A SharperIron Design Update this Weekend
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If my notes are correct, SI’s last design update was about three years ago. That would make us way overdue for a face lift! It turns out one has been in the making behind the scenes for several months, and the site will go offline for much of the weekend to transition.
The underlying framework, for those interested, is still Drupal 7, but theming for Drupal — and for websites in general — has improved a good bit in the last couple of years. There are some powerful tools available now for themers … and I don’t how to use any of them!
But the good folks at More Than (Just) Themes provided a great starting design and excellent support along the way so, Lord willing, an updated look will be operational and about 90% actually “finished” before Monday morning October 30. Most of you probably won’t notice the 10% that will still be under construction.
As some of you have probably noticed, I’m a lousy cheerleader. So, with that as context, my assessment is that the update is looking mostly pretty good.
A few improvements to look for along with a fresh, more colorful look:
- Improved overall fit to varying screen sizes
- More eyeball-friendly fonts
- Easy return to top of page
- Text editor (comments, etc.) in rich text mode on most phone browsers (rather than plain text)
- Logging in via the Log In link returns you to the page you logged in from (with a few exceptions) rather than always taking you to your profile
- New Posts tabs display data without reloading the entire New Posts page
- Jump to Filings from the menu (saves some scrolling on small screens)
- Logged in users: “Discuss” takes you to the bottom of the thread (a shortcut that works regardless of logged-in state is on the do-list)
- Multi-page threads: paging links (next, 1, 2, 3, etc.) are visible at the top of the thread as well as the bottom
- Containers on the Forums page are just headings rather than links to a redundant and potentially confusing additional list page
- Larger ads for our advertisers
- Miscellaneous other tuning and tweaking
- A continued total absence of: automatically playing videos, instant or time delayed overlay ads, popups insisting that you turn your adblocker off.
There are a number of options that are in the “undecided” category, so your feedback after the transition will be welcome. And this thread is the perfect place to post issues/bugs/whatever.
We’re not moving to a different server, so there shouldn’t be any weird half-old-half-new syncing issues … but if you see anomalies of any kind, flush your browser cache (usually ctrl+shift+delete; select images and files) and see if that helps.
Just one other detail: The plan is to go offline today, 10/27/17 around 4 PM Central.
Aaron Blumer 2016 Bio
Aaron Blumer is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in small-town western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored for thirteen years. In his full time job, he is content manager for a law-enforcement digital library service. (Views expressed are the author's own and not his employer's, church's, etc.)
- 10 views
And somehow, this seems appropriate.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Might be funny one of these years to switch the site to an early 90’s retro theme on April Fool’s Day.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
A couple of other improvements that didn’t make the list in the main post:
- Two new blogs in the Blogroll
- When you click “Start a discussion” from a sub-forum page the post defaults to the correct sub-forum.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Congratulations. I need to do something similar elsewhere!
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Thank you! Looks much easier to navigate.
Everything looks fantastic so far, Aaron. Nice job!
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells
Where has the “New Posts” link gone to! Site looks very, very good. :)
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Good work
This is a minor thing …but one can BOTH “like” and “dislike” a comment.
Not a new “problem” - was that way before
Wish the ” Notify me when new comments are posted” would default UNCLICKED
[TylerR]Where has the “New Posts” link gone to! Site looks very, very good.
It had gone the way of “Oops, how did that get deleted?” It’s now back home under the Forum menu.
Thanks for asking, and everybody do please feel free to point out glitches, etc. Some of these things might be in the “can’t fix yet” category, but some are just a bit of transitional mess easy to clean up.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Jim]This is a minor thing …but one can BOTH “like” and “dislike” a comment.
Not a new “problem” - was that way before
Yeah, that was one of those things that turned out to be hard to fix then got to thinking, why fix it? I kind of enjoy it now as an expression of ambivalence. People have probably also noticed that you can like and unlike your own comments.
Speaking of… there is now a new block in the Foundry listing recently liked threads/articles. I don’t think we have one for comments yet.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
And I’ve also had fun with liking and disliking the same comment. I did my own to avoid offense, believe it or not.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
The filings don’t appear along the right-hand side any longer. Intentional?
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Where they appear will depend on screen width. They should still be on the right if your browser is wide enough… I forget what the threshold on th at is, but if you play with it, you’ll probably see what I mean.
One thing you can do to get “more width” on a somewhat smaller screen is zoom out a bit. Fonts are large enough that this might be fine for some users. Ctrl key and - key or Ctrl + scrollwheel zoom in and out.
Sometimes for side-by-side work, I zoom out a bit so I can see the “wide” layout without using up more screen.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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