Consider this my "State of the Union" address to my constituency. As long time readers have noticed, teachWNY has seen some fundamental changes in the last few weeks. After growing frustrated with the software used on the previous incarnation of teachWNY, I decided to migrate to another, more stable platform to improve the user experience on teachWNY. I have heard from several readers and responded to your e-mails. I have tried to address the gaps between the old and the new site by implementing small changes to mimic the experience of the old site on the new site. If you had story or category specific bookmarks, I'm sorry, but they have changed. I will be working on a solution to redirect your outdated bookmarks to the URLs where the new site is hosting the same content.
Let's talk pros and cons. For my own site management, I have a ton of pros and very few cons with this recent move. When I started this site over 3 years ago, I had no plan. I was looking for a new job and I was totally frustrated with going from website to website looking for the latest teaching jobs. Equipped with the bare bones knowledge of website scripting language, I installed some software, manually visited a few hundred school districts every day in search of the newest jobs, and posted what I found on teachWNY. The site began receiving traffic from Google and the other search engines immediately. It was a pleasant surprise to see my hard work rewarded with visits from job seeking strangers who occasionally clicked on an advertisement, which in turn made me a few dollars a month to cover my website hosting fees. Fast forward three years and thousands of job postings later to find a young man at a crossroads with his website: too much spam, too many bugs, and too many expired jobs.
The solution presented itself; convert the teachWNY blog into an efficiently run teachWNY. Some of you have witnessed the ugliness of my progress in the form of broken links, dead feeds, and cracked graphics. Thanks for your comments! They have helped me improve the site. As an administrator, I don't always see the user experience in the same way as someone who visits the site looking for specific information, akin to the way a school building administrator sees things from a different perspective than his or her classroom teachers, who in turn see it differently from the students in the desks and the parents at home. Thanks for opening my eyes! Keep me informed of anything that isn't working.
PROS of the new teachWNY:
- NO MORE SPAM - only I can post the jobs.
- NO DEAD JOBS - all jobs are set to expire either at the posted deadline or one month after being posted on teachWNY.
- NO SEPARATE BLOG TO VISIT - you can read all of my drivel in one place now, with more drivel to come.
- CERTIFICATION SPECIFIC CATEGORIZATION - looking for an Elementary Special Education job? It's easier now.
- SITE SEARCH POWERED BY GOOGLE - It does a great job at indexing content. Unfortunately, some old stuff is in there right now.
- LOCAL EDUCATION NEWS - I will post some links and write editorials relevant to the job seeker/teacher in WNY.
- MINOR AESTHETIC CHANGES - I think the site looks better and loads faster.
CONS of the new teachWNY:
- You liked the way it was.
- Some of your old links refuse to work.
- Too much like a blog.
- Other things that you are bound to write in the Comments section below - please do, because I want to make this a better place!
In short, the new site is easier for me to run and should be easier for you to navigate. I'm still scanning the same websites every day looking for new jobs and posting the jobs I find. Thank you for visiting. I know that many of you are loyal users and your patronage is appreciated!
