Hello Everyone,
I am writing to you today to tell you about one of our biggest projects in years: launching a new website. While you may remember that we made changes to our website’s look and feel around 4 years ago, this will be different and will directly support the goal of creating a more secure and maintainable infrastructure moving forward. To this end, we aren’t just changing the public face of the AAVSO website, but completely replacing the backend architecture as well. This has, and will continue to be a massive undertaking, but it will come with several notable benefits for the community as a whole. Specifically:
- An Updated Cleaner Flow: Our goal is to improve site navigation and make content easier to find, whether you are brand new or an experienced user.
- Improved Applications: Our most popular applications search, download and submission have all been completely re-written. We have tried to keep the functionality similar but provide much needed improvements, such as allowing you to see your data before submission, and adding a global search so you can see any photometric, spectroscopic, and transit data on a single object at a glance.
- Updated Content: All of our most important pages are being re-written to make the information easier to digest for a broader audience
- Supporting the AAVSO: From ways to donate to volunteering, new forms and pages will provide a multitude of ways you can ensure the future of the organization
While these changes are exciting, they will represent some significant differences from the current site, so let me give you a little more information on what to expect. First, the current website contains tens of thousands of pages. Given our current staff and resources, maintaining—or even moving—all of this content is untenable; however, I want to assure you that it will not be going away. If you click a link or type in a url for a page that does not exist on the current website, you will be redirected to the old site instead. We will be monitoring these pages closely and if a page is being used heavily that was not migrated, it will be recreated on the new site. In other words, your actions will inform the content that we update and maintain.
Like this content? Want to see more? Support AAVSO’s day-to-day operational needs by becoming a member.
One thing that will be going away in time are some of our old applications for which we have already been implementing replacements. We encourage you to start using these if you haven't already. If they are missing something you feel is fundamental we are always open to feedback. In fact, you may email us directly and we will look over your requests and respond accordingly.
These are just some of the many changes that we are undertaking to make ourselves more sustainable and more user friendly. This will take time and there will be growing pains. We recognize this and will do our best to keep you informed and make the transition as smooth as possible. Thank you for being a part of the AAVSO. We look forward to serving you for many years to come.
Bert Pablo
Staff Astronomer, AAVSO