clements.ca website - NEW & IMPROVED!

Now with more mobile-friendliness!

Is it that time again? Yes, it is. It has been three years less a day since this website was last upgraded. And, as usual, besides a new look there is a whole lot of stuff happening under the hood, and as usual, I am writing this more for myself as a record of what the heck I did with those 100+ hours back in April 2015. (Does the future leave fingerprints on the past?)

So, here's the deal:

• Upgraded from Joomla 2.5.x to 3.4.x
• Upgraded to Warp 7 with uikit framework (awesome)
• Ditched the old photo gallery (not mobile-friendly)
• Hand-rolled a brand-new photo gallery using Widgetkit 2 and Joomla core functions
• Changed/edited every single article to new format with BIG images (no pop-ups)
• Started a rebuild of the Geocoin gallery (holy crap)
• Added new blog category "Here & There" to fill with cool artsy stuff
• Added new main section called Maker to show-off stuff (not much there yet)
• Upgraded/migrated/mySQL-hacked the guest book (it seems to work)
• Removed tons of junk and reorganized what was left (images!)

Part of the deal going from Widgetkit 1 to the all-new stupendous Widgetkit 2 is that none of the old widgets work, and that includes all the site pop-up images. But, it had to be done. Back in the day, it was important to have small little images on your pages. But now with bandwidth that could drink an entire Grotesque Gulp in 0.7 seconds, big images are where it is at. Plus, there is only one image instead of two (the little one, and the big pop-up). Less files is better.

Speaking of less file, the Geocoin collection, built with YOOtheme ZOO, featured four (count 'em 4) images for every single coin (a small one, a bigger one, and two giant ones). Now, it is all done with a single image (a good-sized one). That means 75% less images to load, and a byte-weight decrease of over 40%. Plus, no more roll-overs, because how do you roll-over an image with your finger? It's a mobile world.

By the way, the geocoin gallery is only about 20% complete at this time, so... yeah.

The new photo gallery is mostly built, but still missing some albums. And the new "MAKER" section just has some old stuff in it, but that will have some cool stuff added Real Soon Now.

That's it. Enjoy.