Well, the update is finally complete, and ashbrookstud.ie is hopefully all the better for it.

I had indicated in a previous post that acted as a ‘men at work’ sign (now deleted), the changes that were in store and I will now outline these in greater detail. Some of the changes were quite small or invisible, while some are on the dramatic side and give the site a whole new look. Here are the major changes:

First of all, where’s the sidebar?
Well, it’s still there – it just slipped a bit! The “sidebar” can now be found near the bottom of the home page, and a few others, as opposed to always along the side of the screen. The reasons for this were twofold. The width of this website never exceeds a certain width (this is so those with older computers/smaller screen resolutions can also enjoy the site without too much trouble) and the sidebar was crowding the screen. It took valuable real-estate away from what people came here to read – the posts. So I deleted completely the sidebar segments that didn’t really need to be there: the navigation, gallery, plugs, contact and the link segments are now gone. The Polls, Recent Comments and Event Calendar remain in the new ‘sidebar’ at the bottom of the page. (By the way, the links will come back, but to the Resource section.) The Archive and Category segments are also gone – but have been replaced by…

…The new Archives button!
Yup, a whole new button, just for you. It’s up there in the main navigation menu, in between ‘Ponies’ and ‘Resources’. The new Archives are actually quite a job in themselves: you can now browse the entire list of ashbrookstud.ie posts by their titles, filter them by date, filter them by category, or, in a new departure, select posts by their ‘tags’. If you are not familiar with the concept, basically a post is tagged with key words that sum up it’s subject matter or are in some way connected to the subject at hand. For example, any posts about our last poll – Pony of the Year – would be tagged with the names of the four contestant ponies (Ballyowen Maybelle Molly, Prospect Peter, Sillogue Darkie, and Currachmore Cashel) as well as other words such as ‘poll’, etc.. If you then select a tag like ‘Currachmore Cashel’ you will be presented with a list of all the posts tagged with that name, including the posts dealing with the Pony of the Year poll. I hope this helps those who just want to browse through the site and read through older posts. Bear in mind that the tagging process is still ongoing and so far only about 25% of the total number of posts have been tagged. At the moment, posts going further back than September have yet to be tagged and will therefore not be shown in any tag results. The old ‘Category’ and ‘Monthly Archive’ methods are unchanged and complete however.

Why is the First Post so, um, Huge?
There are obvious changes here. The latest news is now full page size, along with decently sized photos. This will be how all individual posts will be displayed as you browse through older posts. Just below the title are links (to the left and right) to go to Newer or Older Posts. I’ve also put in an Article count along with the more familiar category links. At the bottom of the posts will be the link for comments as well as – in appropriate cases – links to other posts relevant to the one you’re reading. These links will be based on the tags I spoke of earlier and the efficacy of the links will therefore increase as more old posts getted tagged up. You can see a sample on the most recent Sillogue Darkie post. Again, this is to increase the ease at which people can get to the depths of the site – a lot of oldies-but-goodies were being lost to the ether. There is now a small section at the top of the page for news snippets and to highlight older posts.

…And the Rest so Small?
Well, they were being cut off at the ankles as excerpts anyway, so why take up too much room? Just click through to view them in full-screen glory. Remember, there are, and always were, eleven further recent posts linked to in the footer whcih remains (for the moment!) largely unchanged. In total, therefore, there are fifteen posts available from the front page, with over a further hundred-plus available in the archives.

The last thing to note before I sign off, is that, while most of the major structural work was done today, there will be tweaking required as time goes on to get things just so. Some of the very old posts also may contain stuff that just wasn’t designed for adaptability and therefore may look a bit funny until I can get around to cleaning them up. If you would like to make any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Enjoy!

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