Major Upgrade: Wider pages, Videos, Larger Pictures
I've managed to finish some important upgrades today. Here they are in a list:
This was busy weekend so I hope you will enjoy these upgrades
I've managed to finish some important upgrades today. Here they are in a list:
- wider pages - majority of the site visitors are already using 1024×768 or higher resolution so it is a good time to introduce wider pages. Content area now supports embedded images up to 640px wide - that's the exact same width that photo sharing sites like Photobucket are recommending for the web use in their resizing options. As a result 640px wide pictures hosted on these sites are no longer cut out on the right side - example.
- dedicated ads panel - the increase in width allowed me to introduce the dedicated ads panel on the right side. It is designed for the common vertical banners and skyscrapers allowing us to find more advertisers. My goal was to add more ad zones that are not cluttering the content area yet are clearly visible and valuable to potential advertisers. Thanks to this panel I was able to remove the ads that were appearing right above the page title and replace them with the cute "highlights" strip that provides nice graphical shortcuts to the important LumberJocks site sections - currently woodworking store, apparel store and summer awards.
- larger project and workshop pictures - I've increased the size of the project and workshop pictures to 900×700 (before it was 750×500 max). So new pictures you upload will be larger and crisper after enlarging.
- videos - I'm planning to implement more robust videos' handling in the future but thanks to Scott's discussion we now have brilliant temporary solution. I've added new link to the top menu bar titled Videos. Once clicked it will show you the list of all blog entries that contain tag 'video'. So don't forget to tag your blog entries containing videos properly (I've added handy link above the tags field on the blog entry form that will add this tag automatically for you).
- enhanced comments - each comment now displays richer author info on the left.
This was busy weekend so I hope you will enjoy these upgrades