So you’ve probably noticed the changes I’ve been slowly rolling out everywhere! Again the things I’ve been doing have been to either expand the site so it’s more interesting or make it faster and easier to navigate and load.
Moving servers recently has probably been the best thing I’ve done for this blog since getting my own domain name. Now that the site is hosted with Hostgator I have space and allowances to expand things the way I’ve wanted to for almost a year now! In case any of you are interested there is a discount/affiliate coupon for Hostgator in the side bar.
Here’s a list of what’s been done so far starting with the most exciting one…
Gallery Section!
This is the biggest change (or at least the one that’s required the most work!) I have moved off Flickr and am now hosting all of my images myself. What does this mean for you? Easier browsing!
Basically the Snapshots section has been replaced with the Gallery section which is massive and much easier to navigate. The drop down link allows you to either go to the gallery home page or head straight to a subcategory like “outfits“.
I’m still filling in things like descriptions and tags etc but with 6500+ photos that’s going to take me a while! You can also comment on and rate the photos and galleries if you like. I haven’t decided if I’ll keep that feature or not but we’ll see how it goes. In the future I’m hoping to make the Reader’s Gallery automatic so you can create your own accounts and upload photos etc that way you can write in your own descriptions and don’t have to wait around for me to find time to upload them haha! If you have any suggestions for this section please let me know ^_^
Menus!
Following on from the above I have completely revamped the menu system up the top. To keep things more organised (and make room for things to come) I have moved the FAQ section under the “About” tab. You will also notice that the Tutorials tab now has a new organisational system too, more on that later. Pretty much all of the pages up there have been updated a bit too.
You will see there are two new links in the menu, “Browse Posts” and “Downloads“. After listening to a lot of feedback I agreed that it can be hard to find older posts on the site which seemed a shame. Under the Browse Posts link you can now look at old posts by category, sort through my archives or view lists of every post in certain categories alphabetically. Yay that!
Downloads!
For around a year I’ve been thinking how to include more interactive and downloadable content for you guys. Tutorials are all well and good but there are some times when having a pattern you can print and cut out is just the easiest way to do things. Downloads section to the rescue! Now on the new host I have space to do that finally 😀 It’s going to take me a while to go back and make patterns for the tutorials I’ve already done but as I do they will be added here. After that’s all finished I will add some other fun things like wallpaper and icons that I’ve made too.
It’s a big work in progress but a fun one! If there is a specific tutorial that you would like to request a pattern from let me know and I will put it at the top of the list 🙂
Art Portfolio!
Found under the “About” link in the menu, this one is fairly self explanatory 😉
Tutorials!
The Tutorials is now going to be a billion times easier to navigate and maintain. At the moment every time I write a new tutorial I have to manually update that section… which sucks for you guys because I don’t have time to update it often so it is usually a month or two behind. I have changed the system so now it updates automatically, is sorted alphabetically and into category. It’s not as pretty as before because it’s just a link list but soon I will add thumbnails as well to make it easier to find something at a glance. Less work for me and easier to navigate/less clicking for you = win!
You will notice that in this tab there is also a “View by category” link which allows you to just browse through those kinds of posts if you don’t want to deal with reading through a list.
Sidebars!
Continuing the whole easy-navigation theme of these updates you’ll notice that there have been some changes in the side bars. Mostly it’s just been moving things around and bringing more important things higher up. I’ve added one of those cute little grab badges on the left side as well in case anyone feels like using it.
Featured Tutorials Slider!
Along with the good there have been some casualties including the Recent Tutorials Slider. Too difficult to troubleshoot things for people with different browsers and internet speeds so it’s gone. That said with all of the other changes I’ve made hopefully there are no problems finding recent posts now 😉
Now what?
Well at this point (other than the basic maintenance I’ve mentioned above) I’ve finally gotten the site to a place where I’m happy with it. Now I’m trying to sort out plans for the next year and get a firm direction of where I want to go with the direction and stuff like that. From all of your feedback so far I understand that you would like more beauty related things and more videos. I’ve filmed and am currently editing 3 make up tutorials which is something I enjoy and would love to do more of. If you have suggestions of what you want to see more/less of or where you want the blog to go in the long run just let me know if the comments!
Phew!
I think that’s everything! If you managed to read this far you probably deserve some kind of reward XD I don’t have anything though because I didn’t really think this far ahead… so why not go explore the new Gallery section instead 😛
Thank you all for continuing to read my blog, I really appreciate you coming here and supporting me! As always, feedback, ideas and suggestions are welcome and encouraged, I hope you all like everything!
<3 Violet
