articles here, but please take the Doctor’s advice, and heal first.
I like the text size in the articles. It is easy to read.
I do too!
Similarly, thank you for not making the text “grey on white background” like I have been seeing. The poor contrast makes it so hard to read.
Love the new design! Nice work. Not going to lie, the old site was hard to digest lol
I like having a short blub on the articles, but other than that, love the new look! Been on this site forever.
Hi Lisa, you can find the classic blog layout up in Articles at the top navigation. https://www.getrichslowly.org/articles/
Looks good! Someone has probably told you already, but the links on your “Start Here” page don’t link to articles. Best of luck with the re-design!
Yep yep. Adding those links is on my personal to-do list for today. If I hadn’t messed up my arm yesterday, they’d be done already. 🙁
My notes…
Good: The PC/ISP that was not getting GRS refreshes DID update to show the new format without any effort on my end.
Bad: The # of comments on the summary of an article from the GRS/articles/ page does NOT match the # actually on the article (for this specific post, anyway). I am writing (I believe) comment #9, but the link/summary on GRS/articles/ only showed 2, even after I clicked-through/opened the page. Not sure if this is an error or just “the way it is”.
Ugly: I still miss timestamps on comments :'(
I’m noticing a trend of removing dates on comments in many blogs lately. The other sites I’ve seen it on are recycling old content, and removing the dates on the comments makes it less obvious that the “new” articles are just updates of old ones. It’s annoying because I don’t mind reading recycled blog posts, but I don’t want to read through old comments again. I like being able to scroll past the old comments to find the current discussion.
I’m with you! I don’t mind seeing/reading older or updated articles since their relevance today may feel different for me than when I first read it but it helps to know how relevant the comments are too. Not having a date may make them, or the site, feel more ‘evergreen’, but for me (and maybe others) the comments lose context when the dates are removed. A comment on an article today in these ‘pandemic’ times will be different than one from last year, and yet without a date it will be hard for readers to be able to distinguish. In… Read more »
The new site looks wonderful! It’s nice to see the face behind GRS. hope you take care of that arm we don’t realize how important things like arms and knees are til we can’t use them!
Enjoy the site and your tips. Here’s one, you could consider using Google Voice Typing: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/4492226?hl=en or Dragon Naturally Speaking…or just enjoy the rest.
Oh I’m sorry to hear about your injury. I hope it heals without further medical attention. Thanks for keeping it real though. I chuckled at this “(because we Roths don’t do that kind of thing — we just suffer for weeks)”. Same for my family! Here is a big not of the thanks to the more reasonable people like Kim who help those of us more stubborn (or cheap) to get the care we need. Well done Kim! I’ve been reading GRS for well over a decade and look forward to what this chapter of GRS will entail. I really… Read more »
Nice job with the new format! It is clean & easy to read. To use an engineering term, elegant.
Please be aware that a crunch that does not show on x-rays could be a connective tissue problem. If rest etc. does not solve the problem, you may need an MRI to look at the connective tissue (tendons, ligaments, etc.)
Best wishes!
I really love the new theme, JD!! I’ve been trying to redesign my site but I’m not happy with the results. Regardless, I definitely get how much work goes into it – nice job!
Sorry about your arm – that’s rough. At least it happened while the world’s supposed to be shut down and you can sit back and not miss out on anything crazy fun, right? Yeah, I tried – I’m not real good at pep talks. 😉 Hang in there!
I like the lighter, brighter design, but I’m not sure why blogs are switching to such huge font sizes for the body of their articles now. This is the 2nd blog redesign I’ve seen in the past month or so that has giant print for the article and normal size print everywhere else. Zooming out to 75% makes the article print look closer to normal, but then everything else is tiny.
Sorry to hear that about your arm dude, get well soon!
You are not nearly as old as me but you are starting to see what’s coming. It’s the phase of life where if you sneeze wrong you can be down in your back for a week! And lifting things, whoa, that’s an adventure from now on, let me tell you! Looking forward to the new site!
Definitely easier to read, but it’s a HUGE change for me that the main content of the site, the articles, are sort of hidden from the main page. You have to scroll down pretty far and they’re not really presented with as much appeal (That initial blurb), so they don’t really stand out for me. Just my two cents on that! Aside from that, two random things: 1. Is the Travel Credit Card recommendations article no longer linked directly anywhere? I actually never used it, was just curious if that was a conscious decision. 2. There’s a misspelling on the… Read more »
Ugh. I’ve been so focused on fixing big things that I haven’t even got to the copy editing. The funny thing is that we’ve fixed that particular typo twice already in the redesign process. It must be embedded in one of the design docs if it keeps reappearing like that. People are just copying it over without thinking haha. (Also: fixed!) We’ll come up with a more elegant way to link to the travel card page. The front page is now going to be a landing page aimed at new readers. Our assumption is that regular readers will bookmark the… Read more »
HI…..I am one of those that was having problems getting new stuff on your site on my desk top while it was OK on the tablet. I can see your new post and style on the desk top now but it is still weird and all over the place in its arrangement compared to the nice display on the tablet. New look is good but am I the only one who was fine with the old and wish people would not keep changing things. It is like the local supermarket…..why do they want to move things around just when we… Read more »
Yay!……now on Saturday your blog is finally showing up in proper display on my desk top computer. Aloha
Hi J.D. – long time reader (going back to 2006) but infrequent commenter here. Kudos to you and your partner on getting the new design to a point where you’re ready to unveil it. Generally speaking, I think it looks great – it looks and feels far more modern than the old site, with the functionality (from the few minutes I’ve spent so far) to match. Thumbs up. If I had one negative reaction to share, it is that your homepage seems a little overly focused on promotional items: BIG photo of J.D., the Money Boss thing, and Master your… Read more »
Just chiming to say I felt like as soon as I landed on the front page I needed to be buying a book, and was a little confused why there wasn’t a link to sell me one once I clicked on that call-to-action!
I… Don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, lol
Tom and I have a list of things to shift around. And I’ve heard plenty of feedback that the home page should have the content more prominent. It’s not going to return to how it was — it’s going to remain a landing page more targeted at new readers than old — but we’ll re-arrange some things so that it’s easier to access the new material. My hope (and intention) is that regular readers will bookmark the /articles/ directory rather than the home page. Does that make sense?
Long time fan but at the risk of being in the minority, I liked the old look better (except for the font size). The new look is too ‘in your face’ for my taste.
My biggest pet peeve: when you click “Continue reading”, it now links to the top of the article instead of the right point right after “Continue reading”.
Love the new design. Get well soon!
Oooh. Good catch. I think the issue here is that we’re now automatically creating shortened versions for the main “articles” page in the cases where I don’t manually create the split. When I manually create the split, I’ll bet the “continue reading” does jump to the right spot. And I’ll also bet that when the split is automatically created, it’s just going to the top of the post.
I don’t like the larger font. Any chance of having the capability of changing the font size? I’ve seen this on other sites.
Also, RSS feeds seem to be missing. I think that’s an important feature since it lets me see at a glance if there are new articles.
I guess I’m also in the minority. All I wanted to do was read the latest post, not figure out where I fell in the breakdown of your readers. Maybe I’m dumb but for several weeks I assumed you weren’t posting because I didn’t know where to go. Today, I finally found it. I think new readers are going to have trouble finding your latest post. I thought the old format was much clearer.
Okay, folks. We’ve added a form of time measurement back to comments. We’ve implemented relative dates (which is the default for our comment plug-in) rather than absolute dates. This seems fine to me. Let me know what you guys think!
The new layout looks great. Cleaner and brighter. I hope you feel better soon.
I can’t find spare change. I loved reading those articles. Will you continue that? I tried searching the site but couldn’t seem to find them. I enjoy the new look and it is easier to read on my phone. But I prefer to read my articles in the timeline they were written and not by category. Is there a way to do that?
Hi Laura, Space Change is at the bottom of the front page and will definitely continue!