DPReview relaunches on new platform after full rebuild

DPReview put its rebuilt site live on a new platform, and the biggest change is under the hood: the camera site now runs on the same core system as Gear Patrol. The staff says this is the first full replacement of the underlying platform since 1998, when DPReview first went live, and that the old codebase had become harder to maintain and evolve after more than 25 years.

That matters because DPReview is not just a news feed with reviews bolted on. Its mix of product coverage, sample galleries, buying guides, and forums has long made it a place people use when they are deciding between two bodies, trying to understand a lens, or comparing real-world files before spending serious money. A cleaner technical base should make that kind of research easier to keep current, especially if the team can publish, update, and fix content without fighting the old system every step of the way.

The relaunch is not presented as a finished product so much as a working transition. DPReview says some items are still in progress, and the team plans to keep adding FAQs, fixups, and support guidance as the new setup settles in. The launch FAQ says account data transfers automatically to the new site, and the site is exclusively dark mode at launch. For longtime members, the key point is that the forums were not supposed to be disrupted by the migration, which is the part that tends to matter most when a camera community has spent years building up advice, arguing over firmware, and leaving trails of ownership and repair notes behind.

The relaunch also lands with real history behind it. DPReview was founded in November 1998, bought by Amazon in 2007, and based in Seattle from 2010. In March 2023, Amazon said it would shut the site down and set an April 10, 2023 closure date, before Gear Patrol announced on June 20, 2023 that it had acquired DPReview. TechCrunch said the shutdown news drew more than 5,000 comments, which showed just how much fear there was about losing one of photography’s most useful archives.

So this is more than a visual refresh. If the rebuild holds up, it gives DPReview a sturdier home for the reviews, galleries, and forum threads people use when they are trying to make a buying decision that will live with them for years.