2013-07-01

Widgets

4 New layout and look!

Squishat | 2:09 PM
Yeap, after nearly 3 months since the genesis of this blog, may I present... Cubeletsypp 2.0!

Or.. 1.5 Beta more like.

I don't know about you, but I am super excited about this!
(Yeap, well worth the lack of new content for the past fortnight.)

Let me introduce the new layout a bit, and why it is 100000 times better.

Yeap, one hundred thousand times.

That Banner.

Now, I know we've ooohed and ahhed at Rory's amazing artwork before, but I've moved the clock to it, and added some social networking buttons.

The first one being Facebook
which I admit, I am still figuring out.

Apparently Facebook nixed the importing of blog feeds to the fan pages a bit ago. That is the entire reason I created a page in the first place D; 

Although I see a lot of potential for polls, commenting, posting SSes and other casual things to it. So.. we shall see :P 

With that said, instead of making the icon an auto-like link, I've made it into a link to the page instead.

Youtube.

Did you know we had a youtube channel? No? I didn't either.. or at least some days I forget about :P

I make a lot of videos for the blog, not all of them are admittedly uploaded to the crew youtube channel. Except for the most recent Chat Tips + Options video, as well as the videos I made for the teaming guide that I am actually very satisfied with, the rest are admittedly just crappy screen captures (albeit very tedious screen captures)... with bad sound. Well I like the one I did for how to set up ventrilo as well. 

It really helps that I actually have a decent recording program now. Ah well, it's been a really fun learning curve. :)

More to come, so I definitely recommend subscribing. I would have made people subscribe to my own channel, but I didn't really want to seem... hmm.

To be honest I am also very new to the whole relationship between social media and blogs. Although admittedly I've also read extensively (yes, quite a bit ><) on this subject in the past fortnight.

RSS feed.

What is all that about you may ask? Basically it give you feed... nope.. not that fodder you give pigeons at the park, causing them to explode (or does that only happen in cartoons?) Though I am pretty sure that that is where the term originated from. 

Eh. Digressing. 

RSS feeds are basically snippets (or whole posts) of what you subscribe to delivered to a single "inbox".

Kind of like getting the latest issue of all the magazines you subscribe to delivered to your doorstep at the start of every month. Only online. And in real time. And you can subscribe to 1000+ magazines and not kill 100 trees in the process. 

Originally, people preferred to receive their feed via Google Reader. 
(Lord knows I love my "fml" feeds!) 
But now that Google is retiring what I think to be one of their best features (after maps ofc. Apple, eat their dust!), there is a limbo period where everyone is scrambling to find... the next best thing, or the new norm. 


Soo. Unless you already know what RSS Feeds are all about and already have a feed reader, then you should.. hmm. Just sign into your gmail to view the blog, and at the top right corner you'll be able to click "dashboard", and then add blog to reading list via url.


Or, if this is the only blog that you visit, you can always add us to your bookmarks and check once in a while :) 

Dat clock that we love.

start infomercial:
Ever since the Cubelets blog had a game time clock added to it, I have never had to type /info again! It has made keeping track of game time much easier!

End.

Okay, that's really the best I can come up with at 4:38 am :P

I have received feedback that the blue is a little harder to see than it was before on a white background. I'll see what I can do about that after the other 50 things on the list. xD

Btw... did you know that the date shows when you mouseover? Yeap.

That Navigation Bar.

Yes, it is now... /e le gasp. Actually easy to find what you're looking for, and easy to see what the blog has to offer! (Which is quite a bit if you ask me :P)

Those quick links ;o Really really useful. 'Nuff said. 

Who needs QM srsly. (But if you are still in search of QM, I can upload my untainted version to my dropbox. Let me know in the comments!)

New and improved search bar.


Remember how there were two search bars in the old layout? One for the blog and one for the forums and Yppedia? 

Wait, what? You didn't realize there was a search on the old blog? Okay. Sadface, but I'm gonna let that one go. :P

Basically I merged both into the same search box, and now you can sort results by YPPedia/Forums or Blog only! Try it nao~ GCS is the baws. 

Auto Read More. 


Decreased blog loading time. Happier and faster browsing for all! 


Prettier to look at.

You can't pretend that it isn't more pleasant to look at with all that relevant info at a glance.

Back to top... and bottom buttons. 

Oh yuh, with fancy modified JS and everything. Not sure if the images work, but hey, they do the job right! 

Other stuff.

:D I'm sure you'll like it xD I mean I do :3 If you don't... well.. I can't really do much about that. 

I meant. I don't want to :P

But wait.. what about the other widgets that were on the sidebar before?

My good men (and women), in this day and age, less is more. Which is saying something, considering I digress a lot in my posts. Ya huh.

I downgraded this version to 1.5 as, yes, there is definitely more to come in terms of the blog upgrading that improves both the functionality and the feel of the blog. I know that even though the old one was nice, the feel of this new one is way better :) 

Stay tuned for new content as well, as we have a reference page that I will be putting up soon. (It's already done, just that as you can see here... there is a slight problem with coding tables in Blogger @_@. So it will be up as soon as I figure that out :D)

So as we approach 10,000!! pageviews (Thanks to all the readers for making this happen!), I do hope you enjoy the changes I've toiled over to make

As is the tradition with me posting about blog updates, I like to end things on a fun note.

So here is a video by Yoyomax12 making a Canadian Flag for Canada Day.

Happy July 1st everyone!

Squishat 


What do you like about it? What do you still hope to see? (Without disclosing my to-do list!) What changes to the current layout would you like to see? 

Comment either here or on our new FB page!


4 comments:

  1. I love the smell of fresh block in the, erm, midnight.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Squishat says, "comment"

    Squishat says, "comment!!"



    =o!

    ReplyDelete
  3. 1.7 surely not 1.5, excellent features well done. This blog keeps on evolving and new things keep on adding value. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was not strong armed into leaving this comment...

    In all seriousness, this is really cool looking.

    ReplyDelete

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