Happy New Year! I know it's a little bit late, but for 2018 I thought that it was time to bring something new to this website. For the past few months, it's been nothing but post after post, with no real change or adaption, and I started to get tired of the old layout. It didn't have much functionality or organization, and didn't look too nice overall. It was time for a refresh. So, for the past week and a half (this was why there was no post last week), I have been working on new designs, functions, and layouts for the website to give it a much needed refresh. Now, a lot of things have been changed, so I wanted to take this weeks post to talk about all the new things you can see and do on workingtosave:
Graphical Improvements
So obviously, before even clicking on this post, you could tell that the website looks different! In this iteration I chose a new (and better in my opinion) template with more options for customization. With new colors, designs, and images, I personally think this incarnation looks miles better than the previous one. Old sections like the "About the Blog" and the post viewer have also been updated to give a better look and feel.
Better Organization
On the old design, there was nothing but lists upon lists of posts, with no real rhyme or reason to them. This time around, I wanted to give them some organization, so I have introduced three new tabs to the website: The Issues, The Solutions, and the ambiguous "Other Topics". Here is a rundown of what you can find within these new tabs.
The Issues/The Solutions: These tabs are pretty self explanatory. Within them, you can find all of my posts on the environmental issues and solutions I have discussed in the past. This includes topics such as: Acid Rain, Ocean Acidification, Deforestation, and much
more. All of what I consider to be the "most important topics" are now grouped into two easy categories.
Other Topics: Again, as the name states, this tab includes all posts not directly related to big environmental issues. But they aren't all lumped together. There are also subcategories within the tab that help to further separate posts topics to make what you are looking for easier to find.
Free Memberships
Recently, Wix introduced a new option to their websites called Memberships. Essentially, they are an improvement to the old subscription option. While before the only feature it gave you were email updates whenever a new post was released, the new "member" option (which is still completely free) gives you a few more benefits. On top of being able to see whenever new posts come out, you can get in touch with like minded people and also take part in the new discussion forums. I thought this feature was worth trying out, so let's see how it goes! If you want to become a member, just head over to the member tab where you can sign up.
The Discussion Forum
Wix came out with another new feature recently that I wanted to implement, known as forums. Within them, members of the website can post opinions, create discussions, and share thoughts on whatever the topic of the forum is about. I decided to add this to workingtosave as well. Right now, there are four main topics in the forum (which I suggest you check out for yourself) each with subtopics within them. They are all discussion-based, so feel free to share your opinions and start engaging discussions! Members are also allowed to post their own forum topics, so if you know of something that should be discussed, or just something that people should know about, then post it! There are only a few posts up on the forum now, all of which aren't too engaging, but I hope to add better ones in the future.
Improved and Edited Posts
Also, because unfortunately Wix does not allow you to transfer blog posts to a new website, I took the time to copy over and reformat every post on the site. This reformatting, combined with the changes Wix also made to their blogging platform, means that the posts on the website look much much better. The images now look much more natural against the text, and there are less issues with how the text looks in general. While certainly not perfect, the new design makes the posts look more professional, and I hope to continue to improve them in the future. Certainly better than the old site!
Better Mobile Support
And finally, one of the last large changes I made to the website was giving it better mobile support. This time around, I sat down and took the time to edit the mobile version, rather than just hoping Wix would figure it out for me. The result is what I believe to be a much more polished, better looking, and refined mobile viewing experience that is also more intuitive to use. It is certainly a much needed upgrade to the poor mobile pages I had in the last version.
However, I will say that the mobile version is still very much a work in progress. While the website pages themselves are improved, the post-formatting is still a little wonky. Fixing this requires me to go through each post and specifically reformat them to mobile, which is something I will continue to do over the next few weeks, but it will take a while and I wanted to get this new version out in time for this weekend. Expect more improvements for this to come in the following weeks.
Conclusion
So, those are most of the changes I made to the website! There are a few other smaller changes, but they weren't big enough to warrant a mention. Now there is one thing I would like to mention before I end the post: I do not expect this new version to be perfect. There are bound to be mistakes, and I want to know about them. So, if you find any mistakes with this new version, feel free to send an email using the contact button, or post about it in the new forums! I will continue to edit and tweak it over the next few weeks, so let me know what you think I should change. I'm really happy with the new look of the website, and am exciting to unveil it to you guys. Anyways, it's back to the important stuff next week. Thanks for reading.
Credit for the first image used in this post goes to:
https://billygraham.org/devotion/god-is-in-nature/
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