Today I’m happy to introduce you to the new, upgraded Spitfire Site.

You may have noticed our new layout already two days previously depending on when the change of DNS for our domain reached the Internet near you. Anyway, if you can read this post, the site in front of you is all new.

You may already know that all this is a result of about four months’ work, a major undertaking aimed at bringing the site to a new level of usability and efficiency. What has been changed? In short – everything. Behind the scenes, this site has been migrated from Blogger to WordPress, Windows to Linux, US hosting to UK hosting, static layout templates to PHP – the list could continue.

There are some outstanding details still on my “to do” list, but I won’t bother you with them right now. If you encounter an occasional broken link, it will most probably be fixed in a few days.

From the user’s perspective, I have chosen to retain previous site layout and navigation (appreciated by many), at the same time enhancing it with many new features. Some of them should be immediately noticeable – for example, the summary of latest update at the front page – while others, such as article tagging by subject, may not be as obvious at first glance.

And if you’re ever lost, keep in mind that the newest stuff is always neatly presented under What’s New – behind a big red button at the very top of our front page.

One feature which I would like to highlight, though, is our new commenting system. Comments can now be left by anyone, to any article, anywhere, and will be displayed more prominently around the site. With the new, robust spam protection integrated into the platform, no registration should ever be required to leave a comment. So I’d like to encourage you to use your powers and correct, comment or share whenever you have anything to add!

Feel free to sit back and browse around. There’s a good dose of armchair aviation awaiting you at these pages soon.