I made great progress the last 2 days on the updated comicbooknews website. I had a good couple of hours this weekend to work on it.
I’ve got the navigation pretty solid now. Rule #1 when developing a new website is to make sure you’re testing in IE and FireFox the whole time instead of going down a long path, only testing on one browser. The navigation is solid and I’ve added an enhanced "Featured Stories" section. The functionality is similar to the existing site, but I added a little more SEO and fixed the randomly pulled story.
The Google Ads are in place, although I may swap out the ad list on the left side for something else, but the rest of the ads are in place.
Tommorrow I need to see if I can fix the main story popup ajax window in IE. It works great in FireFox but not IE. After that, I’ll add the next 9 stories to the right of the main story.
I’ve decided to number the days on the project by the days I have time to work on the project, not actual days since I probably only have time to work on it once, maybe twice a week.
I have most of the navigation set now – maybe a few tweaks left and some CSS changes, but that’s pretty close to being nailed down. I have ads in place for the header, right side and under the nav, so we’re good there. I have the latest story in place, but now I’m working on adding the nice AJAX fade in/fade out that I have on the existing site when someone clicks on the main news story comic cover. That should go pretty easily and then I’ll clean up the CSS.
The next part of the development will be to add the next 9 news stories to the right of the main story. Most of that functionality is already done on the existing site, so it shouldn’t be too difficul to port over.
If only I could find the time…
I built my website Comic Book News several years ago as an experiment in search engine optimization. I never really had a plan to grow it like it did… I simply patched new functionality ontop of what I built originally.
Now that the site ranks #2 in Google under "Comic Book News", I thought it was time to really take a methodical approach to rebuilding the site. I looked at rebuilding the site with an open source tool, but I have a lot finer control over the site if I build it myself – specifically for search engine optimization.
I have a rough draft of the design – it’s going to be pretty utilitarian, since the comic images themselves will add a lot to the site, but I still need to work on a new logo.
I’m also currently working on the updated navigation for the site. I’m currently looking at using Spry Assets.
If there are no new posts for a while, there’s one good reason…
With a last name like "Grün" I figure it is now time for me to embrace my German Roots. Last night, my wife and I went to a German mart at the local mall. I’ve been on the hunt for a good German beer stein for a while. Since Kim won’t let me drink from my Martin Luther Beer Stein, I needed a good "drink’n mug". I saw a couple of steins that were very cool, but well over $100 – not within my "drink’n mug" budget.
German Beer Stein
The stein is pretty cool. I was laughing at the "authentic" steins that said "Germany". I’m no expert, but wouldn’t they say "Deutschland"? This one does. It’s a heavy ceramic stein that is very detailed. It has a classy pewter lid that completes the piece.
One of the older Germans there said that creating beer steins is a dying art. That’s too bad… It’s a great piece of German culture.
To top it off, I bought a case of Warsteiner beer. It’s a very enjoyable beer, that’s smooth and not bitter at all.
Just a fun little picture of me getting eaten by a dinosaur…
My brother sent me this picture of his Spidey hardhat. Now that’s pretty cool. I have no use for a hardhat at my job, but I’m considering wearing one, if I could get one like this!
The Creation Museum is loaded with cool looking dinosaurs.
