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!
Just a quick note to say that I will be moving servers tonight so if there are any hiccups with the site that’s the reason. Most likely you shouldn’t notice any difference other than a couple of broken links but just wanted to keep everyone up to date ^_^
This should clear up the issues the site has been having lately and make everything faster (hurray!) and I will have a lot more room to play around with extra features. If all goes well I’ll be able to start having things like downloadable patterns for crafts and all the other plans I’ve had on the backburner due to space/load issues 😀
Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly and see you on the other side!
<3 Violet
Update-
The move is over now yay! I will be testing and making improvements over the weekend so stay tuned for that. My email went down briefly over night but it’s back now so if you tried to get in contact with me it’s back now!
If you left a comment here in the last 12 hours it will have disappeared because of the move but I will be copy-pasting them individually when I get home this afternoon so it’s all good.
It’s James’ birthday today so we’ve got lots of fun things planned including a very large cake 😀
New Year, new changes and all of that stuff ^_^ As I mentioned a while ago I’ve been working on a lot of changes to make the site better.
So as promised there’s the run down on everything and the reasoning behind it!
The layout!
Obviously the biggest change is the new theme/layout! This time I’ve gone for a thinner, squarer design. The aim is to be cleaner and a little more professional while still keeping all of my tastes in mind ^_^ It has the recent tutorial slider which aims to make browsing easier for those who are just here for the crafty things. This theme should also make things easier on the eyes for those of you with smaller screens as it’s much thinner than the old layout and handles resizing better too.
Now a couple of you had problems with the tutorials slider stopping loading half way. I have tested this as much as I possibly can on as many computers as I possibly can and in my experience once you let the whole thing load properly once, it’s much quicker the next time and the issues go away. The first time you load the new site it will be slower but from that point on the caching stuff in the back end will kick in so each visit it gets better and better. That said, no one that reported problems got back to me in providing screen caps or more information on their browser, internet speed etc so there was only so much testing and fixing I could do without being able to replicate the problem. If you still can’t view the slider it might be because you don’t have javascript enabled. Of course anyone that has problems is welcome to let me know and I’ll do what I can to sort them :)The theme has been tested on Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome and should look like this when fully loaded:
Other cosmetic changes:
Load time… this is a huge thing for this blog because the tutorials have so many photos in them. I’ve worked a lot behind the scenes to make everything streamlined and under testing conditions (even with the tutorial slider) this should all load about 20% faster now. Hopefully those of you with slower internet will have an easier time now ^_^
About section updated.
Tutorials section updated finally.
Drop down menus added to the navigation bar to make it easier to find stuff.
Snapshots page fixed and updated with recent videos.
Updated the FAQ section with many new questions, please do go have a look ^_^
Added different shop sections as a drop down menu.
A whole lot of back end stuff to make the site smoother and more efficient.
Redid the whole Reader’s Gallery and updated it. It now has it’s own page on the top menu. I lost a couple of the photos when I was transferring so if yours isn’t there just send me an email with it and I’ll put it back up.
Rearranged the widgets.
Added page numbers at the bottom of everything to make browsing easier.
Added an option to browse posts by month in the sidebar widgets so you can find old posts more easily.
Changed the comments to display in chronological order again.
Updates to the comments policy:
As this site gets more readers, spam becomes a bigger problem too and as spammers become smarter and look more like legitimate comments it gets more frustrating trying to deal with it. So from today onwards there will be a couple of updatesto the comment policy, here is a summary:
Can I say whatever I want in the comments?
No. I encourage intelligent discussion and differing opinions. I am happy to accept constructive criticism BUT as I am ultimately legally responsible for the content that appears on this website I will not stand for anything that breaks the law, is bigoted, is racist, or constitutes cyber bullying.
Can I add my blog link to a comment?
No. There is a URL field in the comments for a reason, plus I use CommentLuv so you are already getting 2 links for each comment which I think is more than fair. My comments section is not the place for you to advertise your products or your blogs. Please respect my place on the internet as you would expect people to respect yours. If you leave a legitimate comment with a non-related link I will simply edit the comment to remove the link.
When I held the One Day in Paradise competition I was surprised at how many people weren’t sure how to follow the blog to get updates, it can be a bit tricky to work out if you don’t already follow lots of blogs so I thought I would make it nice and easy and give you a list ^_^ If you want to get updates for the site here are your options:
Google Friend Connect. This is located in the right sidebar and looks like a square with a bunch of little faces on it. You need a Google account to use this. By following through GFC it will add my site to your Google Reader. Google Reader basically pulls posts from any blogs you choose to follow and puts them all in one place for convenience. That way you will know when I’ve updated and can either read the post there or click through to my blog. To follow this way you should click it and follow the prompts.
RSS Feed. This is located on the right sidebar and looks like a pink heart with lines in it. It’s a similar idea to GFC but it requires you to have your own feed reading program. I use a program called Vienna. To follow this way you need to click the heart and copy/paste the url into your feed reader.
Third party sites such a Bloglovin. Similar to the above they let you know when all the blogs you follow have updated. Here are my links: Main Blog, Violet’s Cuties Blog.
Email subscription. Again in the right sidebar you can enter your email address to be sent an automatic summary of the posts I’ve made once a week.
If you want to follow the Violet’s Cuties section of the blog you can follow with a Tumblr account too or GFC/RSS
Or just keep checking back! I post pretty much every day now so there’s always something new here ^_^
So that’s it for now hahaha I told you I’d been working hard! So hopefully these changes will help make it a little nicer here!
And if you made it this far then you deserve a photo ^_^ This is one of the ones James took when we were messing around after Celeste’s graduation. It was such a green pretty day, I took some of the daisies home and pressed them!
Thanks for sticking around and as usual if you have questions, concerns or suggestions just let me know!
Thank you so much to everyone who commented and entered the competition! I really appreciate all the support that you guys give and I’m so happy to be able to give something back 😀 I will be replying to everyone’s lovely comments this week and fingers crossed this will be just the start of the competitions open to international readers ^_^
Thank you for reading! <3
*Edit* As was luckily pointed out by Aimiya in the comments, there has been some confusion in the ordering of the comments. When I counted the entries and picked the winner, I went to the bottom of the post and counted the comments from there down, then paged backwards until reaching the end. I made the mistake of assuming they were in chronological order in the same way as my old theme. I was completely wrong and so while Jessica’s comment appeared as #1, it was not actually the first comment posted chronologically. That comment belonged to Mai from portraitofmai.blogspot.com. No one’s fault but mine, I should have been more vigilant in checking the dates of the comments and I completely apologise for that. To resolve the situation fairly I have decided to give both girls the voucher prize, one donated from One Day in Paradise and one out of my own pocket. That seems like the only right thing to do. Again sorry everyone for the confusion and thank you to all of you that entered and commented! */Edit*
So as you can probably tell by now I’ve been doing some cleaning up around the site ^_^
There are a whole lot of changes happening so please excuse any problems over the next few days! As you can see there are still lots of things that need tweaking but it’s getting there 😀
I’ll still be posting normally in the mean time (starting from tomorrow as I’ve been staring at the screen too long today hahaha!) and once everything is completely sorted I’ll do my usual post with a complete list of changes and the reasons behind them all.
In the mean time I hope you like what’s been done so far of the new layout and have a lovely night!
I’ve been a little bit distracted lately! Lots of really important things are going on at the moment which involve lots of change and hard work… but hey when is that not the case right? XD
One of the projects I’ve been working on I’m happy to announce is now officially online!
It’s called The Registry and it is a categorical listing of Australian blogs. It’s not very big yet, I’ve only got a couple of hundred blogs on there so far but it felt like it was time to launch so here it is! Go take a look, you could spend hours going through all of the really awesome blogs there and if you have an Australian blog please do submit it!
Secondly I couldn’t leave you without any pictures so please enjoy the photos from this year’s Nuffnang Christmas party!
Here are a couple of my favorites from the night, you can see the rest in the side show at the bottom ^_^
The party’s theme was “Blue Hawaii” so everyone dressed to match! This was the most Hawaii-ish outfit I could think of with my limited wardrobe XD
Celeste and I made everyone their own little flower hair clippies and cookies with hibiscuses piped on… except they kind of melted in the car on the way so they looked a bit psychedelic XD
James spent ages blowing up this palm tree! He was so light headed after that! I have some delightfully inappropriate photos of him posing with the palm tree but I think I’ll leave those off the internet to protect modesty 😛
I can’t remember what everyone was laughing at… so just pretend I said something hilarious and go with it 😀
Of course it was a blogger event so there was MUCH cam-whoring around 😀
The Honey Bar even made us all our own Blue Hawaii drinks, they were so pretty!
I was so glad to catch up with, meet and say goodbye to that many Melbourne bloggers. It was a fantastic night out all around, I think you can tell from the photos how good of a time we had ^_^ I really think that Melbourne bloggers are close like a family and while every once and a while we have squabbles over silly things (what family doesn’t right??) we still all just love getting together and hanging out! I really hope that we can get together again before next Christmas!
Out of interest do you all prefer me to post each photo and add captions or just a few with a slide show? I always worry that my captions are a bit lame >_<
Illustrator. Strong tea, knitting, watercolours, and making a video game called Moonlight in Garland. Living with her adorable husband Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
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