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In case you hadn't noticed, this site has been redesigned with a whole new look.
I have to admit that I was never really satisfied with the old look, but at the time I wanted to get the site up and running rather than fiddle endlessly with design concepts. I am not a designer, and it showed, but I'd otherwise still be screwing about with it even now.
During the past couple of years since starting the site I've had a number of ideas for design improvements but have always kept it on the back burner as it's hard to find the time for a redesign. I'm still not a designer and I knew it would be a long and frustrating process if I wanted a better-looking result. I'd love to have paid a proper designer to do it but I run this site entirely from my own wallet and I can't really justify that kind of expense.
Having said that, this time around it was a lot easier. Most of the fiddly stuff I could carry across from the old template, things like the main content area and all the little hacks I've put in place for the directory, calendar, forums etc to try and keep a fairly usable and consistent look. The layout wasn't changing by much, it's mostly just tweaking the decorative bits.
I also had guidance from things that had frustrated me. The more ideas and limitations you can carry into the process, the easier it is. I wanted the menu to be more prominent, and the main banner needed an overhaul with some newer, bigger images. And I wanted a different colour scheme.
I'm quite happy with what I have now, but there will be a bit of tweaking to come as I'd like to reduce the amount of blue everywhere and I might fiddle with the left sidebar a bit. I could have done that before going live with it, but my concerns are fairly minor and I didn't want to hold myself up with endless tweaking.
I am definitely open to feedback so let me know what works and doesn't work for you. I've tested it on the most troublesome browsers and it even works on my iPod Touch. There may be some quirks with IE6. If you're using that browser I will look at any issues but I won't be putting much effort into them.
I'll be spending the next little while making some tweaks to content and the workings of a few things like the contact page. I am aiming to streamline the site to make it easier to upgrade in future.
On the technical side little has changed. The only thing I'm changing is that external links will no longer open in a new window. I decided it's better if I let you make that choice. Existing links will need to be updated so the behaviour will be inconsistent for a while.
There is a major (massive) upgrade to the underlying content management system available, but I am using a number of third-party extensions which haven't all been updated to work with it yet. And the migration process is likely to be painful. So that project can wait a while, the current version will be maintained for a while yet.
A few weeks ago I did set up a new caching system that has made a fairly impressive boost to the site's performance... at the expense of news content being a little slow to update when I add a new article. Unfortunately I don't have as much control over that as I'd like... but it's not a big deal.
As a longer term plan I am thinking of ideas of different directions in which I can take this site to grow its community. I am always open to ideas and feedback so if there's anything you want to see, just get in touch. I am also considering getting some real ads on there as the Google ones aren't really doing much.
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