Welcome to Automated Home v4.0, After lots of blood sweat and tears we’ve completed the move to the new site, the fourth major update since we launched in 1996.
New Design – You asked us for a cleaner, clearer layout and we hope you’ll agree that the new design delivers just that. All of our 2,200 articles have been reformatted for easier reading (remember when this seemed cool?!) and it’s now simpler than ever to choose a topic (Z-Wave for example) and view every article on that subject. We’ve added quick links at the top of the page to the most popular categories like Reviews and Tutorials and you can view the entire category list from the Archive Page.
New Mobile Version – With many more visits to Automated Home coming from a mobile device these days we were keen to improve on things there too. With our new mobile-friendly layout it’s never been a better experience accessing Automated Home from your iOS, Android or Blackberry SmartPhone. If you prefer the full version of the site on your device instead just flip the switch at the bottom of the page.
Live Chat – We’ve launched the Automated Home Chat Room with a simple web client to make it as easy as possible for you to drop by. If you haven’t visited the Automated Home Forums in a while check them out too as they’ve also had a recent makeover.
New Comments System – Our new improved comments system is live and it deals with spam and moderation much better than before which should lead to your pearls of wisdom appearing much faster. All your old comments have been preserved too during the import.
The Wiring Guide – We’ve given The Wiring Guide a much needed refresh and we’ve added some more updates on things we’d do differently if we had to do it all again.
Join In – Check out our Join In page for links to the best ways to engage with the community plus links to subscribe to our posts via email or RSS.
Bugs – We’ve squashed lots of bugs (the annoying ‘page 2’ bug the old site suffered from is gone at last) but if you see something that still needs a little polish please let us know.
Without Whom… Special thanks as always to Steve Edwards for his code and wisdom and to the guys at laser.com for their help and hosting. Thanks to our beta testers for trying out the site and of course to all of you, our readers, for continuing to visit our little corner of the Interweb in such amazingly gratifying numbers!
Very nice!
The site actually needed some serious painting.
I like it very much, thank you.
I wish I could do such beautiful things (but everytime I tried to draw an icon, the reason why I work as a senior software developer and not a designer showed in all its ugliness :o) ).
Keep working,
Ivan, from France.
Crikey it was a shock…
… but, having got over the shock, I love it!
Well done, Mark, Steve, and, of course, thanks to Li and the team from Laser for supporting UK Home Automation for many, many, years – even when I worked for a competitor, I bought the odd thing from Laser 🙂