Welcome to the all-new, completely redesigned and re-imagined Stonehaven Press website.
This site is now live, and will replace the original Stonehaven Press site at stonehaven-press.com. Not only will this one work better — it lets us easily implement all manner of changes to serve our customers and clients better.
As of today (25 January 2013), the old site is still up and running. For the moment, that’s okay. But we plan to redirect traffic from that address to this one.
Two reasons:
When we launched our original Stonehaven Press site in 1997, we designed it using “raw” HTML: the standard web code of the day. This site-building was a new experience for us, and we did what we still believe was a creditable job, given the resources available.
But web design has changed dramatically since 1997. And sadly, other demands on our time simply didn’t allow us to update our website accordingly. Modern sites use content-management and scripting to improve the user experience. They’re interactive; they allow video and slideshows; they embed fonts and beautiful formatting; they encourage comments and feedback.
Because of all that, an up-to-date website can be tricky to set up in the first place. Still a lot easier than the old-style “pure HTML” where we started. But choices and options are infinite, and it can make a body dizzy. Fortunately, you — the visitor — don’t see all that: You see the finished product, which we hope makes it all look easy.
Plus, once everything is in place, it’s also a heck of a lot easier for the webmaster. (That would be me.) If a product needs a new price, new cover image, new shipping options, or anything else — no problem! We’re now able to be much more nimble. Add a new publication? New service? New sale? Sure easier than writing and uploading pages the old way.
The Right Domain Name
Another reason for the new site is this: Back in 1997, when we launched the original Stonehaven site, we chose “stonehaven-press.com” as our domain name. Notice the hyphen. We figured that this punctuation would make it easier for visitors to remember and type the name. Running all the letters together without any punctuation just looked fishy to us.
What we didn’t realize at the time was that as the World Wide Web expanded exponentially, the convention would be to use domain names without any punctuation. People thus expect to run the names together. But we figured we already were locked into the domain name as it was. Recently, however, we checked and were pleasantly surprised to learn that our preferred domain name — StonehavenPress.com, without any punctuation — was still available. (Rather a miracle, considering how long most of the good names had already been snatched up.) So we registered it, built the new site — and here we are!
There will be a lot of changes and additions to this site in the near future. For one thing, we have a number of new publications in the works. Exciting stuff! (Please check back.) For another, we still are moving over content from the old site — things like full-page book and pamphlet descriptions. And we plan to roll out pages describing the book-and-web design services we offer.
For the moment, though, please explore and enjoy the show. And let us know what you think.