However, today we are pleased to announce the latest incarnation of GoWEB, codenamed “Splash”. For this incarnation, we’ve tried to keep the  basic layout with which you are familiar, but 99% of the underlying source code has been rewritten from scratch. The site you see today is NOT an update, but a totally new version, created with the latest web technologies available. All sections of the site have been redesigned from the ground up.

This meant that we had to make a decision about our themes. It wasn’t as simple as just “reusing” the old themes because the HTML elements of the page were being rewritten and renamed. We would have had to recreate the themes from scratch as well. We thought, what’s the point of recreating the same theme? As long as we have to recreate everything, lets do something fresh and new. The result is the “Splash Theme”, which is our default theme. To date, we have made two other themes, namely “Hibiscus” and “Nature”, but hang tight, more are on the way.

We hope you enjoy this redesign and have fun looking around to see what’s changed and what’s new. There are some totally new features on the site which we will not mention yet, but leave you to find. Until next post, happy surfing.

However, that doesn’t mean you will lose all the functionality of those sites. We’ve integrated the themes from the discontinued sites into the homepage, so Portal users now have 13 themes to choose from. We think that’s great news. Also, some of the features from the GoWEB Kids page have been integrated into the GoWEB Games, which is still alive and kicking. We’ve also made improvements to the “Help” features offered on the homepage so you don’t have to open the full Help Center. We are currently looking at what we can do to integrate more Help features without cluttering the page, of course.  In the upcoming weeks, we will be seeking to integrate some of the functionality from GoWEB directory into the homepage as well.

We want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who support our services. We will try to bring back these services(or all-new ones) as soon as we realistically can. We are already in talks about have people run some of them, but more on that when and if that time comes.

• We’ve made the search box bigger
• Features are now loaded with AJAX technology
• The News section is now loaded with AJAX technology
• The Sports section is now loaded with AJAX technology
• Fixed a number of display bugs for Internet Explorer users

AJAX is a technology which allows you to amend the current page with more  data. The method we were using before loaded another page  inside the homepage, which was more overhead and did not update fast enough. Tis change was in the pipeline from last year, but it was not a simple task. We had to make sure the code in the sections to be imported into the homepage, was compatible with the code in the homepage itself. However, after an in-house beta trial, the new homepage is finally live.

Speaking of betas, we usually run a beta homepage alongside our regular homepage, where we  test out new code.  The latest code changes were so fundamental that we couldn’t run the  beta side by side with the public homepage. We had to revive the beta sub-domain (gowebnow.net/beta) to run the trial separately. We are going to leave this sub-domain open as the new beta channel, which you can check  for more code changes this year. As always we are looking at new features  which might  be beneficial to you. We will inform you when new features appear in the beta channel.

Let’s start with the program we use to gt on the web, the web browser. For this exercise we’ve chosen the Google Chrome web browser, which allows theming of just bout every element of the browser. We’re going to use the Yulia Brodskaya theme.

Next, we’re going to give our homepage a theme to match. Not all webpages support themes, but we’re using GoWEB Now as our homepage (of course) which comes with a number of themes for your personal taste. We’re going to use the Marble theme on our GoWEB homepage, which should blend nicely with the themes used on the browser.

After the homepage, the Email Inbox is probably one of the most used pages in our browser. If you have a theme-aware Email service, you can ad that into the theming mix as well. For this, we re going to use Gmail, which in our opinion is the most customizable email service when it comes to themes, (this also works with GoWEB Mail). We’re going to use the Turf theme for Gmail.

And there you have it. We’ve themed our browser, our homepage and our email inbox to match each other. What other services do you use which can be themed?

Get Google Chrome here

Get Google Chrome Themes here

Learn about GoWEB Now here

Learn about GoWEB Themes here

Learn how to make GoWEB your homepage here

Firstly, we’ve tweaked the width of the site just a little. People viewing the site with a 1024×768 resolution screen will now see the entire width of the site without a horizontal scrollbar. This change takes effect across the entire website.

Secondly, we are pleased t o present our new YouTube Channel.

Not only is the YouTube channel redesigned but we’ve started producing some new videos in a “Discover GoWEB” section. We will be producing more helpful videos and restructuring the type of content overall on this channel.

These new videos have allowed us to open our “Discover” tab on the homepage. Just look in the Featured Content box and click “Discover”.

This is just the beginning. Keep your eyes and ears open as the year progresses and we strive to serve you better.

We are in the process of adding new help videos as well as updating some of the existing ones. Keep watching the Help Center or this blog for further updates.

Users of our homepage can also access Twitter from our Social Tray. We’ve also added eBay and About.com to our Web Trays for quick access to these services.

We’ve also changed our bookmark icon, (the little icon that shows next to the Website address or name). The new icon reflects our new logo and hence gives the oveall site more unifromity.

Also is note is that our Caribbean Anthems section has been updated to match the current look and feel of GoWEB Now. It now features it’s own variation of our new logo and a layout similar to the GowEB Directory.

You can access our Anthems site at http://www.gowebnow.net/anthems/

GoWEB users would have noticed our new logo. This is the first time in 3 years that we have changed our logo completely. The new logo is special because it changes itself according to the theme you have applied. All areas may not yet show this new branding as it takes time to do a corporate rebranding. We are working to make the changes on all aspects of your products and services. There have been and will be some changes in themes for certain sections in order to facilitate new logos.

Other Recent Changes

• Enhanced graphics in default theme.
• New “Change Theme” button.
• New “Help” and “Share” buttons are now available next to the “Change Theme” button.
• The Email, Social, Info and Shopping trays now have additional options. Just click the arrow to the bottom of the trays.
• “Share It” has been re-named “GoWEB Social” again, for brand consistency.

Let’s start by introducing GoWEB Games. Our new games channel is now available and can be accessed from the homepage. It carries many multiplayer and singleplayer games for your pleasure.

Next, we introduce GoWEB TV (beta). This is essentially a video channel, giving you access to online TV channels as well as hot YouTube videos. This channel is a public beta, meaning it’s available for all to use, but we’re still evaluating and fine-tuning (no pun intended). GoWEB TV can be reached from the “Video Search Box” on the GoWEB homepage.

Next, we want to re-introduce you to CaribSearch, our Caribbean Search engine. We’ve done a lot to integrate CaribSearch more tightly into GoWEB and we’ve even “opened it up” for you, our valued users, to contribute to the project, by adding sites to the search engine. There will be more on this very soon. To search just CaribSearch, you can go here.

One of the most exciting things we have to offer is our new toolbar. If you installed the GoWEB Toolbar previously then you’ve already been updated automatically. We looked at the statistics and saw the features you use most, least, and not at all. We’ve kept the most popular toolbar modules and added Games and TV to the list. Toolbar users have one-click access to even more Games and TV Channels than what’s available on our site.

And last, but certainly not least, you’ll notice these new features integrated into existing GoWEB pages.

Featured content on your homepage now includes Games and Caribbean Searches

GoWEB Kidz now carries a module from the new Games Channel.

We hope you enjoy these new features. We’ll be explaining more about them and looking out for your feedback as usual.