Enhancement A: The Older Posts Button
The Georgia Sports Blog currently only displays 20 articles at a time on the front page. Since we publish 3-5 articles per day, the content can fly by fairly fast. There wasn't an easy way to get to the older/non-front page articles without going into the monthly archives.
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By upgrading to the new Blogger software, we've fixed this issue. From the front page, you can now read/skim the first 20 articles, then click on "Older Posts" and read the prior 20. As the site's publisher, it was ridiculous to me that it took Blogger.com/Google so long to make that feature available in the first place. Welcome to 2003, I guess. At least it's finally here.
Enhancement B: Better Archive List
The monthly archive list had gotten so long that it was cluttering up the sidebar. With the upgrade, I was able to switch to a drop down list. If you still want to use the monthly archive feature, it's now easier to scroll through the list.
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With the extra space on the sidebar, I can bring new features to the site. I'm looking into those features now.
Enhancement C: Moved the Subscribe Button
I moved the "Subscribe" links higher on the page. This is just a tweak in that it makes it easier to find the subscribe button for newbies. If you have no idea what RSS technology is or what I'm talking about...just nod your head and move on. (Dad - It doesn't affect you.)
Enhancement D: Headline Thingy
You can finally click on the headline of an article to get the full post WITH comments. I have no idea why you couldn't do that before. Everyone else's blog could do that.
Enhancement E: The Future
I can evolve the site much faster going forward. If you've seen other Blogger.com sites that are using cool functionality that we should be using, let me know. I spent the past few hours monkeying around with this stuff so I could have some flexibility going forward.
What did we give up:
1. I'm not totally sure yet. But feel free to tell me tomorrow.
2. So far, I know the comments present slightly differently if you click on the comments link below an article. It's the same functionality, it just looks slightly different. If you've used more than 1 blog, you've seen it both ways. It shouldn't be a big deal. You might not have even noticed. I can't figure out how to make it like it was.
3. The long/flat list of monthly archives is gone. It's been replaced by the drop down menu. Again, I ditched it to make room for new functionality.
4. The blog roll isn't as organized as it was before. I used to have the Georgia Blogs, Top College Blogs and "Others of Interest" broken into 3 separate groups. I intended for it to move over like it was. It didn't. It's now one long alphabetical list. I'll fix it later. (no ETA).
5. The Google Ads below the top 3 articles on a page are gone for now. Google owns blogger, and they've made it incredibly difficult to use Google Adsense in the new design. None of you care, but I do. I'm stuck with the one lone ad at the bottom of the page, and I can't center it. So it looks like crap. But feel free to take pity on me and click it.
What's Next for the Site?
I'm not totally sure yet. I'm considering adding the one click label feature. That would let you search the site for all the articles about a particular topic. I'm probably going to have to hard code that feature into the HTML since the Blogger.com label widget shows the entire damn list of labels that we've used. (Translation: I may do another navigational enhancement)
I'm also considering adding a newsfeed for other Bulldog news sites. We'll see.
I'm open to suggestions. I have some space on the right now.
Like I said, the changes right now are minor looking. But they give me the flexibility to do cool new things. And hopefully, the navigational improvements are helpful.
PWD
...oh yeah...the absurdly old advertisement for the Store will get updated at some point too.
4 comments:
Paul, I don't know if it's something you can deal with on your end, but in the Google reader feed, only the first few lines of your post show up. To read the entire thing, it is necessary to click on the header and open the page up in a new window. Not a big deal, just to let you know.
Awesome, as always. Keep up the good work.
I'd say you should add a DIGG link so folks can recommend your articles to other readers...not really a Blogger device, but it can help spread the word. I use Feedburner for my Digg, Facebook, and Delicious link posts.
The site looks good, though. The new Blogger is better, it's the transition that bites.
jimmy, ultimately I do want you to visit my site. not just to read it on the google reader. ;-)
That said, I'll look into it.
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