We're Back

Welcome to the new, revamped and hopefully improved Awaiting A Western Renaissance, its taken nearly two days, to almost completely alter her and I hope that you the reader find the new look to your liking. Many aspects remain the same, in relation to post pages, although the site itself has I, believe utterly changed, there is a better navigation system with dropdown tabbing, a large and vastly extended footer to display pertinent information, it is a little easier on the eye and I believe overall more accessible.

Some things have been lost, working to display as a web 2.0 compliant site, taking on board some aspects has meant some loss, I believe that sites these days have lost the idea of scope and almost all newly developed sites, seem considerably smaller in size. None more so than weblogs, for this reason, I had thought of what is known as a magazine style layout, creating a page chock full of divided content, however, in the end I opted for user accessibility, losing even when pitted against the old look AAWR, the sense of space.

So I needed AAWR to function cross browser, as we had, had some difficulty with MSIE prior, further, I wanted AAWR to present as modern, tidy and user friendly, “as much as it can be on Blogger”. So quite simply layout was quite important and I believe we have achieved our aim, some abilities we were unable to do with the old layout we are now able, such as post truncating, in order to load faster and present better to the eye. As previously stated we now have an extensive footer section, an impossibly with the old template, I believe the navigation section is much better than the old HTML coded dropdowns ,although I still use them on post pages to display links and suchlike.

Hard work:

I find that this layout to has some issues with the Blogger platform, primarily, that it fails completely to respond to the drag and drop facility offered by Blogger, so consequently it is impossible to move elements to a new layout and save them, this means much hard work merely to present elements in the right order. Also Blogger displays the backend as too wide and one finds that they have to scroll some considerable distance to use any functions. This of course is due to styling issues between one or the other most probably with AAWR as a site such as this was never meant for Blogger.

Blogger is a rudimentary platform in comparison to other platforms, it has some catching up to do in comparison with other providers however, Blogger seems at least to some degree, to uphold the concept of free-speech, when set against other providers. Another aspect is that Blogger is continually improving, currently a “read more for posts” is not offered as it is on other platforms and one must hack into site coding to provide it for readers, in fact almost all of the changes one can implement involve substantial re-coding in order to achieve them.

Yet in the case of AAWR I believe it to be worth it, after all the public have been trained to reject the nationalist message, so it is in our interest to at least attempt to maintain a well-presented site, in order to in some way, negate such programming. Of course the vast majority of users pass on by, never to return, must will not even take the time to read articles or engage with the site, yet some may very well have their eyes opened and it is for them that AAWR exists.
It is not for the nationalist per-se, quite simply because preaching to the already converted serves little purpose, although it does help to form our community bonds and present us as a united voice to opposition. No, AAWR I hope, could serve to awaken at least one or two individuals to our plight that is the reasoning behind it, to steal a march whilst we can, on the owned press and present our case whilst time permits.

So I would hope that regular readers like the new design, I shall place a poll at the end of this post for user feedback, please remember to bookmark AAWR and interact with the site, it both makes for a better user experience and our job worthwhile. In order to facilitate interaction, I have placed the comment form below posts (on post pages), this means that readers can stay upon the site to post without pop-ups. Also I have added a newsletter facility so that readers can stay abreast when away from home, the topic area still needs work however the site is to the best of my knowledge functional.

Currently it is in an embryonic stage, in need of content, so if you feel you can help please contact us, also try if you can to promote the site, link to it, tell friends and those who may find it of interest. For now I am done, two days work, I’m tired and if I ever look at code again, why I’ll, I’ll…

What do you think of our new look?

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