Improvements to ShowMeDo

Kyran has completed some fantastic new work on our ShowMeDo:

  • New frontpage (a few weeks back) resulting in a 10% decrease in bounces from the frontpage
  • New portals for Python, Ruby and other categories
  • Site-wide unification of font choices
  • Cleaner interface for the header and sidebars

I’ve also worked on smaller changes:

  • Speed-ups throughout the site by making less DB queries
  • Integration of our Google Group to the frontpage for greater exposure

The DB improvements came via John’s great SQLObject performance guide.
Lucas won the most-popular-video-of-the-month award this month (and received a £20 prize). This is the third month we’ve run the competition and it is working well. The prize is based on an author’s position in the 30-day most-popular list.

Finally – we’re working to let authors receive PayPal donations for their efforts. Authors will keep 100% of whatever they are given, this is another step we take to say thank-you to authors for putting in their hours making such fine tutorials.