Well, sort of. It's hard to believe it's been more than a month since we shut down the old site, but now Pixstel is back in at least partial operation.

Our previous website was a custom build ... created some 6 years ago when there weren't a lot of off the shelf options around. But building and maintaining a commercial web site is a major undertaking, with the need for constant updates if only for security reasons.

This year, with a major re-write looming, it was time to look at the available services once again and see if there was an alternative to 'rolling our own'.

Turns out there are quite a few, each with its pros and cons. For a variety of reasons, we've opted for Zenfolio. Its not a perfect match to our requirements, but it does address areas that were causing us the most difficulty.

Sadly, selecting a host is one thing, migrating is another. With tens of thousands of images (and associated metadata), and our own ideas of how things should be done, its all taken much longer than it should have. To anyone else who may be thinking of doing something similar, we suggest figuring out how long it will take. Then allow for contingencies. Then double that figure, and you might come close!

So with apologies for the delay, we present to you Pixstel v.2, and hope that while you might not like some changes, you find a number of improvements as well. Over the next few weeks we'll be bringing the rest of our existing collections on line, and of course adding new images.