Website Theme Update Part 3

7th Aug 2010 Posted by Richard in Website News

Continuing on with the website theme update I have now started to apply the same styles used for the blog posts to the pages, I am changing one page at a time, also validating them against the html5 standard, which I am pleased to say most do without making many changes, the enquiry forms I know will not pass html5 validation, not sure what I will do with them yet.

I have also upgraded the spry tabbed panels that were on the easi-joist definitions, trussed rafter definitions, downloads, and McCarthy and Stone pages to the latest version and have changed the styles so they are a better fit with the sites new theme. As you can see from this picture, the tabs are now spaced slightly, this meant that I had to merge some tabs on the trussed rafter definitions page to ensure all the tabs remained on the one row. On the whole this has lead to code for those pages being much less cluttered, which will make them easier to update in the future. One thing to note about the updated theme for the spry tabbed panels and tables is that the gradient backgrounds for these elements will only appear in the latest versions of firefox, safari and chrome, meaning that in the older versions of those browsers and in opera and internet explorer a plain background will appear instead.

Website Theme Update Part 2

2nd Aug 2010 Posted by Richard in Website News

Continuing on with the website theme update, I have recently updated the page header, footers and have made a few changes to the sidebars, such as including links to twitter, facebook, flickr, and our rss feed, the next stage of the update is mainly focused on the blog.

As you can see from this image thumbnail this latest update will bring the styles used for the look of the blog posts more in-line with those used in the new header. Sticky posts will also get a face-lift, currently the only thing that differentiates a sticky post from a normal post is the background colour, with the new styles sticky posts will display a padlock on the right-hand side of the post title.

I hope to activate this new theme over the next few days, assuming it doesn’t negatively affect any other elements on the site, such as page headings etc.

UPDATE: The new posts theme has now been activated, the only negative affect it has had on the rest of the site is that it has added a small margin around the content on some of the ‘normal’ pages throughout the site, this isn’t going to be a big problem, especially since I still have to tackle the new theme for the pages anyway.

Website Theme Update

9th Jul 2010 Posted by Richard in Website News

After reviewing the websites analytics data, specifically the bit about which browsers people are using to view the site, I have noticed that people are starting to visit the site using their mobile phones which the site isn’t really designed for, so over the past two weeks I have started working on a new theme for the website. The first phase is a new header, I have decided to remove the current large flash header which doesn’t work with every browser and replace it with an Ajax based rotator. At the same time I have moved the navigation and search features up into the header as well.

Also included in the new header are our phone and fax numbers as well as our email address, the phone number has been setup so if viewed on a mobile phone clicking on the phone number will activate the phones dialing app, the email address is also an email link. The main reason for adding these to the header is to make it easier for people to find our contact details, currently they can only be found on the contact us page.

Click on the image thumbnail above to open a full size image of the new themes header.

New Theme Switched On

8th Jun 2009 Posted by Richard in Website News

So after a bit of tweaking I have decided to bite the bullet and switch the new theme on, I have managed to sort out a few issues, some remain but at the moment I am not to concerned about them. I will however continue to tweak a few things every so often until I am completely happy with it. If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to use to comment form (if it works) or the general enquiry form to send them in.

Blog Theme Update

7th Jun 2009 Posted by Richard in Website News

So a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had started working on a new theme for the blog, a theme based upon the rest of eandhbaxendale.com, well with some help from Luke over at lunamedia.co.uk I can tell you that it is getting closer to being finished, everything seemed to be working when I took it for a test drive earlier today, however I have decided not to switch it on just yet.

There are a few issues to sort out first, which are mainly to do with the styles used. There is also an issue with left aligned images and the post meta data floating up into the image, if the image extends past the last line of text in the post, the temporary fix is to right align them but I would like to find a better solution if possible. Time permitting I would like to have it up and running by next week, I would also like to finish off the trussed rafter types and trussed rafter eaves details pages as well which I started to update a few weeks ago but got distracted by other jobs at work.

blog theme

23rd May 2009 Posted by Richard in Website News

eandhbaxendale.com

Well I have started working on a theme based upon the rest of the eandhbaxendale.com site, and so far it’s going well. I have got the header, sidebar and content area working somewhat, I just have to sort out the styles and the footer section, and then I will take it for a test drive to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, which I probably have.

Looking at those two sentences it sounds so simple, but it is my first time working on a WordPress theme and my first time working with PHP, the enquiry forms on the main site are submitted using PHP but that is a script I downloaded and the only customising I did was to add the email address the forms are submitted to.