A reminder that you can use the problem report page to notify our webmaster of any difficulties you encounter on this site and they will try and help you solve them quickly - our aim is to let everyone enjoy this site!!

Latest Updates
February 2008, Disticor is no longer handling hi-fi+'s North American subscriptions, all subscriptions will now be processed from the home office in the UK.

April 2007, The underlying directory structure of the site has been rationised. This has mainly been an effort to tidy the way images are held on the server, making it easier to maintain and give it a more logical set of divisions. It should also make keeping track of dead images a lot easier so saving hi-fi+ from paying for server space used up by images that are no longer used in the site. It should also help speed up the servers retrieval of images by dividing them amongst more directories (there are some efficiency savings made if there are around 100 images per directory, its to do with the way the server indexes files).

The changes should have no effect on the sites clients, but if the images have suddenly been replaced with placeholders (blanks with a little x in the corner) please try hitting the refresh button in your browser, they are relocated not deleted - honest!!

October 2005 - Feb 2006, The blue pages are taking over...
Indeed they are, easier to maintain and nicer to look at, they are the form of the future for the site. Design changes may be ushered in following the takeover by AMI but for the time being the direction is into the blue.

One of the main drivers towards the blue pages has been the ongoing conversion of the legacy site to use Cascading Style Sheets, its a W3C standard and involves removing all presentation formatting from the HTML code, excising all the font and bold instructions etc. CSS will help make future developments simpler and quicker. There are still some pages to be de-fonted but they will be swapped to CSS as time and funding allows.

SUBSCRIPTION AND BACKISSUE ORDERS PLACED BETWEEN TUESDAY 28th OCTOBER AND WEDNESDAY 8th NOVEMBER 2005
A technical outage at our hosts has meant that orders placed between the above 2 dates have not been received by hi-fi+. Emails informing us of the order were not forwarded to the hi-fi+ office.
If you placed an order and DID NOT RECEIVE a confirmation email shortly afterwards please re-submit your order and it will be dealt with promptly.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

MAY 2004: John van Bavel, a site visitor reported an error which was causing the content listing pages to appear more or less blank. he was using Netscape 7.1. it appears that the new verion of NS does not like the use of negative values in the z-index of layers (<DIV> tags) on html pages. This wasn't a problem with earlier versions of the browser client and we assumed that the browsewr would behave in the same way as earlier versions (as Divs were essentially a netscape driven programming tag originally) but we have amended all the relevent pages to ensure that they display correctly for NS7 and other browsers, but if you find any that are behaving badly with NS7 please let us know. Sorry for the inconvenience to any NS 7 users.

FEBRUARY 2004: The overall site update to include the new page headers and javascript menu bar on all pages is continuing as funds allow. Only the technical review pages now have the old "purple bar" navigation menu left and these will be dealt with soon. The Commercial contacts and B2B sections are currently being reviewed to see whether we can improve or expand them and make it easier for businesses to initiate business with us over the web.

The latest addition to the site is the site map page which was requested by site users who are using Linux or similar operatinf systems and who were finding navigatiing around the site difficult. The page is not quite complete but should be fully loaded by the time issue 30 is on UK stands. The page is available at sitemap.html

JULY 2003: We have begun phasing in a large site update. The update is mainly cosmetic but it will involve some structural changes and a few pages will be getting combined or sepearated to enhance the sites functionality. Any "Webmaster Speaks" info will now be provided on this page and the front page will be leaner! This process will be carried out over some weeks to allow tweaks and improvements to be incorporated throughout. The search pages will be activated during this process.

4th March 2003: SECURE ORDERING: Our web site hosts have upgraded the secure server that our Subscription and back Issue order pages sit on. Clients who are NOT using a browser with at least 128 bit Cipher Strength will not be able to access these pages. Microsoft INTERNET EXPLORER seems to be the MOST AFFECTED!
YOU NEED
>>> Internet Explorer version 5.5 or better <<<
You can check your copy of IE's cipher strength by looking in Help > About
The 128 bit upgrade for IE is available through microsoft following THIS link
>>> Netscape 4.73 or better <<<
>>> Opera 3.5 or better <<<
In the meantime you can always send a manual order by email using the contact page instructions

28th Febuary 2002: An apology to all who waited for contact from the hi-fi+ office after sending emails during the first 2 - 3 weeks of Febuary 2002. We had a problem receiving emails sent to anything@hifiplus.com. The problem has since been resolved and won't happen again... someone accidentally deleted the mail account from our mail software so no mail was being collected and it was thought the world had stopped liking us!!
Slapped wrists all round in the office!!

25th June 2001 : We have just completed a major overhaul of the technical review pages. Those that choose to use older browsers that do not handle emerging net technologies well (or at all) will be tested for. Anyone using pre v4.0 IE or NS 4.75 or earlier will automatically be transfered to another version of the page that is obsolete browser friendly. Those using some other browser and everyone else will have a choice of the layered technical reviews or swapping to table based copy of the page by clicking on a buton. Can't be fairer than that can we! If you experience any problems with the technical review pages email the webmaster.

20th April: The promised list of retail outlets stocking hi-fi+ in the United States is now online. Details as supplied by our North America distributor Disticor. Check out the USA page through via the North american retailers page or here

26th March 2001: Online ordering on this site is now done via secure server pages - also if you have been seeing a "cannot run from here" message when you try and order then try again now.

Issue 10 is now online, including updates to the UK and Ireland stockist listings. WH Smith has provided us with a list of stores that regularly stock the magazine. Hopefully this update will solve some of the problems you have getting hold of the magazine. There does appear to be some problem with current distribution in the North West, Roy is checking out why and how it can be sorted.

The 2001 Product awards are online and will remain so as an archived page.

5th Febuary 2001
New for 2001, direct subscriptions for USA and Canada hi-fi+ is pleased to be able to offer our readers in the USA and Canada a new subscription service. This service is operated by our North American distributor, and allows you to order subscriptions via a free phone number from anywhere in North America. As the company is based in Canada, all the normal payment conditions and guarantees apply, and there is less of a problem with time zone differences. As previously the subscriptions are for 8 or 16 issue. There are new rates which represent a 10% saving over the US and Canadian cover prices. These new prices are considerably lower than subscribing directly from us, as the cost of postage from the UK to North America is disproportionately high.
Click HERE for the link to information and subscriptions

31st January 2001
North American SUBSCRIBERS TAKE NOTE!!! Up to now we have dealt with North American subscriptions and postage ourselves from the UK. Due to increased demand over the Pond we are arranging for our distributor to take over the processing and mailing of subscription copies - note that all BACK ISSUE ordering will remain UK based. Although this is not complete yet it will be set up before Issue 10 hits the shelves. In the long term you will pay less postage per issue and your copy should be with you faster. Existing subscribers need do nothing. North America subscribers will be transfered to the Disticor website to complete their subscription application at some point in the future. Watch this page for updates as they happen.

31st January 2001
North America subscriptions and mailing of subscribers copies is being dealt with by our North America distributor Disticor. Although the details have yet to be settled we will be redirecting appropriate clients to thier site to enter subscription details. For the rest of the world you will still deal with hi-fi+ Publishing in the UK.

27th January 2001
It appears our forms were offline for a few days 20th - 27th January. They are now all working again -thanks Geoff Bailey & Geoff Clarke.

20 January 2001
Issue 9 has been a bit slow reaching the web site. The main reason for this was to give issue 8 some front page web time. Our move of the website from our old hosts to our new host became a bit of a trial, our hosting agreement expired at the beginning of November 2000, (just before issue 8 hit the shelves) and we began the proces of relocating at the end of October 2000.... allowing plenty of time to complete the move before publication day or expiry of our money! Or so you would have thought..
Our now ex-hosting organisation lacked the technical skills to complete the move and all of a sudden a nice smooth move was off the cards. For any of you who know how Network Solutions process domain rehosting you know its basically we fill out an online form, it gets emailed to the contacts listed, they hit the reply button, its done. Except when at first the host has forgotten to update thier email and the forms are getting sent to a dead address... we noticed that and our old host only took around a month to correct that issue. Next they were getting the form (and apparently replying to it) but couldn't understand why Network Solutions wouldn't accept the reply (the email was sent to an address that wound up on some chaps computer that collected mail from several mailboxes). When he replied he used the default "reply from" address which wasn't the address Network solutions expected the reply to be sourced from. A simple change in the mail software and problem solved... except they didn't tell us they were having a problem so we kept filling in the form at NS thinking that they either weren't bothering to reply or they had supplied NS with another duff email address. Anyway after a while they decided there was nothing they could do to solve thier problem.... and decided to forget about it - not exactly helpful to us!! Some further terse communications later we told them that if they couldn't work out how to change the reply from address we would consider the web space donated for free until they did work out a solution - we also explained how to fix their "reply from" problem and hey presto it was all done. That was around 30th December 2000. A long and sorry saga that didn't inspire confidence in them as a host organisation. You'll note I haven't included their name here, if you want to know it and avoid them email the webmaster!!! Now we are happily esconced on Global-gold, a technically accomplished UK based host!!
We have use of thier secure server for credit card transactions and MySQL for running the forthcoming Database.

We also have unlimited email addresses. anything@hifiplus.com will reach the office, although the main adreeses remain
accounts at hifiplus.com
editor at hifiplus.com
business-manager at hifiplus.com
webmaster at hifiplus.com

14 November 2000
OVERLAPPING TEXT the answer!
We are looking at ways to resolve this problem but we do now know what is causing it thanks to Jason Hector our favourite reviewer! The cause is the font size you have set in your browser. Whilst we have designed for "Medium" font setting some of you are using Large, Largest, or even small settings which completely screw up our lovely page layouts - especially on the Technical Review pages, but on the Archive issue pages as well to some extent.
So whilst we look for a solution that works for everybody and retains the formatting of the pages if you want to see the full glory of pages where you see overlapping text reset your browser to MEDIUM text size....
on the IE toolbar ------->>>> VIEW > TEXT SIZE > MEDIUM.
Thanks!

We have changed hosts, the site is now on a UK server rather than in California, US of A. The changeover happened on the 31st October 2000 so if you noticed a break in service you now know why. The reasons for the changeover were primarily technical and now we have somewhat better hosting support and we have support for our long awaited database. The database will be on line in the next 3-4 weeks and will be announced here first!

We have a new page, the letters page. These are the readers letters that were published this issue, but are only a sample of the number of letters and emails we get every month.

24 October 2000
Are you java and javascript enabled? to get the best from this site you should be! If there isn't a navigation bar at the top of this page then you aren't! Our statistical collection package features a Java program and if you are freezing up it could be this causing you grief. We are working on a solution.

Issue 8 is near to finished but no release date is available at this time. Deliveries of Back Issues and subscription copies abroad were hit by the UK Petrol crisis as the UK post office cut back on collections making some run later than we wanted... sorry!

hi-fi+'s new Poole (Dorset) office is getting up to speed. Back issue orders and subscription orders should be processed somewhat quicker and smoother from this month.

30 August 2000
Forms forms forms...
Some of you may notice that the navigation bar has sprouted a few more entries. We have been working on the contactibility quotient of the site. So we now have the problem report form for telling us about any glitches you find and it guides you to supply the sort of information that we find useful to know when sorting the bugs. We also introduce the business contact pages where retailers who are feeling left out by not having hi-fi+ on thier shelves can get in touch with us, and the advertisers contact page so people who want to tell you about thier wares can do so in the magazine... whether you buy is up to you! Finally there is the delivery query form, where you can contact hi-fi+ to tell us if you haven't received your subscribed magazine or a back issue order.

Canada gets lucky...
by Wednesday 16th August the list of Canadian Hi-Fi+ retailers was available here. Thanks to Disticor for the information! The US should be up within the next 2 weeks... sadly the UK and Europe are still awaiting the distributor information to get to the Webmaster... but we will get it eventually!

Gudbye t'Frames (to misquote Noddy Holder)
For the past few months you've been able to navigate around the site using either the text hot links at the bottom of the major "topic" pages. The little hi-fi+ logo arrows were lovely to look at and we were quite proud of them from an artistic point of view, but much as we loved them we couldn't reduce their size whilst maintaining text legibility and whilst we tried other ways of using them the size factor kept coming back to haunt us. The navigation bar was over a standard 15" monitors depth. Although bigger screens are getting more widespread the most common screens in use are still 15" 800x600 resolution to that end we wanted the navigation frame to fit a single screen and although we used a shoe horn on it we always felt the results used up too much screen space.
We looked at lots of ways of providing the site navigation and in the end we agreed on a javascript bar, it is great for using the available space well and it provides a high degree of flexibility for adding navigation points. It should also be slightly faster to download than all the images that made up the rollover arrows.
We think it looks good and works well, we hope you agree! The bottom of page text hot links are still there for anyone who has a problem with javascript so all our visitors should be well served. We hope you enjoy our selection of search engine links, Google and Dogpile are excellent for finding "stuff" and although we love all search engines to death we recommend these two especially!

The feedback form
The feedback form on the contact page has had a few problems, and they have been reported to us by several people. They have arisen in 2 ways, the first was a misspelling of one of the required field names, the perl script which does the checking named a required field as "country" but on the form it was misspelt as "county". Slapped wrists for us! The second problem that arose and is now solved was that anyone filling in the form was offered a default "male" for sex, the form however didn't pass on a default value wanting the visitor to make a selection rather than leave to default. Again a slapped wrist for us... this time we have got it right!

Big screens and overlapping text
Whilst we make every effort to make sure that you all get the best out of the site we have been aware of a problem facing users with 1024x768 resolution on 18" or better screens. The text on the News page, technical and music review pages, meet the reviewers and to some minor extent on other pages as well. The problems have arisen through our use of "layers" rather than tables to set up these pages. We use layers because they allow us to overlap images and text and try and reproduce some of the style of the magazine rather than the boxy column look you get with newspapers. What we have done now is adjust the vertical spacing between layers where we want to maintain a look, and where the use of layers was not essential we have converted to tables. If there are still problems encountered by visitors we want to know! We have our checkers going over the site but if you spot a problem we are happy to hear from you.

Top | Back to Last Page

Site History
Hifiplus.com has humble roots, its first incarnation was created using Claris Homepage and Frontpage '97, tools many of you will be familiar with. The "pink pages" version served well for the first few issues but as the sites popularity grew we needed to get the site looking and feeling more in keeping with the magazine itself. So we looked for a design tool that would allow us a bit more flexibility and settled on Macromedia Dreamweaver, although not solely Dreamweaver. We still like to hand craft some parts of the code behind the pages and scripts and for that we use a wonderful tool called "Arachnophilia" created by Paul Lutus of Port Hadlock, WA, available through most good download stores and the arachnophilia site - its careware that means its free and if you want to know more about careware read the "about" in the product!

A lot of 2000 so far has been used up in redesign work for on the site, some essential maintenance when a problem has been brought to our attention, and some improvement of the content available on the site. One major step forward has been the inclusion of the online subscription facility and the back order page. We don't keep any of your information online so your information is as safe as possible once it reaches us.

In the first year of the site we had over 50,000 hits and that number is growing as the magazine circulation increases around the globe, and with the addition to the site of a contact point for reviewers and the Editor, Roy Gregory, we get some interesting feedback and questions arising from printed articles... and some on articles we haven't printed yet!

We will keep on trying to improve the site as long as you keep reading it and sending us your comments!

Site Diary (main events)

• Site now hosted on a UNIX server 4-June
• Jump menus now working correctly (RECHECKED) 11-June
• Republic of Ireland rather than Eire correction done 11-June
• Music Review pages split for quicker download 11-June
• Technical Review pages now include navigation at bottom of page + live links 14-June
• Subscription and back issue (via archive page) ordering online now available 2-July

The Future (2006)
The future features the oft promised database, sometime it would be good to convert the static pages into a set of dynamic pages driven by a database which is kept up to date from the hi-fi+ office. Development Time, budget, and staff time at the office may mean that this developement is put on a back burner until the new owners devise a strategy for the future of the website. Ultimately it may be a tear down and rebuild if a dynamic site is the ultimate direction for hi-fi+.

The retailers list: With Absolute multimedia promising a greater distribution for the magazine it should be getting updated, this could be the opportunity to introduce a database into the behind the scenes processing of the site.

The look and feel: The site has been evolving steadily over the past few years and the blue pages are here to stay at least until the site is redeveloped with database driven outputs, the new owners may have corporate image issues to look into if they want the site to fall in line with thier other publications, or they could decide to move all the other mags towards this look and feel, its in the lap of the Gods!

Beyond these plans the future for the hi-fi+ site will continue to evolve in ways that we hope will make it a key resource for all hi-fi and music lovers.