Macfilos has been completely revised, with a much more involving front page and easier-to-read articles. Over the summer, the editorial team has been working towards today. In the past, the site has grown in a rather haphazard fashion and the editorial team decided a fresh new image was required. The new Home page highlights the latest articles, including photography news, while providing the opportunity to enjoy groups of articles on specific themes and covering individual manufacturers.
If you normally view Macfilos on a smartphone or go direct to articles from our regular newsletters or RSS links, I can recommend a visit to our new Home and Blog pages to see what changes have been made. The Home page, where most visitors land, is now much more involving. It contains many sections for specific topics, historical posts, and articles which are most-read or most-commented upon.
An outstanding feature of the new Macfilos site is the depth of coverage of both newer and older articles. This will give you an opportunity to highlight and catch up on topics you might have missed in the past. We are now approaching 6,000 articles published since the inception of Macfilos in 2008. And, there are nearly 32,000 comments from enthusiastic and knowledgeable photographers to peruse.
If you prefer a more traditional approach, the Blog page has been reconfigured as a matrix, with articles arranged strictly in chronological order. Using this view ensures that you never miss a post. You can also check back to see what has appeared since you last visited.
Menu choices
The new Macfilos site menu allows direct access to articles on a vast range of different subjects. This allows you the opportunity to scroll back over a specific subject, whether that’s different photography brands, genres such as street photography and travel, or technical considerations such as sensor format. And don’t forget to delve into the Macfilos articles to see what topics we have been discussing since 2008.
We hope you will also enjoy the fresh layout and format of the site. We have given considerable thought to the layout, colour scheme, and fonts. In our opinion, the new Macfilos site is modern, pleasing on the eye, and easy to navigate. We trust you agree.
There will undoubtedly be some snags and teething problems with the news site as it begins to handle the latest material. But we will continue to tweak the parameters and ensure that the site is as functional and user-friendly as possible. One of the known issues is repetition of recent articles in the various sections. Fortunately, we can correct this piecemeal by adjusting the categories.
Although we have paid a lot of attention to the aesthetics, what is most important is the site’s content. Thanks to our contributors, editors, readers, and commenters, Macfilos has been a highly valued resource for the photography community. We intend to keep it that way.
In-depth user reviews
We are fortunate to have world-class photographers among our team of long-term reviewers. Members of our editorial team also own and use the cameras and lenses we review. You can count on Macfilos for thorough, unbiased, reviews of gear that we would all like to know more about.
Macfilos has a great deal of influence in the Leica enthusiast market. What we lack in absolute readership numbers, we more than compensate for in the quality of our readers, almost all of whom are actual discerning buyers of the company’s products. Compared with more general photography or technology sites, Macfilos has a sophisticated and relatively affluent readership, which represents Leica’s traditional marketplace.
We will retain our emphasis on the Leica ecosystem, including M- and L-mount cameras. We will also cover the massive range of Leica and third-party lenses that support it. Nevertheless, we recognise that the discerning photographers in our community also use and value products from other leading brands.
While mainstream manufacturers are covered in depth by other sites, our focus continues to feature Leica, Panasonic and L-Mount in general. But we also cover popular fixed-lens compacts such as those from Ricoh and Fujifilm.
Non-commercial
Macfilos remains entirely non-commercial and is run by an enthusiastic team of editorial volunteers based in the UK, USA and Germany. Most of the costs, which have now reached £3,000 (nearly $4,000) every year, come from the pockets of the team.
Last year we raised £1,600 from in readers’ contributions, and we remain grateful to all those who dug deep into their pockets. We are especially grateful to those readers who have continued a regular monthly contribution.
Currently, however, over the past 20 months we are running a net deficit of £3,500 ($4,600). Costs continue to rise. So, if you would like to make a small donation, please press the button below. Or simply send a donation by PayPal to support@macfilos.com.
Above all, please have a poke around the new site. I can guarantee you will discover several interesting articles you have not read before. With nearly 6,000 articles in the archives, and over 31,000 individual comments, there is a great deal of stuff you will enjoy. And the new layout makes it much easier to access all this content.
The new Macfilos is based on the Newspaper theme from TagDiv. It is used by many well-known news sites around the world. We decided it was the best WordPress theme to present Macfilos to our readers. We are grateful to Emanuel and his team from TagDiv who did most of the heavy lifting in designing our new look. I would also like to thank my colleagues who have spent many hours revising the categorisation of older posts and adjusting headlines to fit into the new layout. Credit is also due to Jörg-Peter Rau for designing and producing the necessary artwork for the new Mf logo.
What do you think of the new Macfilos? Please let us know in the comments section below.
A cup of coffee works wonders in supporting Macfilos
Did you know that Macfilos is run by a dedicated team of volunteers? We rely on donations to help pay our running costs. And even the cost of a cup of coffee will do wonders for our energy levels.
I contribute monthly to Mike Johnston at TOP via Patreon using PayPal, I just set it once and forget it. Might work for you as well, just a thought.
Many thanks, Mark. We did consider Patreon and did not go forward. I’m not sure of the reason, but PayPal seemed to be a cheaper and easier option. I seem to remember (but could be wrong) that there is an element of special access for contributors, which is something we would rather not implement because it can be messy and raises an obligation.
I have say I like it.
The menu is very good and has already led me to look at some older articles.
Great effort, will remain a site to be read daily with my morning coffee.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mark. When we made changes to the old theme (in particular adding slider views of popular past articles) there was a marked increase in page views. We’re hoping this effect will now be magnified.
Congratulations on the new look! The format and structure are great. Unfortunately, I find the font used in the main body of the page a bit hard on the eyes. It looks slightly compressed horizontally. In contrast, the font used for these comments is very comfortable. I am using Safari with a Mac Studio to view the page.
I am just getting used to it. The type is larger and thy reclines are more widely spaced than on the old theme. But it is growing on me.
Having looked at a few articles in the new style, I think the font works fine for only a few paragraphs interspersed with photos (which are much larger in the new style) – and most MacFilos articles tend to be like that. A large body of text with no photos might be a bit like reading a book set in Arial or Helvetica.
One of our principal goals is to use short paragraphs and plenty of images to break up the text. With so many ways of viewing articles, from narrow smartphone screens to 32in computer monitors, shorter paragraphs work well. The resident font in an off-the-peg theme such as our Newspaper theme, is a fundamental part of the design. I don’t think we would want to experiment with alternatives and I hope that the new look grows on readers.
I am looking forward to more feature articles by Bogdan Boancas.
Ha! Bogdan is the executive at TagDev who headed the team installing the new site. His dummy posts were written for the promotional site and, somehow, got missed up with ours.
The new website looks great. I like the colour scheme, layout and design. I’m looking forward to reading more articles under the new format. Thank you providing this free content for Leica enthusiasts. It is much appreciated.
Hi Mike and team. Congratulations on a superb update to the site! I have been cruising around it and think the new format is great. I agree with your point that the blog view makes it easy to catch up on articles I might have missed, and the drop down menus for different categories are very helpful. I am sure a lot of work was involved! It was worth it.
All the best, Jeff
Thank you, Jeff. We think the site is now looking good, but to an extent we are working in a vacuum. From the start, we had to make decisions. The most important one is choosing the theme, the one that most accurately reflects our objectives. We can’t afford bespoke tailoring, and even setting up this off-the-peg design cost us nearly $1,000 out of our pockets. We could have attempted installation ourselves, but we were aware that we couldn’t afford mistakes. On balance, though (apart from this morning’s glitch) it has all worked out well and we look forward to welcoming more readers. Mike
Congratulations with the new! I find that I click and read from the daily email, so the format isn’t confusing at all. I like the possibility to go “Brands” and “Genres”
🙂
Thanks, Thorsten, your opinion is valued, and I am glad you approve.
Yikes! I knew this was coming but I guess I’m experiencing ‘The Shock of the New”. Like someone secretly changed out the Leica menu on my SL2s for a more complex and confusing SONY one when I wasn’t looking, or changed the recipe of my favorite chocolate! Nevertheless I’m still here, er…I think.
Thanks, Stephen. I know the feeling, but I’ve been staring at the new site for a couple of months, although the content was frozen at the end of August. So it’s good to see everything live again. I expect it will grow on readers, although initially, it might seem a bit confusing. The big improvement, from my perspective, is the automatic selection of articles based on popularity or number of comments. This brings up many older articles that are worth viewing, but which would otherwise be hidden in the chronological order. We are also taking small steps to avoid repetition of articles on the home page. It is just a matter of working through the parameters.
One big worry has been the list of categories. Readers will notice the large number of “Tech” articles. This arose back in 2014 when the site transferred from an old host to Squarespece. All existing posts were designated as “Tech”. Previous allocations to camera manufacturers were lost, and this accounts for the rather lopsided view of content.
Jörg-Peter, Keith and I are gradually working through older posts to reallocate the categories. It’s a monumental task, and we have 2,266 more articles to change. When that is done, the Tech category will move down the list, and we will begin to see a true reflection of the actually content. Since 2014, we moved to WordPress from Squarespace without losing the categories. Anyway, enjoy the new site.