So what exactly is BW2 and how is it different from plain Bitwise?

From the reader’s perspective there really isn’t a great deal of difference. You’ll be reading features written by the same writers, there will still be code to download from the programming articles – even the layout of the pages hasn’t changed much.

From the point of view of the editorial team, however, the changes are enormous. Up to now, Bitwise has been published entirely in the good old fashioned way – by laboriously designing each page in handcrafted HTML before uploading it to the site. The links from one page to another and from the Index to the articles have also all been hand crafted.

In BW2, on the other hand, much of this is automated. That’s because BW2 is created using SPIP – a superb open source Content Management program. SPIP is well known in France and other French-speaking countries; not so well known in the English speaking world. Well, that’s their loss, our gain.

Over the coming months we’ll be moving more and more of Bitwise into SPIP. We’ll try to make the transition as seamless as possible. However, there is the added complication that a new version of SPIP (1.9) has just been released and this may necessitate a certain amount of restructuring of the site. I’m hoping that it won’t be necessary to take BW2 offline to do this. But if we do go missing for a short while, rest assured that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Incidentally, one of the useful features of SPIP is that it generates a site map (notice the link at the left-hand side of this page) which you can use to find your favourite features quickly. You can also use the coloured boxes shown at the right-hand side of most pages in order to locate the various sections of BW2 and to search for articles with the same keywords as the one you are currently viewing.

This makes our old ‘archive’ redundant. You can still use the archive to search for articles published before July 2006. But use the BW2 site map for more recent features.

Incidentally, one other major new feature of BW2 is the commenting system. You can now leave comments about most of the articles on this site. The comments are threaded so you can also, if you wish, leave comments to comments!

Best wishes
Huw
(Editor)