Last night, Neill @ Melbourne Metblogs asked on OzBargain about opening deals in a new window. He also asked:

Also, surely OZbargain has grown enough to be out of beta?

OzBargain has been sitting on beta release for as long as it has been alive. It has gone through regular updates and I consider that it is still “in development”. However I guess different people see the word “beta” differently. Some can easily shun away thinking they better not touch it else it will fall into pieces. Some reckon you simply can’t be an exciting Web 2.0 website without a “beta” flashing right next to your logo constantly.

Since the users of OzBargain might be biased towards the former than later, I went ahead and removed the beta sign…

… and A New Theme!!!

I have actually been working on this new theme on and off for a few months, and OzBargain has finally switched over this morning at 12:40am. The new theme has a simpler and fresher look. It also has “Store Profile” code in the deal pages so you can easily find other deals from the same shop. Moreover, it has more banner space (one 300×250 rectangle and one 468×60 banner) so hopefully I can recover a bit more $$$ from my ridiculously low CTR :)

By the way, if you do not like banner ads for whatever reason, you can:

• Install Firefox Adblock Plus, or
• Change your user preference on OzBargain to not show banner ads.

Although “beta” is no longer shown, I can assure you that more development is still on the way. I have a few new features planned so stay tuned!