Last week Monday I was faced with some downtime after setting Baby Hobbit down for her afternoon nap and I got the bug to change up the site. The primary lesson here is probably: “Don’t give Goldenstar a day off” but hopefully my inspiration will end up better serving our blog readers.
There have been two big updates to the blog which I will go through.
New Blog Theme
We have purchased a new theme for the blog! The basic structure of the site has not been altered much. My goal was to have some familiarity with the site while adding some additional niceties.
OLD SITE |
NEW SITE |
New Features added include:
- A rotating carousel of top stories at the top of the site
- a new subscription widget listing more than just our RSS.
- The popular posts area has a new “latest” tab for recent postings
- search bar moved to the top (latest tweet still available in the right nav)
- new author tags to better share who’s written that article
- related posts to help you find similar posts you may be interested in
- Podcast player in the right navigation.
Like I said, my goal wasn’t to completely start over with our site’s design but simply add more functionality to what we already have. The front page still displays a listing of the latest posts, the poll is still in the same location, etc. Hopefully you see the changes as a benefit to your CSTM site experience!
New Mobile Theme
We’ve purchased a new plugin to deliver our blog post to mobile sites. This is just a theme to display the blog posts for those who surf to our web site via a mobile browser and is separate from our iPhone/iPod touch app.
Mobile devices supported by this new theme are:
| Device Classes | User Agents |
| iOS / Webkit | iphone, ipod, aspen, incognito, webmate, ipad |
| Android | android, dream, cupcake, froyo |
| Blackberry Storm/Torch | blackberry9500, blackberry9520, blackberry9530, blackberry9550, blackberry 9800 |
| Palm | webos |
| Samsung | s8000, bada |
Now I only have one cellphone and it’s a iPhone so all you other folks will have to test and give me feedback on how well it works on your device.
There is no special web address to use, your device is automatically detected and the mobile version is displayed. If you prefer not to use the mobile version you can use the link at the bottom of the page to see the full site.
The iPad has a special theme built just for it. Again it is simple as clicking the “Switch to Regular Theme” link at the bottom if you prefer to see the full site.
February 28, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Thanks Goldenstar for all the hard work you put into the site. Glad to see it back up!!!
February 28, 2011 at 10:22 pm
It’s looking fantastic, and thank you thank you thank you for giving me something fun to do on my new iPad I got for “work”! You guys rock!
February 28, 2011 at 10:35 pm
The site looks great Goldenstar both on my computer and on my Droid X. You do an amazing job.
February 28, 2011 at 10:39 pm
The mobile theme is much appreciated!
February 28, 2011 at 11:08 pm
Very glad to hear it’s working and you like it
March 1, 2011 at 12:09 am
Great work Goldenstar! The only thing I miss about the old design is the lack of author credits on the front page. I’m not sure why it should matter to me, since I read everything you guys put up, but I liked seeing who contributed before I clicked on the article and also liked the credit at the top of each article, so I don’t have to scroll all the way down to the bottom. Anyway, I appreciate all your hard work, and am glad to see the site is back on its feet after all the trouble last week.
March 1, 2011 at 6:08 am
I can see if I can fix that. At least on the home page for you.
March 1, 2011 at 6:32 am
It looks nice and professional, but there’s a problem with hyperlinks in general. In Opera 11, Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome they tend to hang a few pixels downwards compared to the rest of the text. Strangely this doesn’t seem to be a problem in IE8.
March 1, 2011 at 6:37 am
Just spotted another problem. The green arrow icon next to “Continue reading…” in article boxes on the front page is clipped in IE8. It is displayed fully in Opera 11, Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome.
Sorry for pestering you with this but I’ve been working as a software tester and tend to notice these things.
March 1, 2011 at 6:43 am
Never mind; now the icons are fine. Must have been a glitch.
March 1, 2011 at 6:44 am
And now the links too. You just fixed this on the fly, didn’t you?
March 1, 2011 at 6:45 am
I didn’t do anything to the icons. I did attempt to straighten the links but it didn’t work. Apparently it just needed to think about it a bit longer.
March 1, 2011 at 7:17 am
Well, now it looks fine (both links and those icons) in Opera 11, Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome and IE8 on my PC.
March 1, 2011 at 7:26 am
Eventhough I wrote you a sceptical email about the changes Im starting to like it… like you said, it probably takes some time to get used to.
Also I have a feeling the old layout felt nicer on my phone but since im using a Nokia (Symbian) and it doesnt seem to have its own mobile layout i’m blaming the phone!
Go go CSTM, your doing a great job!
Caelas
March 1, 2011 at 10:22 am
Looks great. I was looking at it the other day and thought “this is different…” Guess I’m not crazy lol.
March 1, 2011 at 10:49 am
Flawless!
I am very fond of the new changes! An improvement!
March 1, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Looks good on my Blackberry – thanks for your hard work!
March 1, 2011 at 4:26 pm
I like the ‘cleaner’ look with the paler background.
One of the things I really liked over christmas was the very delicate snowfall you had going on – loved how the flakes were inconsistent sizes and even over time changed which direction they fell in. I’d love the code for how you did that!
One thing I’ve not been able to find is a place where I can register so I don’t have to put my name and email in every time I post a reply, and get an avatar like some of the other people who post seem to have. Is there such a thing? I don’t want to subscribe to the feeds because I don’t need to, I just want to register.
March 1, 2011 at 4:35 pm
The snowfall effect is a plug-in I activate just for the month of December. It is called “Let it Snow!”
For the registration question: It’s something we can discuss adding. Currently registration is turned off on the blog and only folks who have accounts are writers.
We didn’t want to require login just to comment or make it seem like you had to give us all your information just to talk to us, I guess. Keep communication pretty open. The name/email is an open form and people don’t even have to use their real information.
If people really are interested in registering a subscriber account with CSTM, we can make that possible.
Oh and just so folks know: We don’t use the email address you provide us at all except in the instances of like making sure someone gets an answer they needed or won something in a contest. Otherwise I don’t even look at the silly thing. I’ve got better things to do
March 1, 2011 at 6:50 pm
I see you have an avatar now, but just in case anyone else is wondering; you can get a general avatar for many WordPress blogs at http://en.gravatar.com.
March 1, 2011 at 9:27 pm
That’s not an avatar I picked, it’s one it randomly gave me.
It’s given it too me before actually as well. Weirdly, I’m actually registerd on the cheezburger network (the lolcats sites), and whenever I post there it always gives me the baby too!
March 2, 2011 at 10:23 am
If your goal to register is to pick a different avatar, I’m afraid that won’t help. The system works the same for registered or not. It is pulling the gravatar (see link above) based on email address used. My avatar is my gravatar as well and is not something I set in my profile.
Sounds like you need to go and change up the gravatar for your email address with their site. That will change it for cheezburger too.