For those of you who have been asking for a new website design that is less cluttered - one is on the way.
The clutter is also driving me crazy, but I need to balance streamlining with the ability for us seniors with less than perfect eyesight to be able to read the information. In working on the redesign, I have looked at a lot of websites, and in order to fit everything in, the print is so small, I not only can't read it, I can't find anything. So we're working on a happy medium.
As you can imagine, the new design will not be rolled out before I am settled in my new house. I'm hoping for it to be ready before Thanksgiving. But don't hold me to it.
Joan, you really are a glutton for punishment, to be working at getting the website redesigned at the same time as your big move and getting settled in a new community. As long as you're doing all this at once though, could you please have the new website ready by Labor Day? Thanksgiving is soooo far away. (-: Thanks for all you do for us. Please remember to take a few minutes each day to be kind to yourself.
Nope. We're going to Chicago for Thanksgiving. All I have to do is make the stuffing. My sister and her daughters-in-law do the rest.
And there is a method to my madness as far as the web design goes. My son got laid off from his regular job (He still does his E-bay and Amazon stores), so I figure he'll have more time to work on the website design.
Great news & thanks, Joan. My only request would be no dark backgrounds. Lots of websites seem to have them with very light contrast lettering and they are most difficult to read.
Weejun - I agree. I find a lot of them hard to read because of that. I know they do it to grab your attention, but I have skipped websites when the contrast is too much. I have even deleted email forwards that are that way - don't even bother with them.
Why in the world would anyone want to use yellow typeface? I agree with Charlotte and Weejun. I have "jumpy" vision, if that makes sense...and I have trouble reading or staying "on the line" when the pictures are in the blogs. Please know that I understand I am in the wee little minority re: the pictures in the blog.. Joan can do what she wants on her blog. I wonder if there is a way to put a hyperlink option in the comments?? Sometime, we are given a link to something, and it would be so easy to just click on it without having to retype it or paste it at the top.
Joel sent me the instructions on how to give you a link to read the blogs without the pictures, but I couldn't make it work. After I finish with the move, I'll have him talk me through it on the phone.
I put links all over the home page for everything, and you just need to click on them to get the article or whatever. The message board software doesn't allow for links, which is why we have to copy and paste. A pain, I know, but unfortunately, I can't do anything about that.
The link on the home page for the survey isn't working, and I've been trying to fix it for the last 1/2 hour. One more try, and then I'm going to bed.
Puleeeeeeze, Joan, don't apologize. I am the worst computer operator person on the face of the earth. Bought a scanner and still haven't figured it out...Need a grandchild to come by. I just had to chime in with my two bits worth....which is more like 2 cents worth.
I knew you have links everywhere on the home page or main page of your site..I was just talking about these little comments we add on the other page. Don't worry about it. I'm just proud I can get to the site. I have a "FLAG" up on my "Favorite Places" on the Tool Bar which has made it easier to access the site. If only my laptop could read my mind and then just "do it".
Nancy, I'm sure you use a browser that allows you to have more than one window at a time open. (there will be a little plus to the right of the tabs. Open up all the tabs you want to see when you first start in the morning, close all the others, then in Firefox, under the Firefox name, choose Preferences, startup, and choose USE THESE PAGES. In IE, choose TOOLS, INTERNET OPTIONS, then the pages you want.
So you can have one tab for Google, one for Joan's place, etc. They open up automatically every morning.
Joan, I very much like the vanillaforum and hope it doesn't get changed. But see if up in the header, below Start a new discussion, a link could be put to the home page. That would help. I think it may be possible there, since there are obviously links throughout the TEMPLATE, just not in the MESSAGES.
I recently almost-finished an author webpage which has to do with my writing projects. Uses WordPress software and a hosting service. I am, therefore, sympathetic to the struggles involved in getting such a thing to do what you want it to do. I pretty much spent my vacation studying WordPress for Dummies and experimenting. Took a lot of trial and error.
Good luck and don't give yourself too many headaches.