about the new mersenne.org web site
 

I would like to make some comments about the new web site.
Of course, from a purely functional point of view, it is a great progress, with much detailed technical information available for participants.
However, I regret some "details", which rather concern visibility / accessibility of the most "general" information which most first time visitors might look for.

1) Many sites (e.g. [URL]http://primes.utm.edu/mersenne/[/URL] but there are dozens) linked to [URL="http://www.mersenne.org/status.htm"]The GIMPS Status Page[/URL] (i.e. [URL]http://www.mersenne.org/status.htm[/URL]) - which is now a broken link.

2) As explained in the famous article "Cool URIs don't change" written already in the last century ([URL]http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI[/URL]), pages should not be named .../status.htm nor .../status.php - it should just be .../status .

3) Last not least, why is there no page ".../status", neither such an item in the sidebar menu ? It's quite difficult to find information like "Countdown to proving that mmmm is the nn-th Mersenne prime" etc.
(Well actually I already know the phrase I'm looking for, so good ol'google warps me there, but...)

Now you may flame me for all kinds of reasons, but I think it wouldn't be bad (for the project) if the most popular links would be made working again (via redirects or rewrites or at least a "site search" form or whatsoever). (Maybe have a look at the web server's top ten 404 errors log.)

I agree with the above sentiments.

By popular demand, George produced

[URL]http://v5www.mersenne.org/report_classic/[/URL]

But it is slow to load and we were encouraged to use it
sparingly because it "hammers the database".

Where can the milestones and countdowns be found these days?

David

[quote=davieddy;161101]Where can the milestones and countdowns be found these days?

David[/quote]

'Results Queries' -> 'Milestones':wink:

best regards,

Matthias

[QUOTE=davieddy;161101]I agree with the above sentiments.

By popular demand, George produced

[URL]http://v5www.mersenne.org/report_classic/[/URL]

But it is slow to load and we were encouraged to use it
sparingly because it "hammers the database".

Where can the milestones and countdowns be found these days?

David[/QUOTE]

On the left-side menus:

Results Queries
- Milestones

takes you to:

[url]http://www.mersenne.org/report_milestones/[/url]

[QUOTE=MatWur-S530113;161103]'Results Queries' -> 'Milestones':wink:
best regards,
Matthias[/QUOTE]
As I said,
[url]http://www.google.com/search?q=Countdown+proving+Mersenne[/url]
also gives the correct page as #1 hit, but if a newcomer doesn't know the phrase he should look for, it's a bit awkward to discover.

I suggest (well I won't go that far, it's rather just an idea...) to reorganize the links on the l.h.s. into 2 parts,
a first block with items "general info for (first time) visitors"
(with this milestone page, links to prime pages, proofs, history,...)
and a second block for (logged-in ?) users, with more detailed technical information.
In fact, the new web site corresponds more or less to the /ips (=/primenet) subdirectory of the old web site, but all the rest (general information,math,history...) has (more or less?) disappeared.