Some more site updates

Submitted: 2008-01-08 22:10:02

Time for some more site updates for you all. I've been working rather hard on the site through boredom at home and the odd spec of free time at work so there is plenty to explain about here. Along the way I have been given jobs by the other members of the band for site improvements so I've been adding those, and one or two of my own that I thought might jazz the place up a bit, for useability of course.

At this point I would like to add that if you happen across something on a website that you like, and feel we could benefit from here, please contact us with the relevant details and we'll get on to it right away. I'm always looking to update things and make it look the way you and we want so I'd be glad of the challenges and rewards it would bring. As well as a better site, of course.

Menu Syste(3)m

Right, on to the updates. I have added one or two scripts that do various things to help both you and I (the webmaster... always wanted to use that name!). The first, and probably most major, update on the site is the navigation. Previously there were a few links stuffed at the bottom of the pages that you would have to scroll down to find and use and it was very friendly (except on the home page). So what I have done is build a fixed menu (for browsers that support it) to the right of the main content that should stay out of the way, but always in view.

Using fixed menus like this does cause some issues when you use a smaller window as you can't scroll down to lower links if it is not large enough. Also, if you make the window smaller horizontally the menu will sit above any content it hovers above. To help with this I have added a little javascript functionality that allows you to minimise the window if it becomes a pain. I'm working on cookies to store whether you have it minimised or maximised so as you browse the site it should stay as you set it. All in all, a useful addon I feel and one that I hope you will find useful too.

I added a link called 'Back to top' in place of the bottom menu so that when you get to the bottom of the page you can easily navigate to the top again.

Online Visitor Count

Whilst browsing the web for random rubbish I came across a nice little feature that tells clients how many people are looking at that page at the precise moment it loads. Usually associated with forums this little feature would certainly benefit me as I can more easily monitor traffic to and from the site and the locations we are getting hits from. Google analytics does this too, but it's useful to be able to see who's doing what, and when. I have added it so that anyone can see it though just because I thought it'd be a nice feature to have.

You can find this small item at the bottom of the site next to todays date.

Hit Counter

Not for your eyes, except those that are admins of this site, but we also felt that in addition to the above script, a little hit counter that monitors both individual hits and unique ip hits would also be useful so that we could see how many hits we are getting and where from.

Profile Page

A fairly big and tiresome update here thanks to Rich for asking for it. The profiles are now separated into two parts, plain and 'dark' profiles. It was generally felt that the humorous profiles we have at the moment are great but that an option should be made to choose which profile a person sees. So if you go to the profiles page you will see a link at the bottom of the content area that will allow you to see the plain, or the 'dark', switching the content between each.

As of yet the plain ones aren't written yet, but as soon as the others pull their fingers out we should see them completed soon and that section finished. One other small update to the profiles page is that you can click the link to view the blogs written by that member of the band (the number in brackets is the number that person has written in total... Matt you are so lacking!).

Other corrections

Thanks to Tim for having a trawl over the site and picking up a few flaws in the design and text. I have fixed the spelling errors and changed the width of the select drop-down options so that they are now readable. Firefox is the problem here as it tends to lose all padding, which it should do as I set it to, but at quite a convenience to me!

I have also made sure that the E-Mail address that was visible to all in the source code, and more importantly, to spam bots that read through the pages, is well hidden from anyone resembling anything less than an able bodied mind that knows a thing or two about javascript and hex values.

I think that's all for now. Have fun!

(878 words)

- Posted by Alex Hall

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