Gear Patrol founder Eric Yang: Why we rebuilt DPReview after 25 years

Photographers and creators, the new DPReview is live in beta.

Or, in DPReview terms, let’s call it slightly pre-release firmware.

Holy smokes, this thing was not easy to pull off. We still have a lot to do, but this feels like the right moment to pause, crack my knuckles, and walk through how we got here.

Nearly three years ago, Gear Patrol acquired DPReview from Amazon after it had been marked for closure.

The acquisition came to us under circumstances we did not expect, but it fit something I believed and still believe deeply: enthusiast communities matter. Product journalism still matters. And there is still a bright future for brands built around expertise, trust, and obsession, especially where a product sits at the heart of a passion.

That is what cameras are for: photographers and creators.

Two people sit together in a restaurant, holding and operating a digital camera. One person helps the other use the camera. Dried herbs are visible hanging in the background.

But it was also a real risk.

Dedicated cameras may no longer be the default for everyday photography. For many people, the iPhone is enough.

But I actually see a world where photography is building an exciting future. There is incredible innovation in both the products and creatives. Engineers and designers are still building tools that allow people to capture images and video in ways they could not before. Even film, monitors and printers are exciting. And yes, some bad-ass and occasionally questionable new product ideas are still making it to market.

I take that as a good sign. It means there is still some appetite for risk out there, and that the entire industry is not just trying to make the most pin-sharp 24-70mm f/2.8 lens in the world.

Acquiring DPReview was not easy for us. Working with Amazon put me in rooms with people above my pay grade. But we made a bet that we could be good stewards of one of the most important archives of photography knowledge on the web, one of the most deeply invested communities online, and a deeply respected editorial team.

I am still thankful Amazon agreed, because they certainly did not need to pick us.

Product journalism still matters.

But we also inherited a rabbit hole of aging infrastructure.

It’s staggering to even say this out loud, but until this week, DPReview was still operating without a responsive site for mobile users.

The job has been hard. We knew it would be. We have been working toward this launch for three years, with a couple of false starts along the way. We have been hammering on code, design, migration, UX, ad tech, editorial workflow, product decisions, and budgeting, so much budgeting, in earnest for well over a year.

It has taken a lot of resources, meaning cash, to get here. And as an independent media company, every dollar had to be earned and stretched.

I have questioned my own judgment more than once. I have worn out Ben Bowers, my partner in this whole endeavor, with an onslaught of meme GIFs; Sanford and Son was particularly poignant when I was bereft of productive words. I bought a monitor that I put into portrait-orientation so I could help debug CSS and stare into the abyss that was (and still is) the bug tracker.

Person clutching chest dramatically with speech bubbles reading,

Thankfully, we are now at a place where we can go live, knowing full well that we still have so much work to do.

We first rebuilt the forums last year, migrating them to XenForo. And now we’ve moved the publishing side to WordPress VIP. We also modernized the tech stack. We rebuilt signature tools like the Image Comparison Tool and product comparisons. We made the site responsive. And we paid off huge chunks of technical debt that had accumulated over many years.

There have been moments where the project has felt bigger than I thought we were ready for.

But thankfully, I work with real pros. Many of them have lived and breathed DPReview for the majority of their careers. That is why being honest about how difficult this has been feels important. We are proud of the step forward, but we are not pretending the work is done. Those career-DPR staffers would never let me.

The new DPReview is live, but it is far from finished.

We launched in beta, and beta means what beta has always meant: bugs, fixes, feedback, and iteration.

This beta reminds me a little of the industry’s shift from DSLRs to mirrorless. The first bodies were not perfect. Autofocus had to improve. Lens ecosystems had to catch up. Firmware updates did real work. But the foundation was right, and the direction was clear. You had to start somewhere.

But DPReview is alive. It is moving forward. And it now has a new foundation we can build on.

That foundation matters. The legacy site was running on aging, increasingly expensive infrastructure that was getting harder to maintain and harder for modern internet users to find, understand, and share. Audience traffic and engagement are the lifeblood that keep DPReview free and alive.

Subscriptions can help, but we’ve done the math and are clear-eyed that they cannot carry the entire site on their own. People already have enough subscriptions in their lives, and we want DPReview to remain open and accessible.

So this is not just a redesign. It is the start of making DPReview sustainable for its next chapter. We will keep tuning, fixing, and improving it in public. Feedback is welcome. Patience is appreciated.

This beta reminds me a little of the industry’s shift from DSLRs to mirrorless. The first bodies were not perfect. Autofocus had to improve. Lens ecosystems had to catch up. Firmware updates did real work. But the foundation was right, and the direction was clear.

I am grateful to the team that carried this work through the unglamorous middle, where most of the real difficulty lives.

I am also grateful to the DPReview community for caring enough to keep pushing, questioning, and showing up. I know you still have real feelings about threaded views. We’re working on light mode. Maybe the new logo too. I get it. I have been reading this site and lurking in the forums for more than two decades as well.

Most of all, though, I am proud that we made this bet.

The future of media is not just algorithms. It is trust. It is inspiration. It is expertise. An example of that future we’re hoping to be a part of is supporting a community of people who care deeply about specific, ultra-niche things that only fellow enthusiasts fully understand, and can debate endlessly online and over beers. That is a special, very real thing.

That is why people trust DPReview’s little corner of the internet.

And today is a big step toward making sure it remains one.

Thanks for letting us take care of DPReview. We do not take the job lightly.

Eric Yang
Founder, Gear Patrol

Huge shout-out to the launch team: Mathew Anderson, Dale Baskin, Mike Bailey, Ben Bowers, Richard Butler, Mitchell Clark, Mykim Dang, Scott Everett, Abby Ferguson, Richard Laws, Caitlyn Shaw, Joe Tornatzky, Anthony Wyborny and our talented counterparts at Fueled.

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