Update - Site Redesign

[Drashner1]

Hello all,

At the beginning of the year, it was decided that the OA website should receive a general redesign as well as a number of tweaks and upgrades. The first of these have now been made. Specifically:

a) The announcements banner on the OA main page now displays the links to V:FT and the OA books in a lighter format that is easier to read.

b) When a search of the EG is performed, the articles that are generated will now display 'short' URLs when opened instead of the 'long' URLs that were generated previously. These short URLs will continue to function after the search page is closed and can be copy/pasted into a search bar or document while remaining functional.

c) An extraneous writing credit has been removed from the Topic pages and the message '@ 2014 Orion's Arm Universe project' now displays at the end of every page in the EG.

d) An 'Additional Information' tab can now be displayed at the end of a given EG article, if desired. This tab can be used to display links to information that relates to a given article, but was not directly involved in its creation or is not inside the EG website. Examples would be links to papers elsewhere online, stories or art galleries within/outside the site, etc. We've used the Development Notes tab for this sort of thing from time to time, but will be gradually switching the relevant info on those pages over to the Additional Information tab as well as placing all new information of this type into the AI tab moving forward.

In addition to these actual changes, we also learned from our webmaster that the site already has functionality to do some things that we wanted. Specifically, it is possible to edit the text on the OA main page, including adding hyperlinks to other online locations. While we have no immediate plans for this functionality, it is likely that it will come into play in the future, either before or after the eventual replacement of the OA main page with a new and improved version.

Ok, I think that covers things for now. We will continue to keep the membership updated on additional site upgrades and changes as they happen.

Thanks!

Todd

Editor - Orion's Arm Universe Project

[Drashner1]

Hello all,

While this doesn't deal directly with the ongoing redesign of the OA website - which has grown to encompass other parts of the OA project as well - it is an upgrade so I thought I'd share it here:

It is now possible to set up subscriptions to forums and threads on the OA forum and to receive notification via email when someone posts to a forum or thread that you have subscribed to or when someone sends you a private message. For directions on how to do this, please refer to the Help section of the forum in the upper right section of your screen.

If you run into any issues or have any questions about any of the above, please use the Suggestion Box - Forum thread to post it and we'll be happy to help.

Thanks!

Todd

[Drashner1]

Hello all,

Hot on the heels of my previous announcement comes the next round of changes in our ongoing site redesign process. Specifically:

1) Each Topic and Major Article page in the EG now includes a sharing box in the upper-right section of the page. Using this box you can share the page via a number of social medial sites, currently set at:

Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Delicious
Tumblr
Baidu
Pinterest
Reddit
Slashdot

One of the nice things about the tool we are using for this is that it allows you to change sharing options as desired. As such, if/when the current crop of options is supplanted by the next generation of popular social media tools, we should be able to adjust things to keep up.

While the sharing tool is currently only available on existing Topic and Major Article pages (major articles are those that include a link in the title that opens up a larger article page), we will be reviewing our current list of Minor Articles (those that display the entire article in the listing of EG entries) and converting many of them to Major status so that they can also support the sharing tool. This will be taking place on an ongoing basis until done. If you have a specific Minor Article that you would like converted ASAP, please use the Contact Us feature or the forum Suggestion Box - Website to request it.

2) The Contact Us button has been added to all the pages in the EG. Clicking the button will take you to our existing Contact Us page, which mostly continues to operate as before. The exception being...

3) A banner link to the OA Forum has been added to the Contact Us page. While the OA community generally doesn't see this, we have found that we receive a fair number of questions or ideas about the setting via the Contact Us feature. The addition of a link to the forum is intended to encourage people to join the OA community and share in the fun.

Ok, that covers things for now. We will continue to report on new additions and changes to the OA project and site as they occur. If you have any questions or concerns regarding any of the above, or run into any issues, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Thanks!

Todd

[Drashner1]

Hello all,

Our Webmaster, Trond, has been making some fixes and upgrades to the EG as part of our larger ongoing project of upgrading the OA website.

As of today, he has made the following improvements:

1) The copyright notice on the bottom-right of each EG page is now set to 2016 and should automagically update itself each year.

2) A 'Return to Top' bar will now display at the bottom of the screen when you move down from the top of any Topic or Article page in the EG. You may need to clear your cache or history to make this show up.

3) An 'Additional Information' box can now be added to the end of any Topic or Article to provide related information about the subject matter, such as links to stories relating to that article, RL references about the subject matter, etc. For an example of what this looks like, see HERE.

As additional upgrades and changes are made, we'll continue posting them here.

Thanks!

Todd

[Drashner1]

Hello all,

Please be advised - If everything goes as planned, we will be making a major update to the OA website tomorrow afternoon, beginning around 4:30 pm EST.

During this period, the plan is to have a banner up on the site indicating that it is undergoing some work. If you should work past that banner, be advised that different parts of the site may look rather strange for the duration of the update process.

The actual update process should only take 2-4 hours after which the updated version of the website will be available for viewing and use. An announcement will be posted when the change is complete.

You may need to clear your cache in order to see the changes.

Thanks!

Todd

[Drashner1]

Hello all,

Please be advised - If everything goes as planned, we will be making a major update to the OA website tomorrow afternoon, beginning around 4:30 pm EST.

During this period, the plan is to have a banner up on the site indicating that it is undergoing some work. If you should work past that banner, be advised that different parts of the site may look rather strange for the duration of the update process.

The actual update process should only take 2-4 hours after which the updated version of the website will be available for viewing and use. An announcement will be posted when the change is complete.

You may need to clear your cache in order to see the changes.

Thanks!

Todd

The primary update is now complete.

This updates the OA Main Page and associated 'business' (outside the fourth wall of the EG) pages.

There are still some updates to be made to some of the links in the navigation menus and some text adjustments in a few other places. These required the primary update to be completed first and will be taken care of over the course of this week.

Beyond that, please explore the new design and let us know if you run into any problems or find stuff that either seems to be malfunctioning or (in your judgement) needs some modification.

The OA Webmaster and I are going to meet again in a couple of weeks, so if you find things that need tweaking or fixing, please don't be shy about posting here so we are aware of them going in.

Our current plan is to let people play around for the next month or two - letting us know about any issues so we can fix them - and then moving on to a review and redesign of the EG pages, both in terms of their appearance and their functionality. This process will include asking the OA membership (both here and on the Discord) for ideas and suggestions.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding any of the above, please don't hesitate to post here or contact me directly.

Thanks!

Todd

[Drashner1]

Hello all,

Since launching the new site design, we've discovered the following three issues:

a) The Search function on the main page works fine, but the internal Search function inside the EG is currently malfunctioning.

b) Certain tablet sizes may not invoke the responsive design switch to the tablet/phone display and the links in the main page drop menus don't work in that case.

c) The Member Galleries and Member Videos pages are both overlapping the right border of the screen when viewed on a phone.

These have all been reported to Trond this AM. Will post to this thread as they are resolved. So no need to report on these issues if you encounter them in the immediate future. Although if you run into them again after we've reported them fixed here, please let us know!

On a related note - the links to the Discord and the OA PayPal page are not currently working. This is a known issue and I will be working on fixing that later today.

Thanks!

Todd