I love tweaking, customising, modifying the look, feel and functionality of my website. I love it so much, I'm always looking for something to make it better in some way. Here's what I've been working on recently:
Drop down lists
When I created the drop down lists I did this to reduce the clutter. However, there were two drawbacks to this, which I disregarded in favour of tidying up.
- The drop down list aren't links, and therefore don't show the visitor where they have or haven't been, as 'visited links' do. I know it can be a valuable means of functionality to see which links you have or haven't been to. And seeing unvisited links can often invite you to visit them! Which only increases the 'stickiness' of the site, causing visitors to browse a bit more.
- Search engines, as far as I know, love to follow links. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I believe the dropdown lists don't allow for search engines to see or follow the links within them.
As a result of these 2 drawbacks I've been keeping my eyes open for a means of having the dropdown lists AND overcoming those drawbacks. Today, I actually got off my butt and looked for a way of doing it. The result is in the 'Photo Blog' section on the right. If you click on the + sign, the dropdown list shows you the actual links to the relevent pages, allowing you to see what you have or haven't visited, and also allows, I believe, search engines to follow them.
I'll be changing the other dropdown lists over to the new style over the next couple of days.
Formatting
I adjusted the CSS formatting to enhance the posts from each other, emboldening the headings, and generally enhancing the appearance of the posts.
Link backs
You might also know them as Trackbacks. Blogspot.com introduced the functionality a few weeks ago, and a few days ago I implemented a variation of the coding to this site. I did it in such a way, however, that they're visible on the front page under each post, not only showing links back to the post, but also allowing you to click on a link that'll take you to the actual post itself, just in case you want to link back to it on your own blog. (Please do, if you find something interesting!)
It's been quite a challenge to work on the blog coding in such a way that the functionality of it is changed in ways that is uniquely mine! I love it!
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