almost on time for the new year to start, the new look for my website is finally done. Especially the final stage of the redesign required extensive downtime of more than 24 hours, for which I’m extremely sorry.
The website is still not fully done: what’s missing are the minor details. However, those will take a while to complete, and since the website is usable in this state, and all major, popular categories are cleaned out and adjusted, there’s no reason to keep this page offline.
I’m excited to announced a few new general features that were asked for most in the usability survey I did a while back.
Rating System
This page now features a star-rating system in which you can rate stories, artwork and blogposts according to whether you like them or not. Of course written reviews are always very welcome, but I know from experience that sometimes you just like a story (or not) without wanting to say much. So you can do that now.
You will find the rating for posts at the top under the title (see the yellow highlight):
If you want to rate a story, artwork or blogpost, you can do so at the bottom of the post, where you’ll find social media sharing buttons and the rating feature. Simply click the desired amount of stars you with to give and it will register. You can try it out on this post if you wish.
Merging of Art, Blog and Main Page
Many of you were asking for a merging of the pages. I always kept them separate because I thought having all in one page might be confusing. However, to be honest, maintaining one website is a lot of work–and even more so is maintaining three websites. So I decided to put them all together in one and divide them into different categories. The new menu and different category pages for each should make it easy to navigate between the sections, so that you’ll always find exactly what you’re looking for.
A New Menu
The brand new menu offers a much better overview over the available categories and features. You also have a “Featured” menu entry now, which will immediately show you the most popular stories for quick access along with infos about rating and post date.
THE NEW WEBSITE – STEP BY STEP
<— Top Menu
<— Main Navigation
<— Welcome Area with a search bar and recent posts at the side for quick access
<—Featured area–allows quick access to popular stories, art and blog entries
<— News section–you will find page news here.
<— Story section–You can find the 7 most recent stories from my story categories here. They’re tabbed, and by clicking on another tab, you’ll change category.
<– The sidebar offers an overview of newest reviews and newest video posts.
Under the story section, you’ll find the art section and a blogfeed featuring the five most recent blogposts from all blog categories.
More features, a refining of the layout and an addition of pages will follow. I hope you’ll enjoy the new layout and features. If there’s anything unclear, or if you have comments, criticism, an error to report or similar, feel free to leave a comment on this post.
