Hi all, I didn’t want to take up a regular post to share this, but I think it’s pretty good info to know about. I know a lot of you are on the rss feed and don’t always stop by the site. I wanted to make sure that this got to you too.
New Archive!
First of all, the archive is changing over to a new-improved system. I’m using wordpress’s built in category feature to be able to update the archive with a click of a button. Instead of having to make a button image, type type type, and whatever else, I just click the correct category for the post and it’s all set! This will be a huge time saver for me and a huge benefit to you. No more waiting for every once and awhile archive updates. Now they are added to the project archive as soon as I post them. Hooray!
There are some cons. It’s taking awhile to make new excerpts for all the old posts, but they are coming. So when you look through the projects, not all of the summaries have images yet–lame. It will just take some time. I have a friend helping me through this and so it should hopefully be completed by June.
Tweeky little things
My friend also pointed out that my homepage was a little confusing, so I’ve changed that up. The slider is “this week in CL.” So projects from the last/current week are there. Down below, instead of “news and notes” it’s “from the vault.” Each week I’ll feature 4 projects from the archive in this area. Then there is the twitter widget, which is what it is. If you tweet you know what that’s all about. If you don’t tweet, think of it as “today on CL.” :) I usually link to the newest post there or tweet about things that are going on in the studio.
My friend also pointed out that on the blog summaries, it’s a little hard to tell where one ends and one begins. I can see that. So it’s now a heavier line that’s black vs. gray. So you know where to click, I changed the “continue reading…” to blue.
I also changed the “next post/previous posts” to bold so they are a little easier to see.
More to come…
Though it won’t be immediately apparent, I’m going to continue to spend an hour or two a week working on the website to make it more user friendly. I’m also working on updating the project posts that are in the archive to make the pictures nicer and the patterns of better quality. I’ve learned a lot in the past 4 years of pattern writing. I love a lot of my earlier patterns, but I know they could use some serious tech editing as well as design editing. Ha. It just shows how much I’ve grown. :)
If you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know by leaving a comment on this post or sending me an email at kristin [at] craftleftovers [dot] com.
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