Howdy everyone! Mike Bryan, blog founder and publisher here.
I just wanted to take a moment to explain all the new features and layout of our new site design. We have hopefully simplified and enhanced readers’ ability to navigate the site and improved our layout for readability and appearance across all devices.
If you are having any problems, please try emptying/purging your browser’s cache before doing anything else. This will fix almost every problem by getting rid of stored pages and preferences from the prior site design.
The biggest changes are to our Homepage:
Let’s start right at the top. You now have icon links in the upper right to our Facebook Page and our Twitter Feed. Please check them out and subscribe or follow!
Our main top menu, right below our logo, contains a new navigation tool: News Categories. Hovering your cursor there will give you access to our list of Categories, which have been simplified down to 13 from the over 100 we used to have! Much easier to find what you are looking for now! Clicking on a Category will take you to that Category’s page with all the posts on that subject in a descending chronological timeline.
You will see a little magnifying glass to the far right of the top menu bar that brings up a search field where you can enter your search terms to find related posts from our archive. You might also notice there is a Donation link where you can support our work with a generous non-tax deductible donation.
The Events link in the top bar menu takes you right to our Events Calendar, where you will find all the upcoming political and cultural events from the community.
You can submit your community events to us by emailing your event details to BlogForArizona AT gmail DOT com.
You can choose the format in which to view the calendar, either as a default list, by month, or by day.
Next on the top menu, we have a link to our Shop where you can get cool branded swag that helps support the blog.
Right below the top menu bar we now have a Featured Slider where up to four of our most important or timely posts will be displayed: like this one! You will see little arrows at both edges of the slider to navigate among the Featured Posts without waiting for them to auto-slide.
Below that, are all our latest posts in descending chronological order. We are publishing between just a few, and up to a dozen or more new posts every day, so we wanted readers to be able to see them all in one place without much fuss or effort.
At the bottom of the 10 most recent posts, there is a link to Load More Posts, that will (obviously) load yet more of the most recent posts, ad infinitum (well, up to the over 20,000 posts in our archive, anyway…).
Below the Latest Posts section, you will find the four soonest upcoming events in the calendar, and a link to view the full calendar.
In the bottom footer, you will find a list of the most recent reader comments, our latest Tweet, and the option to subscribe to the blog via email for free, so you can get a daily digest of all our latest posts.
Finally, you will hopefully note a significantly improved appearance and performance on mobile devices. Our new template auto-adapts to mobile display and should provide all the same functions and adaptive formatting on your mobile devices, so that you get as good a reader experience on your mobile device as on a regular computer.
We are still bug-stomping and adjusting to our new site, so if you are having issues, or you have feedback for us, please leave a comment on this post to let us know what you think! Keep an eye out for future update posts – like this one – that will inform you of any significant changes, answer any common questions we get, and explain any new features we add during this update.
Thanks so much for your continued interest, readership, and patronage. It is only due to your support and generosity that we were able to make this latest redesign and update of the site.
Best Regards,
Mike
The new format does look great but I’ve run across a couple of problems. One: The pages have a tendency to auto-scroll while reading them, in fact it’s happening while I’m typing this comment. Two: When clicking on a comment to read the reader is taken to the bottom of the post containing the comment instead of the comment being clicked on. This is happening in Firefox.
I see what you mean. As the Related posts auto-slide it changes the spacing a bit. Perhaps we’ll make that a manual function instead of automatic.
Dialing back on the ad placement. Adsense is sticking too many many at the top of everything.
I see what you mean about the typeface. It could stand to be a bit more substantial.
Make the cartoon easier to find. Check.
I don’t mind the new layout, but find it more difficult to read the articles. The font is wider but fainter, so it’s a bit harder to get these old eyes to adjust to it. Can you at least make the font darker? Thanks.
Done 🙂
The new format is very professional, but I find it harder to get around. There are multiple pages instead of one index page. It took a lot of searching to find the cartoons. I preferred the old format. Dave Ericsson
The main idea was to use the Categories under News Categories in the menu bar to navigate, and to present ALL our latest articles on the Home page so you can see everything new more easily.
Hey loyal BFAZ readers/followers of our Calendar: We’re back with lots of progressive events for September, and into October. However AidsWALK this October will be virtual, so I’ll post about that later. Added website feature: upper right corner of Events is a 3 horizontal bar icon: gives you option to view Events by Day, Month or List (images as now being shown on the bottom of the front page).