New Fortunes and Other Site Updates!


Even after making the custom design update to the website, I've been making additional adjustments and changes in a variety of areas around the site. It has occurred to me that the pages here aren't quite as colorful and fun as the site itself, so it's time to change that - and introduce some creative new features in the process.

New Fortunes and Entertainment Updates

The following changes have been made to the Entertainment page:

  • You can now find Wizard101 and Pirate101 fortune cards on the page. It is recommended that you get one per day. There are currently 100 of each, so plenty of fun to be had... and a few of YOU are in there, too.
  • The whole page has been redesigned. It is now more colorful and has fewer expandable page divisions.
  • All images hosted there are now directly on Blogger for faster loading.
  • YouTube and website links have been provided in place of videos that take long lengths of time to load.
  • All sites now open in new browser tabs.

In the future, I plan to add more fortune cards for both games and also have plans to flesh out Pirate Hearts with more levels of all difficulties.

Community Page Updates

The following changes have been made to the Community page:

  • The bulletin board has been removed.
  • There is now a bulletin board style texture background with notes leading to various websites and parts of the community.
  • Links to KingsIsle on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been added.
  • Submitted fansites have now been divided by game.
  • Buttons have been added as links to official sites.
  • All sites now open in new browser tabs.
  • All images hosted there are now directly on Blogger for faster loading.

My purpose here was to make this page more of a long-term thing. The links may be updated or changed periodically, but this page is mainly meant to be a gateway to the community, official and not.

Other Website Updates

The following changes have been made to the website:

  • The Privacy Policy page now has a matching title and backdrop for the new page designs.
  • The Submissions page now has a matching title and backdrop for the new page designs.
  • The bar that previously sorted posts has been slightly moved and now acts as sub-navigation, as well as including the Submissions, Contests, and Privacy Policy pages.
  • The Privacy Policy has been reworded slightly - take the time to look at that.
  • Images used for the site design are now all hosted directly on Blogger for quicker loading.
  • There is a new, "unlinked" page here that's strictly for fun (those of you not on Twitter may not understand the context) that is dedicated to Alric Ravensinger and all of my Privateer friends HERE.
  • Some widgets have been removed.

Planned Changes

I have plans to make these same types of changes to the tools and guides page. While all pages will eventually have expanded content, these two will probably need that content included in the update, and that will be a longer process.

I also plan to switch up and play with some of the gadgets and plug-ins here. I would like to update the header with a more recent photo of my Musketeer (the pirate in blue), but haven't found a balance of characters that I like as well as this one quite yet.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral!

4 comments:

  1. Looks great! Glad you got those fortune cards working like they should.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A few things:
    I see you've added the Contests page to the... bar thing. I think it should say somewhere that the contests are over.

    On the submissions page, there's still a "Bulletin Board Spot" submission section.

    Did you get the privacy policy from somewhere? It says there's a mailing list (what?) and, on the POST it says, "Note: If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails...you may respond to this email with the message 'STOP'." Um. What.

    In this post, you say you changed the privacy policy, but on the privacy policy post, it says it was last modified on 6/6/2012.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, thanks for the feedback!

      For the contests, I hoped the end dates would be indicators, but I'll create a quick new layer on top that indicates that they're finished.

      I need to remove that on the Submissions page.

      The Privacy Policy is not an original one. It's based on a site that helps create one. There actually ARE a couple of mailing lists - first, those who have subscribed via email get emails when new posts are created automatically from Blogger. Additionally, I'll sometimes offer extra points in a contest for allowing me to send "x" emails with updates.

      I wouldn't venture to say any updates were really made other than formatting and a few word changes, but I will go ahead and update that date.

      Delete

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