Welcome to the new DPReview!

Welcome to the new DPReview – if you’re reading this article, it means the new DPReview website is now live.

Not just a fresh coat of paint

A couple of months ago, we told you we were rebuilding DPReview for the first time in its history. The old site had been built up over more than 25 years. It still did a lot of things very well, but it had become hard to maintain and even harder to change. Every past update, however useful, was another coat of paint on the same aging foundation.

Not this time around. DPReview now runs on the same core platform as our sister site, Gear Patrol. That means we can share the basic plumbing instead of building and maintaining everything twice, while still investing in the tools that make DPReview what it is.

The site is new; DPReview itself isn’t.

What this means for you

As you explore the site, you’ll undoubtedly discover new things, but there are a few worth calling out here because of the impact they’ll have on visitors.

Fewer ads for logged-in users: This one is simple: if you have a DPReview account and are logged into the site, you’ll see fewer ads on the page. Note that this isn’t an “ad-free” experience: you’ll still see ads, but there will be fewer of them. We still rely on advertising to fund DPReview, but we wanted to give logged-in readers a cleaner page as a thank-you for your support.

Mobile-friendly design: This is one area where the old site’s architecture was holding us back. The old site had mobile versions of some pages, but it was never fully responsive, and several of our most important tools really didn’t work well on phones. The new site adapts across phones, tablets and desktop screens. The clearest example is the Image Comparison Tool: you can now explore the same studio scenes and compare the same camera data from a phone or tablet.

A platform we can build on: One real-world example is that the new site can display HDR images – the kind produced by new cameras like the Hasselblad X2D II or the Sigma BF. If you’re using a device with an HDR display and a compatible browser, you’ll now see HDR photos as they were meant to be seen; on other screens, they’ll display as normal SDR images. It’s the first of several things the new foundation makes possible that the old one simply couldn’t.

One real-world example of the capabilities the new site brings us is the ability to display HDR images when you’re using an HDR display with a compatible browser.Richard Butler

Live, and still improving

We’re calling this a beta because it’s an honest label, not a hedge. The site is live, but some things aren’t finished; a few features aren’t back yet, some migration work is still running, and you might even run into rough spots in the first weeks. We’d rather be transparent about that than pretend otherwise. We’ll drop the label once we’re confident the site has earned it.

For the first few days, it’s possible you’ll run into some rough spots or a page that loads more slowly than you expect, but that should smooth out quickly.

Article comments

If notifications have felt disjointed for the past few months, this update is built to fix that. Comments now run on the same platform as our forums, which means you’ll get one unified, consistent set of notifications across the entire site instead of two separate systems that didn’t always work well together.

One change that comes with it: replies are no longer threaded the way they used to be. The old system nested replies one level deep so you could see who replied to each comment. Now, you can quote the comment you’re replying to, a different way to see who’s responding to whom.

What about Challenges?

As we announced back in April, the Challenges system won’t be available at launch. We know how important it is to all the people who enjoy taking part.

Rather than rushing it while re-working every other part of the site, we wanted to get this first phase completed so that we could devote the time to build something better than the existing system. We’ve heard years of feedback about how Challenges could be better, and we’re using that as we plan the replacement. Challenges will be back, more to come soon.

The new website gives us capabilities we didn’t have in the past, like the ability to use the Image Comparison tool on mobile devices.

Work still underway

There are a few outstanding things we’ll be working on over the next days and weeks as we get everything tightened down. Here are a few you should be aware of:

Comments are still moving over: We’re restoring previous article comments in stages, so some articles won’t have their full comment history right away.

Search is simplified (for now): Everything on the site remains searchable, but search results that break down content by type (e.g. articles, products, forum threads, etc.), along with detailed filtering options, are being rebuilt in the coming weeks.

Tell us what you think

Moving more than 25 years of DPReview onto a new platform has been a huge job, and launch day isn’t the end of it. There are things here we’re genuinely excited about, especially the Image Comparison Tool on mobile, fewer ads for logged-in readers, and improvements like HDR photo display. There are also places where we know the site needs more work.

Take a look around. Tell us what works, what doesn’t and where the new site gets in your way. We’ve created a dedicated forum thread to track known issues and bug reports. We’ll keep the first post updated, call out recurring problems and let you know when important fixes go live. If you have additional questions, make sure to check out our detailed FAQ.

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