Retail Banks

The Transfer Has Begun!

We started an update to the Informed Banking website several, actually many, months ago. The main target was the wiki, and finally the transfer process has begun. I’ve been very careful to make sure the URLs get mapped to the new site. The old wiki engine was not really designed for dynamic publishing, so we’re switching to MediaWiki.

Many pages have already been transferred, but I’ve only redirected one so far. I’m excited for this transition, though it will take a few more weeks to complete.

The first migrated page: Marketable Securities.

More Banking Rumors Some new rumors abounding this morning in the banking world: New York Times is reporting that Washington Mutual is in talks for sale by Goldman SachsNew York Times also reporting that Wachovia might buy Morgan Stanley What the blazes is going on here?

Informed Banking Status Report

Informed Banking has taken a hiatus lately (my wife and I had our first baby recently), and so the launch of the new design had to be postponed. Now I’ve got a moment to revisit the process, and I’m wondering how to proceed.

Within the past few weeks, I was able to migrate IB to the new hosting platform we’re using, but in the process, broke a few existing feature, like the forums and the bank directory. These will be fixed eventually, using more sustainable software applications and databases.

I’m trying to decide the order in which to do all this. I’ll probably update the blog first as that should be a fairly easy switch - just have to make sure all the old URLs are redirected to the new path. Then I’ll follow up with the wiki update, as most of the articles have already been migrated, and again fix the URL’s. After that, I’ll replace the forums and the bank directory. I’m not as concerned about the URLs for the bank directory or the forums, both are designed more for browsing and interacting than as a reference.

Request for Feedback

Hello Informed Banking readers! I’m posting today to ask for your feedback about our new design. As you’ll likely notice, the content isn’t fully up-to-date, but the point is to only to preview the new design. Here is the address:

New Informed Banking Design Beta

I’ve still got a lot of work to do on it, but I figured you might enjoy a sneak preview. Thanks for your comments!