tree updates
The homepage and everyone's own blog landing page layouts have changed a bit. The new homepage shows the 15 latest blog entries throughout the whole site, featuring the most recent at the top and showing a few more lines of text from the blog as well. This means if someone hasn't posted in a while their blog will most likely not make the homepage. At the same time, if someone posts a lot in a short amount of time they could easily have 2 or 3 (or more, yes it is possible to take the whole page Brian) featured blogs. The entry linking has changed a bit too. If you click on the entry title or the read more/comments links it will link you directly to that specific entry, but if you'd like to view all blogs from a person you can click on the 'view all' text next to the title or just click their name found in the navagation to the left.
In addition, everyone's individual blog landing page has also been updated. It mirrors the homepage structure more by featuring 15 of your last blogs and only a small portion (without images) of your last blog. If you would like to see more of a certain entry or leave a comment, just click on the entry title or the read more/comments links found under each entry.
These updates should help to speed up connections a bit and help our site advance into a more successful archive of all our posts as they increase.
Any questions or comments? Let's hear 'em below.
recent branches
**NOTE**
With the revised layout of the homepage, you may experience a slight delay till your post and/or comments are featured on the homepage. At most, everything should update within 24 hours of posting due to server update delays.
Your post will still appear instantly on your own landing page, so you can still double check it and click on it over and over again to get more clicks then Brian. :)
Recent branches is a nice new feature.
Thanks. :)
Yes, everyone may notice I also added a new 'recent branches' column on the home page now too. Thie list shows the 15 last comments posted across the site, so you can keep a closer eye on where the most recent activity on the site is.
Oh, and disregard that previous 'note' - I wandered around the code for a bit and figured out how to post new blog summaries immediately to the homepage. YAY.
New design works great, thanks.
Lately I've found that the preview button sends me directly to the "thanks for posting" screen rather than the old preview screen we used. No problem, but sometimes I think those comments haven't really gotten posted(?) yet weren't visible for preview, either.
My work around is to proofread more first, and then just go right to POST to submit.
Clarification - the preview for new entries still works AOK for me. It's only the preview button for comments that seems different than it used to be.
Great catch, thanks Jeff. It appears when I set up a template for the 'thanks for posting' screen I linked the 'comment pending' screen to the same template on a few of the blogs.
This problem should be fixed now - but let me know if you still run into the problem.
I like the pics on the left tool bar that come up when you put the mouse over it. Is this new? I just noticed it.
Good eye Claire!
Yes, this is also a new feature. In addition to the pop-up over the navigation item, the user image will also pop-up if you move your mouse onto the person's name under their comment. For example, right above here where it says 'Posted by Claire'.
You will see that this doesn't work 100% of the time in the comments area. The trick to making this work when you put in a comment is to keep putting in your blog URL correctly in the URL space when you enter your comment (as you successfully did for the comment above).
In addition to this new feature, anyone can change their own headshot picture whenever they want too. There are a few tricks to this as well, but it is generally easy and utilizes steps you already know.
1. name the image you want to upload as 'headshot.jpg' (no caps)*
2. once you are logged in to your own blog upload this photo (the way you always do)
3. when it asks to overwrite the current one, click yes
*the image should be sized to 84x85pixels when you upload. if it isn't, it will resize when it is used - but it might possibly appear stretched when it is resized to fit in certain spaces
please give me the link to put in to the url section: is it mckinneytree.info/stevenmckinney ???
http://www.mckinneytree.info/steven_mckinney/
you have to use that, just copy/paste that into the URL when making a comment