Taking as little time off as possible to celebrate the festive season, such as putting in a full day’s work on Boxing Day (bliss), I have been working my way through the Albums. I have re-captured a few images on most pages so that each page now has the bigger enlargements, not just the first three or four pages. I have also updated and expanded the accompanying texts.
It took me a few days to restore a semblance of order to the albums after the November 10 debacle, during which time I realised that much of the curating was years old and tired. The re-launched site provided a unique opportunity to curate the contents of the albums. At the very least I hope to fill in gaps about species distribution and provide some facts and figures, although in many instances there is scant online information on a particular species. As important is grouping images to show variations within a species or provide greater detail. The work is demanding, trying to keep the writing fresh and positioning new and old images in the right place among several hundred in a given album.
I trust you are enjoying the site. There have been a few niggles which annoyingly, at times prevented me from uploading new images. On October 15, I emailed Jess that some of the thumbnails on the Moths album weren’t loading, which is not a good look. Also, the thumbnail for the Fungi album didn’t load, but one could still access the album. The matter was only rectified on November 10. However, in so doing, Jess’s wordpress guy somehow got rid of the ‘Sort gallery’ button. Even when it reappeared, it didn’t work properly and the newest images were on the last page. I had an ominous feeling that I had yet again entered a website world of pain. Fortunately, after some false starts, Jess seems to have restored order and banished chaos. Today, I have successfully uploaded new images and updated the sort order. Fingers crossed that this will continue unabated.
Pardon me for crowing, but the redeveloped website went live overnight. Thanks to the brilliance of its young developer, Jess Murphy of BeITsafe, here on the Gold Coast, the site now has more of a contemporary look with crucial concomitant features, such as being smart phone and tablet friendly.
The pages are wider which improves their look and makes the blog easier to read by allowing the use of a larger font. The videos are paginated and the total shown is automatically updated as new videos are added. Best of all is the long overdue species search function for images and videos, with which I am having a lot of fun.
The previous upgrade went live in August 2013, when the site was given its albums and blog categories. It also enabled me to upload posts and images for the first time. But its overall look remained true to its original appearance.
It’s three months since I last uploaded material to the site. This is the first cab off the rank, with quite a backlog of posts and images for me to work through. Can’t wait.
The website work has taken longer than intended, but Jess had to take a period of medical leave. Her office is in an up-to-the-minute mixed-use building occupied by health businesses, IT experts, solicitors, accountants and the like. There is a café and a receptionist to whom visitors report. Fittingly, the building is in the wider Bond University precinct. We had a most productive 2 hour meeting dealing with design issues and anticipating the action needed for going live.
The newest link to the new site shows the work considerably advanced. Having a wider page improves the look of the albums, gallery and blog. The search function is going to be a tremendous asset when all the images have been migrated to the site. Still a way to go, but the finished article promises to be a game changer.
Jess emailed me with a link to the new site wanting my initial feedback to the direction she is working in. It’s a lot different to the current site, most notably, the wider page which will take a bit of getting used to. But I like what she’s doing. This post also predates the 500th.
To recap about the website – we were forced to close the site down in October 2017 because it became corrupted. The long-delayed resurrected version went live in late February 2018 without the video harvesting and gallery sort order (sorting the position of images on the page) functions. A situation which the developer refused to remedy. The only additional work he carried out was to create a new ‘Website’ category in early April. Fortunately, I was able to continue uploading images and posts. The idea was to also introduce new features, but the developer flatly refused to do any more work so I was forced to look elsewhere.
Steve introduced me to Jess Murphy of BeITsafe and today I paid her first invoice.
This post predates the 500th, but for obvious reasons, I had to make the later post the 500th.
Working my way through the blog archive, has resulted in me redirecting 40 posts, dating from 2005 to 2017, to the ‘Website’ category.
This is the first post written since the creation of a ‘Website’ category for my blog. It is one of the changes to the site since its restoration at the end of February after it was closed down in October 2017. I now look forward to checking some of the early posts for inclusion in the new category.
