New and Improved — Version 4.0

Congratulations! If you are reading this, that means I’ve successfully updated my website. Now you know what super secret project #999 was all about. I’m not going to lie…this has been a major source of frustration for me over the last few weeks (just ask Kari…on second thought…don’t do that). I want to say I started the process somewhere around the beginning of September. Yeah. I really wanted it to be ready in on October 1 which was when I first went to using PHP/mySQL two years ago…but that didn’t happen.Speaking of two years, I haven’t added any patches to the website since I first installed it. Go me MR. Computer Person. The back end was two years old and two major releases out of date. That meant I couldn’t just slap on the latest release and be done with it. I ended up having to download a copy of the website, run it on a local web server, and install all the updates to see what broke. Needless to say…everything broke but the forum (hey, I do keep it up-to-date). In essence, I had to re-design the entire user interface to be more compatible.

Which is why you are looking at a brand new site layout. Here’s a run down on what changed layout wise:

1. First and foremost, the two sidebar format is gone. I felt like there was too much on the side that wasn’t being used.
2. All the information relating to me, this website (the forum and archives), and external websites has been moved to the very top of the page.
3. All of the Features, such as Artie’cles, Futile Files, and Ramblings, have been moved to the Categories section.
4. Everything else has been moved to a sidebar on the right hand side of the page and sorted in order that I thought people used the most on a daily basis.

Now if I remember correctly, the last time I did a major site redesign, something like 20 or 30% of you didn’t like it. Well guess what? Scroll all the way down to be bottom of the right side column. See that fancy do-dad called “Theme Switcher”? I’ve included a few additional themes for all you graphically unhappy people. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t put as much work into those as I did this one (the Reloaded theme) but it should be enough to get you by. I’ve also got another theme I’m going to add sometime over the next week or so. Oh, if you have cookies enabled, it remembers which theme you were last viewing and automatically selects it the next time you visit my page.

So what else is new?

• You can now click on the X Users Online to see exactly who’s online.
• The “This Post X Years Ago” is gone based on y’alls’ feedback.
• The Poll is now Ajax driven and doesn’t require a page reload when you vote.
• T-Shirts. Yep, you read that right. There are now a few T-Shirts available based on an Arch Nemesis and some happenings in the forum. Because I have a basic store, I can only have one design per t-shirt type. So things are somewhat limited right now. If it becomes a popular feature, I’ll upgrade to the premium store. If you have any t-shirt ideas, just let me know!

As much as I put into this upgrade, it still wasn’t complete. I still need to create a new About (i.e. Current Events) Page, an Arch Nemesis Page, a Contact Page, and a whole new Photos section. The old Photos section was completely old and busted and I’m still trying to figure a solution. I’m also toying around with the idea of adding tags to every post to make searching easier and possibly a way to embed YouTube and Google Videos directly into posts. You’ll probably see some polls in the future regarding these features.

Finally, in honor of the upgrade, I’ve got a new Artie’cle, Rambling, AND Futile File!!!!!!

PS – If you encounter any problems, please let me know. Also, be sure to include which theme had the problem. Thanks!