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
Filings is there before I login, and then disappears afterwards. This happens at home and at work. Home I use Edge. Work we use IE11.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
I primarily use Chrome on my android phone and can’t find the Filings page anywhere.
I’m on Chrome on a widescreen laptop, don’t see the Filings on the main page. I’ll log out and see what I can see then.
Ok, … logged out and back in. Filings shows up when logged out, but when I log back in, it’s gone.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Thanks, Don, for confirming this.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
So far, no idea what would do that. I can’t get that to happen in any browser I have access to (four so far).
Will keep digging though. Have you tried flushing your browser cache?
OK, I can duplicate this now with certain permission settings. Still no idea why the block is disappearing for some roles. Just a matter of time though.
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.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I think this is working now. (There was an obscure config setting that should have no impact on this, but it seems to have made a difference so… ) Please post your results. Thanks.
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.
It works now.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
That fixed it, thanks Aaron.
Glad to hear it, thanks.
If anyone notices any other glitches, please post.
… and if I don’t see it right away, feel free to message me.
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.
For some reason, the portraits on posts only seem to display 3/4 of the way on my iPhone 5s (iOS 11.0.3). I have a screenshot I can email if you want.
Is it SharperIron or SHARPER IRON? I have always written the former but with this new relaunch it seems like our name and logo was tweaked to the latter.
"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
The avatars were good yesterday; now they’re as Jay said. This is on Edge. I think something went wrong …
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
When I click on a link to a new comment, the poster’s avatar and name are obscured by the persistent menu banner that includes the name, Sharper Iron, and the options Profile, Messages, and Log Out.
This may be trivial and unavoidable, but I find at my advanced age that I sometimes forget who wrote what I clicked on. I am finding myself scrolling up a bit to recall the poster’s name. Sad to admit, but true.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Got that avatar glitch.
Don, I’d like to see that link issue fixed also…. Same thing happens when clicking on footnote links. The reason is that the browser doesn’t “see” the hover bar when taking you to the link destination. So it’s behind it. I bet there is a bit of CSS or something to fix that, but it may be like it is for a while. (I’ve got a support request in on this one. It’s a bit over my head.)
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.
Is it SharperIron or SHARPER IRON? I have always written the former but with this new relaunch it seems like our name and logo was tweaked to the latter.
Well, the answer is … sorta both? For a good while, we’ve crunched the two words together in the name to fit the URL, which doesn’t have a space… sharperiron.org. For the last few design cycles, there was kind of a half space between Sharper and Iron, with a smallcaps style using larger caps for the S and the I.
Now with all caps, there was no way to even hint at two words without a real space. SHARPERIRON just kind of looks like a mess. With a half space, it looked like an accidental spacing problem. :-) So… two words this time around. I’m hoping it doesn’t mess up indexing at all. But it shouldn’t. The previous header/logo combos were just one jpg/png image.
So anyway, that’s the thinking behind that.
(Also I see that smileys aren’t displaying quite right… alignment issue. On the do list)
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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