Recent updates to Ever Wonder Wine, newest first.
The bottom of every page now correctly shows "EverWonderWine" as one word, matching your branding, instead of the spaced-out "Ever Wonder Wine."
Every morning at 9, the site checks whether anything new was published the day before. If so, everyone on the subscriber list gets a nicely formatted email with the full post — picture, caption, and the whole article, looking just like it does on the site — the same job Mailchimp was doing, but built in. Readers sign up with the form at the bottom of any page and confirm from their inbox, and every email has a working unsubscribe link. There's also a new "Subscribers" page in the admin menu where you can see everyone on the list, add someone yourself, and check what's been sent. Addresses that bounce or mark an email as spam are taken off automatically so your emails keep landing in inboxes.
Typing an address like /wine-101/ with an extra slash at the end now lands on the proper /wine-101 — one true address per page, which search engines prefer.
Your reference pages are now organized into a real family tree, and their web addresses show it: Red Wines, for example, now lives at /wine-101/types-of-wine/red-wines instead of just /red-wines. The Wine 101 home page also got a cleaner address — /wine-101 instead of /wine-101-1. Every old address still works: anyone following an old link or bookmark is sent straight to the page's new home, and the same is true if you ever move a page to a different spot later. The little breadcrumb trail at the top of each page now follows this tree automatically, so new pages get the right trail without any extra setup. In the admin, each page has a "Parent Page" picker that controls where it sits, and both editors now show the page's full web address as a link you can click to see the finished page.
Any page that shows a stack of posts — the blog, the year and month archives, tag pages, and the Behind the Cork™ review lists — used to download every thumbnail picture the instant the page opened, including the ones far down the page a reader may never scroll to. Now each picture is fetched only as the reader gets close to it. The top of the page appears sooner, and readers on phones use less data. The very first picture still loads right away, so there's never an empty gap where the top image should be.
Until now, re-importing the Squarespace site would have overwritten everything here with the Squarespace copy — including all the link, wording, and formatting fixes you've made on this site. The import now works the other way around: brand-new posts you've written on Squarespace come straight in, and anything that exists in both places but differs is set aside in a new "Import Review" list in the admin menu. For each one you see exactly what's different, side by side, and choose which version wins — nothing changes and nothing is deleted until you say so. Your decisions are remembered, so the next import only asks about things Squarespace has actually changed since. There's also a one-click "keep this site's version for all" for the first big pass.
Tuscany's sub-regions on the Italy page are now organized the same way Piedmont's are: a numbered list of its 12 main areas, with Brunello di Montalcino, Chianti, and Val di Cornia each showing their own smaller zones as bullets tucked underneath. Click to expand and see all of them, or collapse it back down to keep the page tidy.
When you write a post or page, you format it by typing a few small symbols — two stars around a word makes it bold, a hyphen at the start of a line makes a bullet. That shorthand is called Markdown, and until now there was nothing to look it up in. There's now a "Formatting Help" page in the admin menu, and a link to it just above the writing box, that explains every symbol with a side-by-side example: what you type on the left, what your readers will see on the right. Those examples are generated by the website itself, so they're always exactly right. It also warns about the handful of things other Markdown guides on the internet show that don't work here — tables especially, since a pasted table looks nearly correct while you're typing and then falls apart on the finished page.
When editing a blog post, you could drag an image onto a box to attach it, or click to pick a file, and you'd see a thumbnail of it before saving. Editing a page only offered a plain "Choose File" button with no preview. Both screens now work the same way, so there's nothing different to remember depending on where you are.
Searching used to look only through blog posts. It now also covers all the wine guide pages — countries and regions, types of wine, grape listings, the glossary, and more. Results are ordered so the reference pages and grape deep-dives show up before individual wine reviews that merely mention the word, matched words are highlighted, and close-enough spellings still find what you meant ("reisling" finds Riesling). The search box also remembers what you typed and shows results on their own page.
A couple of behind-the-scenes files (a database export and a helper script) had quietly ended up at public web addresses. Those are now blocked, and the tool that copies the site to the server stops and asks before sending anything that isn't part of the site — so this can't happen again.
Removed the word "ongoing" from the mention of the Tour of Wine Grapes series on the /blog page, since the wording no longer fit.
The paragraph on the /blog page explaining the two kinds of posts (Behind the Cork reviews and everything else) is now a bulleted list, making it easier to scan at a glance.
Browsing a specific month (like /blog/2024/06) now shows that month's posts in the order they were written, oldest to newest, instead of newest-first.
On the Edit Post page, the Featured Image box now lets you drag an image file straight in from your desktop or a folder, instead of only clicking Choose File.
Claude's project notes were pointing at "staging.everwonderwine.com," an address that doesn't actually go to the practice site anymore — it was showing the old pre-move site instead, which made some finished work look broken. The notes now correctly point to eww.mekstudios.com. Claude can also now read and write the practice database directly and safely, using Marc's own login, instead of getting stuck looking for locked-away passwords.
On the Find a Wine pages (like Cabernet Sauvignon reviews), clicking page 2, 3, and so on was always showing page 1 — that's fixed. Those pages also now list reviews strictly newest-first. The yearly blog archives (like /blog/2024) now have page numbers too, so you can browse the whole year instead of just the six most recent posts.
The homepage's "Explore the Site" section now has its own card for the Ever Wonder? series, alongside Wine 101, Behind the Cork, and Blog, so that big collection of Q&A posts is easier for visitors to find.
Nudged the new Glossary of Wine Terms link in the Wine 101 dropdown menu so it sits in the same order as the tiles on the Wine 101 page (right before Wine Fun Facts).
The Wine 101 dropdown menu at the top of the site was missing a link to the Glossary of Wine Terms page, even though it was already featured on the Wine 101 page itself. It's now in the menu too.
The Glossary, Wine Fun Facts, and Listing of Common Wines tiles on the Wine 101 page now show your new "title card" style images. Also fixed a display bug where these picture tiles could crop off part of the image on some screen sizes — they now always show the full picture.
The Wine Regions of the World page now has a crisp, full-width world map at the top. The United States page also has a full-width US map above the A–Z letter bar. The letter bar was improved so W jumps to Washington State (not West Virginia), state names are fully visible after jumping (no longer hidden behind the bar), and an invisible character hiding before the Texas heading was removed.
The /united-states page now has a sticky A–Z letter bar at the top so you can jump directly to any state. Stray asterisks that were appearing as literal text (a leftover from the Squarespace migration) were also cleaned up across the United States, California, Oregon, Washington State, and Italy pages. The Glossary terms are now bold, the Submit Samples page heading and formatting were updated, and the /glossary-of-terms page received a formatting fix.
The Red Wines page now uses sub-headings instead of bullet points for Full Bodied, Medium Bodied, Light Bodied, Red Wine Blends, and Meritage — making the page easier to scan. A 'Read More' link was added to the Red Wine Blends section. Intro text was added under the Meritage heading. All the blog post links on the page were also corrected — several dates were pointing to the wrong day.
The Red Wines and White Wines pages each now have two new sub-pages — one organized by grape type and one by region — with clickable links right on the main page to take you there. Breadcrumb trails (Home › Wine 101 › Types of Wine › …) now appear at the top of all the wine-type pages and their sub-pages so you can always find your way back. The Rosé Wines page was rewritten to combine its original text with the full description from the original site. On the Sparkling Wines page, all the links to related blog posts were fixed — they were pointing to the wrong dates and going nowhere.
When you find a wine by browsing (say, clicking "Barbera" in the Find a Wine table), a "← Back to Barbera Reviews" link now appears at the bottom of the post so you can easily return to the list. It only shows up when you navigate there from the reviews page — it won't appear if you go to the post directly.
The Types of Wine page got a full makeover: a new featured photo at the top (four wine glasses on a barrel), a clickable table of contents so you can jump straight to any wine type, 'Back to top' links between sections, and photos added to the Red Wines, White Wines, Rosé Wines, Sparkling Wines, Dessert Wines, Fortified Wines, and Distilled Wines & Spirits sections — each with proper photo credits. Links throughout the page now appear in blue with underlines, and the page title was moved above the photo.
Brought the site up to date with your most recent Squarespace export: newly added posts and pages are now live, and anything you'd changed in Squarespace now matches here too. If a page or post's web address changed, the old link automatically forwards to the new one, so existing links and bookmarks keep working. A few leftover duplicate pages from the original move were also tidied up.
Whether a page shows up in the site's top menu is now a single "Show in main navigation" checkbox in the page editor, replacing the older parent/child page setup. The menu itself looks the same as before.
You can now delete a post or page. Each row in the Posts and Pages lists has a Delete button — clicking it asks you to confirm with "Yes, delete" before anything happens — and there's a matching Delete option at the bottom of each editor's right column. Deleting a page that has sub-pages keeps those sub-pages (they simply move up to the top level), and you'll get a heads-up before you confirm.
The post and page editors now show a colored badge telling you at a glance whether you're looking at a Draft or something that's Published, with clear "Publish", "Update", and "Save Draft" buttons. Brand-new pages now start as drafts, and you can preview a draft as a real page while you're logged in. And when you set a post's web address, the editor checks that it isn't already used by another post on the same day.
Fixed a glitch where, just after saving a brand-new page, starting another new page would mistakenly offer to bring back the one you'd already saved. Also tidied the wording of the autosave "saved to your browser" message.
The Glossary page now has an A–Z bar at the top — click a letter to jump straight to that section. Letters with no entries are greyed out.
Added this very page — a running, plain-English list of recent site updates, linked from the footer, so you can see what's changed at a glance.
While you're working on a post or page, your draft is now saved automatically so you won't lose it. And when you edit something that's already published, your changes stay private until you choose to publish them — nothing goes live by accident.
In the admin area, the Posts list now has a search box that filters your posts by title instantly as you type.
The Pages list in the admin area got the same instant title search, so you can find a page quickly.