Just a quick heads up to say that I have updated Links with my Gaming Info, more to help my ability to keep track of them than anything else. I know they’re not technically “links” in the purest sense, but it’s the only good place to list them.
Content… incomplete! Yeah, I have more than a couple friend codes I need to fish up, so until then, the Temple is again “incomplete.” Oh well, at least I’m updating over two months since this version launched, and how many times have I been able to say that before?
Four years ago today I first created the Temple of Andrex. Originally a compilation of my amateur-hour projects, it grew into a place of reflection and reverence for me.
With today being the anniversary of the first version, I have finally, finally launched the “style picker” on the Archives page. As of right now, this only has Version 1′s design, but I think I’ve gotten better about promising more features that I can confidently say the others will be here shortly. I also have plans to make the original designs take over when you view each update’s “single” page. The Version 1 design I uploaded is 100% renovated, from scratch in HTML 5, while still keeping the basic design. There are a few subtle differences (which you can point out if you study the image on the History page), such as dates now having the year attached (and being linked to its “single” page) and the “Entity is a joke” thing appended to each entry, but I’m happy to say it is still 97% superficially the same. Even the JavaScript image rollover at the bottom, right down to the alt/title text.
Sort by tags is coming soon to Archives as well- Archives in general is slowly becoming very fleshed out, I suppose it’s more for myself helping myself to make finding entries to reflect on easier, but still. Lastly, I’ll be adding a “Gamer” section to Links/Profiles to hold all my online gaming info, specifically friend codes (again, for myself so they’re in a unified location.)
Four years… Five versions… Numerous hiatuses… But, here we are, still moving forward after all this time. Hopefully this website will see another four years of growth.
Just a short update to say I’ve re-added the introduction to the top of the main page. Most of the text is borrowed from Version 4, but I updated it a little. However, unlike on Project Gforum, if you do a search, it doesn’t appear at the top of each search page.
Speaking of pages, I realized that there’s no way to navigate between them for posts, and will be adding navigational links at the bottom of each page that needs them. Also, I will display the tags I’ve been using internally for posts on the Archives page, for searching by topic. Lastly, I worked some behind-the-scenes magic so that a “New Post” link is shown on the front page when I’m logged in, which just makes the whole process easier for me. Truly, when I dreamed of making the Temple the absolute easiest to update and maintain, the system I have now is pretty darn close.
I have finished up adding all I can find (on-hand) to the Archives, and not only that, I have finished Links (for now.) This means every link in the navigation, every page on the site, is complete. However, that doesn’t mean I won’t ever update them again. On the contrary, now I’ll feel much less pressured and more likely to update them more often, particularly Projects, though if I see a bad link or something I want to add to the other pages, I will. I will also be scouring every nook and cranny of both my computers for the “Lost 2007 Updates”, the ones from Version 3, which I never got around to archiving properly, but I do remember downloading at some point. So they may be uploaded soon, they may not. On a minor note, I’ve also updated Archives to use the “Table of Contents” format now employed by every page (except this one, obviously.) It’s nice being consistent.
Because the Temple of Andrex is now “content complete,” I would like to start adding features, or at least one more, to this version. Every since Version 2, I’ve been wanting to implement a feature that would allow you to switch designs to go back to what the previous versions looked like. I won’t quite do that now, however, there will be an option in Archives to view a particular version’s posts, and the page that displays them will be in that version’s design. I will be recoding each design manually for HTML 5, but I will try my hardest to match the classic looks as much as possible.
So many things are coming to fruition in this version, and so soon after it launched. I haven’t been this excited about the Temple in a long time.
The History page is now 100% completed, and it chronicles the entire timeline of this website from even before it was created, to what the future holds. At this point, there may still be some minor editorial issues I may correct in the future, but the content is all completely there. The next step is, of course, to add all the old posts (the ones I can find, anyways) to this version so you can read with your own eyes how far the Temple and I have come. I personally can’t wait for it.
It took me around six hours of scouring old archives, broken links, and source code, but I was able to finally piece together the beginning-to-present History of the Temple of Andrex. This is probably the most significant content update I have ever done, and I’ve been wanting to do it for so long. This should have been released almost two years ago with Version 4, if not earlier.
For now, it only chronicles the story of the Temple from pre-birth up until the end of Version 4′s life, but Version 5 and beyond will be coming shortly. In addition, once that’s completed, I will be:
Filling out Links with websites that I still feel are useful, but relatively unknown.
Adding every single update post I can find to Archives, all the way back to 2005.
