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Behind the scenes, we've been working on automating some tasks that had to be done manually every day, or even every few hours. Yesterday we updated to a later version of PHP. That was fun - and I apologize for any users who may have encountered problems yesterday because of it. there were a few issues with libraries not being loaded and causing certain modules to crash. I think they have all been fixed. I haven't seen any errors reported in the error log file all day. That's a first - so we're making progress around here.

Now that things are finally a bit stable, we've been concentrating on cosmetics.

The "User Central" slider module has been changed a bit to make it look better and be able to comfortably hold more text. It was also changed so that the slider banner changes colors if you are logged on or logged off. Grey means you are logged off - and green means you are logged on. This makes it easier to identify if you have been logged off and hadn't noticed it. For example, the session cookie is set to expire after 30 minutes of inactivity - so if you leave your PC and come back 30 minutes later you will be logged off (even though the screen won't show it until you try to enter a different page).

We eliminated the accordion slider beneath the top menu that we were using to show the "Latest Changes" and the "Most Read Today" module blocks. It was not compatible with the latest version of PHP - and I'd been meaning to change it anyhow because there was no option in the accordion module that allowed me to set both sliders as closed by default. (If you recall, the "Most Read Today" slider was always open each time you revisited the Home Page.) I'm now using the same slider plugin that we were using for the User Central module which allows you to set any slide as closed or open by default. Setting them both closed adds a little more "real estate" to the Home Page.

Also the main menus have been replaced with an all-inclusive dropdown Main Menu that allows us to include sub-items all in one menu. Menus are a matter of personal tastes I suppose, but "ease of use" and configuration was a big part in that decision also.

A few other changes include the addition of a "Ratings" indicator (and "Vote" selector) for all articles. There is also now, in addition to the "View" count and "Rating" number (0-5), an icon at the bottom of each block for the article preview modules which shows the number of comments made on that article. Clicking that number will take you directly to the forum thread comments for that article. I added a tooltip for reach of those icons so that a mouse-over will indicate what the numbers next to the icons represent. Unfortunately this feature does not work in Microsoft Internet Explorer (9 or 10 anyhow). Just another reason why recommend using Firefox to browse Liberalroundup.com.

If anyone has any other suggestions for the appearance or features of this website, we welcome and are open to suggestions.

 

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