So as we approach 2025 it is time for some changes to the website–paid for with the generous donations of all you folks–of course I am extremely grateful for the financial help.
Some of the changes won’t be noticeable by readers/users as they are small tweaks–some of which are more ‘behind the scenes’ or are so minor that many won’t even notice them. Others will be more noticeable—IF we can execute them.
A big one is for a rearrangement of the top menu. I haven’t been happy with the ability to select items on the top menu for years, but rearranging it means that the top part of the website will need to be rebuilt and that is technically a big deal. In the month ahead you will see some changes there.
Another big one is in the ‘search’ area. This has been discussed by many over the years–the functionality kind of sucks. The tech folks are looking into substantially improving this item. For instance adding a ‘radio button’ to indicate if you want to search just ‘comments’ made by others. Over the coming month or so you should see a big change in that area.
Another item that is less than satisfactory is the page load time on those areas with major traffic–like the Sandbox Page. Because those pages have thousands of comments the page load can be slow because the comments all have to ‘load’. Hopefully we can find a way to speed this up–it is being researched as I write.
Other items are simply to move data that is meaningful ‘above the fold’. When readers go to a page they like to see data the moment the page loads–not have to scroll down the page–so there will be some reformatting of pages.
The bottom line is that over the course of a month or two we will see some changes that will improve user functionality and satisfaction. As always if we make a change this totally misses the mark we will back out the change and try again.
