The main purpose for the site redesign of SD is to allow embedded linking, pics, and videos in the comments, as well as a forum and user profiles, so that readers can more easily share information with each other. SilverDoctors now has nearly 20,000 hits per day, and our readers share a collective wealth of knowledge that far surpasses The Doc's. Unfortunately the limitations of Blogger severely limit the abilities of the readers to share this information with each other.
The Doc receives numerous emails daily requesting links to articles, videos, or photos be posted to the site. The new site will allow you to posts these yourself instantly.
Without letting too much of the cat out of the bag, the last major reason for a site redesign is The Doc's dream to launch a precious metals trading platform- which would allow readers to trade gold and silver amongst themselves for fiat (ebay style but with much lower fees), or directly for goods or services.
The Doc currently still works 60-70 hours/week at the day job in order to support his family, and dedicates his efforts to SilverDoctors basically on a volunteer basis because its what he loves and is passionate about. His dream and goal however is to come up with a way to generate enough revenue to quit working for the man at the day job 70hrs/week, and be able to focus entirely on SD.
The Doc would again like to thank each and every reader who has donated through the "Doc's Life Support" link, as well as those who have visited and considered SD's sponsors- your donations are all being put towards the development of the new site which should allow a much greater and more interactive experience for the readers, as well as a vast increase in the wealth of knowledge shared by the readers of SD.
We are currently receiving bids from the techies on the new site development, while we continue to save our coppers from generous donations in order to implement the redesign.
In the meanwhile, The Doc would like to share several work-arounds for a few of the limitations of Blogger.
Many readers view SD though SilverDoctors.com, but for those who are unaware, the site is actually hosted by blogspot, so the actual URL is http://silverdoctors.blogspot.com/ . Those who access SD through SilverDoctors.com notice a major limitation- each article's URL appears to be silverdoctors.com, preventing you from linking to a specific article. If you've ever had trouble linking an SD article, its because you're viewing the site from SilverDoctors.com, which merely redirects you to SilverDoctors.blogspot.com. So until the new site rollout, use the silverdoctors.blogspot.com address to link to individual articles.
Many readers have also sent in complaints that website links can't be posted as a click-able link. Again, this is a major blogger limitation, but for those who would really like to embed a link, it will embed if you used the html coding:
a href="http://www.example.com" title="Link to example website">text that turns into the link
*Please not that you must add a < to the beginning, and a > to the end. (If I add them it will embed as a link rather than demonstrating the code. Simply paste your link in the place of the http://www.example.com and replace the example text with your description for your link to create an embedded, click-able link.
Annoying we know, but this is the only way to post a clickable link until the site redesign is rolled out. Curses to blogger!
Finally, if you have an idea for a great improvement to the new site, feel free to post it in the comments section of the post, or email it to The Doc @ silverdoctors@gmail.com .
Thanks again so much to all our readers for your support, donations, and patience as we continue to work towards rolling out the new and improved site!
-Doc
