Random Jabber is Back Online

July 12, 2007 ·
Filed in Random Jabber ·
6 Comments

You have probably noticed Random Jabber has been down now for nearly two days. When I took the site down, I really never intended for it to be down for that long, but sometimes things don’t happen as we plan. I’ve made quite a few changes to improve the design and functionality of the site and I think I’ve accomplished my goal.

So, What Changed?

A lot has changed. Here is the rundown of everything that’s different.

Layout changed to three columns from two. I think this gives me a lot more room to operate. With only two columns, I’m very limited in my real estate and once the blog grows, it’s hard to add more features. I think with the three column layout, I now have plenty of room to place new and exciting features for my visitors.
I’ve added an action packed footer. The old footer was merely copyright information, but the new footer has the six newest flickr photos, which I don’t have a lot of right now, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere, right? I’ve added a list of my favorite blogs under “Random Sites To Check Out.” Last addition to the action packed footer, I’ve added a few of my favorite CSS books (I’ll be adding more later).
I’ve added “Popular Posts” in the top portion of site. Hopefully this will allow visitors to find my best content without searching to archives and categories. A Post is places in this section according to how many views the article is receiving and the number of comments it’s received.
Added the ability to subscribe to posts through email.

That’s About It

Well, there you have it. My hope is that the additions are interesting to visitors and that they will enhance the user experience when visiting Random Jabber.

I have tested the site quite a bit to make sure it works as I intended, but I very well could have missed something. If you should notice weirdness, please let me know.

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Comments

1Daravuth jabbered...

Thanks for adding me as one of ur blogrolls, Deron. Your action packed footer is really cool. I see many sites add it these days:)

Posted on Thu Jul 12, 2007

2Deron jabbered...

Daravuth: No problem at all. Thanks for the compliments on the site. Yeah, the action packed footer is on all kinds of sites today. I’d love to get super creative and come up with something new, but I just don’t have the time, lol. I’m happy with the final result though.

Posted on Fri Jul 13, 2007

3Armen jabbered...

Nice changes Deron. I have been thinking about integrating a similar footer on my site, but I’m not sure.

BTW...why is it that your recent articles when seen from the index page, aren’t in the most recent order?

Posted on Tue Jul 17, 2007

4Deron jabbered...

Hi Armen. Nice to see you online still browsing sites. Sorry to hear that you closed down iffect. I really enjoyed reading your work.

The articles on the index page should be in order from newest at the top, to oldest at the bottom. What I’ve done though, is set the offset to 5, so what happens is, on the homepage, since I’m already displaying five articles at a time in the main content area, there’s not really any need to duplicate these titles in the “recent” section, as they are already there in the form of summaries on the homepage. So, when you browse to any other page beside the homepage, you see the most recent articles, when you’re on the homepage, you basically see the 6th most recent article in the “recent” section.