UPDATED June 20

This enhancement project is complete, as you have probably noticed.

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Here is more information about all of the new features and how you can use them. Thanks as always for your support and I hope you will always enjoy your visits here at Byrneholics!

1. Byrne-ing News Box: this box is red and sits in the right column above the Projects in the Works box. Any news that I don’t have time to write a full posting about will go in this box! And if you have alerted me about this news, I will mention you. Most of these items are links to the original source, so be sure to click on them to find out more.

2. Subscribe to Email Notifications: below the Projects in the Works box is this new box. If you subscribe, when I make a new posting, you will receive an email with a short description and a link to the posting. You can set how often you want to receive this stuff: daily, weekly, etc. I think I will change the name to Get Byrneholics In Your Mailbox or something more exciting…

3. Sharing is Caring: at the bottom of all postings you will see the icons for the various Social places like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Please do share postings on Facebook and Twitter if you use these! Also, you can email postings to yourself or friends AND there is a Printer-Friendly button that makes printing these postings easier (in case you just can’t read another thing on your screen and need a paper copy). Do take a look at these and see how you might want to use them!

4. You May Also Like: also at the bottom of each posting is a series of icons that will lead you to previous postings that you might enjoy reading. These links do seem to be taking you to relevant postings (if you are reading a posting about Quirke, for instance, those links will take you to other postings about Quirke that I have done). Sometimes, if the posting is general, these may take you to weird things, but that can be fun too!

Because all of these features focus so much on individual postings, I will not be doing “The Byrne-ing News” in the future. Instead, I will create a separate posting for each news item that I used to bring all together into one posting called “Byrne-ing News.” This way, if you subscribe to email notifications or you see a “You May Also Like” icon, you will know what you are getting. “The Byrne-ing News” is too hard to search and some of the sections are too important to be hidden away…

One last thing: the old Twitter box died. The developer of that widget, which was called TweetBlender, did not update it and everyone who used it had to go find something else. So I did. The new Twitter box is a more traditional box: all it shows is what I tweet and re-tweet. There is nothing else like TweetBlender, that also brought in tweets by others ABOUT Gabriel Byrne. So this is sad but the new Twitter box is the best thing available. Maybe someday the guy who made TweetBlender will fix it! We can hope.

Thanks to all of you for your support during the enhancement process and thanks especially for your kind words about the new artwork. I hope you are loving Paul Shipper’s art as much as I am. I have future plans for this artwork–I always have future plans, don’t I?–so you have not seen the last of Paul Shipper’s “take” on Gabriel Byrne…it will only get bigger!

Many thanks to Nenad, the web developer who helped make all of these enhancements possible!

Stella

UPDATED May 27

Here is what has been done so far:

  1. Update theme to WPZoom onPlay 2.0–DONE
  2. Updates to WordPress and plug-ins–DONE
  3. Add email subscription form–DONE
  4. Add Facebook SHARE and other social buttons to all content pages–DONE
  5. Add text box widget to homepage; call it BYRNE-ING NEWS. It must support links.–DONE
  6. Change font to something darker and a little larger.–DONE
  7. Google Analytics review–DONE
  8. Change main site header image. Add Paul Shipper’s image.–WORKING ON THIS
  9. Implement new color scheme to match the colors in Paul Shipper’s image. Basic background can remain black.–WORKING ON THIS
  10. Add “Related Posts” so that related post links are displayed on each posting.–DONE
  11. Put Search Box at top of homepage–DONE
  12. Change Copyright info at bottom of home page to 2008 – 2013–DONE

I am working with web developer Nenad Motika (@nmotika on Twitter) and he is doing a GREAT job.

Stay tuned for #8 and #9 later this week.

The site has needed some updating for a long time now and the arrival of the Paul Shipper artwork creates the perfect opportunity to make some changes around here!

The official Enhancements List is below. Most of this work is behind-the-scenes, but you will be seeing some enhancements on the homepage: artistic as well as functionality changes.

The postings and pages will not change significantly, except I hope to improve the font for them a bit.

I am working with a new web developer to make all of these changes a reality. Some changes are easy. Others are more complicated. And some are totally cool…

This process will take about a week, we hope. If something goes “bump in the night,” now you know what made that happen!

enhancements list

  1. Update theme to WPZoom onPlay 2.0
  2. Updates to WordPress and plug-ins
  3. Add email subscription form
  4. Add Facebook SHARE and other social buttons to all content pages
  5. Add text box widget to homepage; call it BYRNE-ING NEWS. It must support links.
  6. Change font to something darker and a little larger.
  7. Google Analytics review
  8. Change main site header image. Add Paul Shipper’s image.
  9. Implement new color scheme to match the colors in Paul Shipper’s image. Basic background can remain black.
  10. Add “Related Posts” so that related post links are displayed on each posting.
  11. Put Search Box at top of homepage
  12. Change Copyright info at bottom of home page to 2008 – 2013

I try to be transparent about what is going on with the website. I probably told you more than you really wanted to know. Sorry…

Wish us luck on this project!

Stella

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10 Comments

  1. Wow, even more fun…

  2. luck on this project !! :-)

  3. All this sounds complicated to me.
    Good luck!!!!

    I think Byrneholics has a great website already, but I guess you are going to make it even better…

  4. You can already see some of the enhancements on the homepage and more are coming.

    Nothing is ever so good that you cannot make it better!

    :-)

  5. Moondreamer

    I ♥ the new look! Great job, Stella! :-)

  6. Kari Elsenpeter

    WOW it really looks great!!! Love the art work and color!! Nice job Stella!
    Take care,
    Kariboo

  7. It looks wonderful. Great job Stella!

  8. It looks great. Congratulations!
    It is very nice with the Gabriel art drawings at the top of the page. I also like the light brown color on the front page and the boxes in the bottom of the page where we can search for different “old” news and projects.

  9. Thanks so much for your comments, everyone! Glad you are liking the enhancements and the artwork. This was a fun project, mostly because I was working with a great web developer, Nenad! If you ever have any suggestions to make the site better, just let me know. I will implement them if I can (with Nenad’s help)!

  10. Great job Stella and Nenad.

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