Welcome to the newly redesigned Tally Room blog. I have changed to a new theme which mainly redesigns the front page. The top of the front page will regularly cycle through the three most recent posts. Each post will include an image to identify the post. However, for a reason I can’t understand I can only post frontpage images for new posts, so it will take a few weeks before the front page takes on its new look. Please let me know what you think of the design and pass on any suggestions for how to improve the site.
Update: I think I’ve got the hang of it now, and I’ll be gradually going back over posts from October and November to give them identifying images, although I don’t plan to go back through the entire back-catalogue. You may also see other minor changes in coming weeks in the sidebar and possibly the featuring of federal election seat guides on the front page.
Sweet.
Bit confusing that it has the last three posts across the top on the front page, but then lists them again in the column below, and it doesn’t display the image where it’s listed in the column.
A little thing. With the old theme it showed on pages the date they were last updated, which was useful with the election guides as it lets people tell when you may have added new material. Doesn’t really matter, and if you have to rewrite the code to change it rather than just changing an option I don’t think it’s worth it.
And I guess I already mentioned the drop-down menu.
Nice stuff. Should be great once it’s all going.
Love it. Keep it up.
if we’re giving comments to help improve the site…
The drop down boxes from the “2010 Federal Election” menu item has returned
Yeah I know about the drop-down boxes. In this new theme they don’t actually run into each other, but if anyone knows how to fix it let me know, the old fix only applied to that theme.
I think it looks awesome, it is v. easy to navigate
Hey Ben, WordPress is a little more advanced now than the version I was working with in 2005, but when I set up a blog back then I was struggling to find a theme that had the right set of features I wanted (you didn’t have the same options to customize themes back then, you were basically stuck with what the designer of the theme put together), so I ended up going into the php files and managed to figure out relatively easily how to remove the bits I didn’t want by deleting the relevant section of code (and I have no programming experience). You may be able to do the same if you haven’t tried that already, though hopefully someone can point you more directly to what you’re looking for so you don’t need to spend time figuring it out.
Thanks Nick, you’re right about that, I’ve already done that in one way and that’s how I previously fixed the menus issue.
I’m just looking for the right fix.
Hey, you gonna have time to write about the Glasgow North-East by-election? It’s a curious field of candidates.
Or people can just read about it for themselves here:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/guide/seat-profiles/glasgownortheast
I haven’t planned anything but might do it tonight if I have time, thanks for reminding me.
There were a couple of noteworthy things about the Canadian by-elections the other day. The NDP comfortably retained New Westminster–Coquitlam in BC, which has been a marginal riding against the Tories. The Tories had a gain from the BQ in Montmagny–L’Islet–Kamouraska–Rivière-du-Loup, but I didn’t read any of the background there so don’t know whether it was expected or not. BQ held the other seat in Quebec, and the Tories regained the seat of the Tory-turned-Independent Bill Casey in NS. The Green Party didn’t do all that well, best result being 4.3% in BC. She seemed like a good candidate from what I saw of her in the preview show I watched, so it’s a shame she didn’t do better.
Looks great Ben, though I did like the ‘recent posts’ bit in the old version; makes it easy to follow what people are talking about.
Enjoying your blog. Thanks.
Hamish, the recent posts and recent comments widgets are now at the bottom of the blog. However I am considering changes so may move them somewhere else when I get around to it.
Nick, would you like to write something about Canada? I might have time to write about Glasgow but don’t really know anything about Canada.
Suppose I could but i think my previous comment probably sums it up well. I wasn’t really paying the required level of attention to be writing at length about it. I’ll have a go at it a little later and email you whatever I come up with.