AARoads New Site Layout

[Zeffy]

Great job Zeffy! I am really impressed. We've come a long way!

At some point, we'll get to convert massive HTML pages in California to the new format. I look forward to the day!

Thank you everyone for your interest and compliments. I am really happy that Alex and Zeffy have worked so hard on this. Their efforts have been almost entirely without me being as fully involved as I used to be. (As much as I'd like to be as involved as in the old days, real life has been keeping me pretty busy  for the past couple of years.)

Thanks!  Alex told me you were busy, so no worries there. When we get out of beta, if you have the time, I can show you around the new content creation area (if Alex hasn't shown you already).

[Zeffy]

More updates to the beta site!

General

• Title bar now reflects the title of the page you are viewing instead of just "AARoads.com"
• Site template optimization for mobile devices

Guide Pages

• Fixed a nasty issue where pages that use multiple content folders would break under the new script and only display half of the images
• Changed photo viewer to a newer version of the Fancybox Javascript library which should work better on all devices now
• "Connect With..." links added, however a few issues are present with them and will be rectified shortly

Content Additions

• Connecticut state gateway fully converted
• Connecticut primary guides converted

As usual, please continue to provide feedback on the site! Your feedback is greatly appreciated by both Alex and I!

[Neddyfram]

Looks cool, as I though the AAroads (except the forum) does look like a 90's website.

[Billy F 1988]

Hey, Alex, Zeffy or Andy, you may be able to do a copy-paste of one of my Missoula area photos from the Montana guide for the new banner, or do I have to resend them to you?

[Zeffy]

Hey, Alex, Zeffy or Andy, you may be able to do a copy-paste of one of my Missoula area photos from the Montana guide for the new banner, or do I have to resend them to you?

It depends on the resolution of the photos - anything that is larger than 1100px in width will work.

[myosh_tino]

Hi guys!

Just saw that you took the new site layout live.  While I really liked the old site, the new one is still pretty good.  One problem I ran into today was the odd placement of the ads.  On my first visit earlier today, the vertical ad was in it's place on the left sidebar but when I went to the site just now, that vertical ad was being placed right in the middle of the page.  Here's a screen shot of what I am seeing...



For what it's worth, I'm viewing the site on a Windows 7 PC using the latest version of Firefox on a 1024x768 monitor.

[KEK Inc.]

It's a good step in the right direction.  Honestly, I think there's a lot of kinks to iron out.  It still looks like a dated site. 

I'd be willing to help if warranted. 

[Alex]

It's a good step in the right direction.  Honestly, I think there's a lot of kinks to iron out.  It still looks like a dated site. 

I'd be willing to help if warranted.

With the deadline for sites to be mobile-friendly upon us, Zeffy and I have gone through a ton to get to this point. While its not 100% what we want right now (once I finished converting the remainder of the old template based pages later on tonight that is), the site will be functional and should buy us some time to work out some of the kinks, which will lead to some of Zeffy's enhancements.

The version I rolled out last night pretty much uses the same script from the old template, with the exception that I added lightbox/slideshow functionality to the older static pages to eliminate the back and forth (we also added this to all Interstate Guide pages).

As for the layout, we are open to help! We've found it hard otherwise to get advice and picked the brains of everyone we could find willing thus far. What I gathered from redesigning sites these days is to make the text large and to simplify the design. At least most of the pages load up well on my phone/tablet, with the exception of pages where we still have 3 or more photos on one row. That will stay for now until we get around to tweaking the script.

Hi guys!

Just saw that you took the new site layout live.  While I really liked the old site, the new one is still pretty good.  One problem I ran into today was the odd placement of the ads.  On my first visit earlier today, the vertical ad was in it's place on the left sidebar but when I went to the site just now, that vertical ad was being placed right in the middle of the page.  Here's a screen shot of what I am seeing...

For what it's worth, I'm viewing the site on a Windows 7 PC using the latest version of Firefox on a 1024x768 monitor.

Don't know why its rendering that way. Sometimes when the page first loads up for me, its wonky and I have to refresh. Not sure if that is a CSS issue, lag time, or what. I am waiting on some feedback about a interstate-guide layout change, and maybe it will shed some light on this and provide me with knowledge on how to prevent this from happening. Until then. 

[Zeffy]

Hello again, today I'm pleased to announce a number of improvements to the beta site, which will be pushed live within the next coming hours when Alex can update the table structure in the database. The biggest feature is another re-writing of the frontend of the website - we are now using a much more robust system that will bridge the gap between us with limited knowledge of PHP but good knowledge of HTML to edit the site.

The new site will function just like the old beta site. However, there's been a number of improvements, ones that we think will really make it easier to navigate AARoads. Here we go:

General Changes:

• Pages are rendered much faster due to streamlined code.
• Page URLs have been entirely re-worked. There is no need to remember the "guide.php?page=..." URLs anymore. Instead, you are now able to punch in the page's 'tag' (or internal identifier) preceeded by /Entry to view the page. For those who are unsure how a tag is made, here's the basic synopsis:
  
  
  
  • i 0 0 9 5 n a n j
  • Route Type: Specifies the type of highway the page is representing. Standard values are i (Interstate), u (US Highway), s (State Highway), or b (Business Route).
  • Route Designation: A 4-digit representation of the highway's number. If there are less than 4-digits, simply add 0s before the actual number to make it into a 4-digit number.
  • Direction of Travel: A cardinal direction (N, S, E or W) that represents the direction of travel the content is representing.
  • Sub-page: A letter from A-Z that represents a specific selection of content for the overall page. In the tag above, this corresponds to the 'Trenton Belt Line' section of Interstate 95 in New Jersey.
  • State: The 2-letter abbreviation for the state the content is in.
• Accessing a state's gateway page is now as easy as simply typing in the abbreviation for the state into the URL bar. The old method was to use "gateway" then the abbreviation of the state.

Gateway Changes

• Gateway tags now use a simplified format (see above).
• Links on gateway pages have been changed so they now can function more robustly.

If you guys have any suggestions or comments on what should be added to the main site (NOT the forums), then please post them in here. Once the main site is polished, both the Interstate Guide and the Shield Gallery will be overhauled to update them into modern standards.