- This topic has 106 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 1 month ago by
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When I’m posting from somewhere with a decent broadband speed (ie at work) it’s pretty fast, I’d say. It takes a while when I’m at home, due to the pathetic phone network BT have saddled us with in our village, and a lack of will on the part of virgin or anyone else to cable us. So I’d say the servers themselves were pretty good.
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I do find the site slightly slower to render than some others. Not really problematically so, but I have noticed that there’s a noticable delay on domain lookup, even before the page renders, and a slightly slow load while things gradually get themselves hidden/visible and all in the right places (I’ve always assumed this is the javascript/ajax loading in combined with jquery waiting for pageload to complete before executing)
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@mike – see if you think the site’s a bit quicker since 27-09-10 – it’s now moved to a new server and it’s a touch quicker I think. I might also move the mySQL database to a new server too…!
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Latest developments:
– BuddyPress updated to latest version, you now see icons in the activity stream. Woo!
– Right hand navigation tidied up with a “quick links” box at the top with links to the main parts of the site.
– Facebook box on right hand size made less irritating and nice logos with links to other social media guff put in
– Sticky welcome post on front page -
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@Tim I love the “Articles from the archives” bit on the right hand nav. There’s stuff in there I’d forgotten I’d written!
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@alison – I know! As at today’s date we have 256 articles – and there’s some really good stuff in the archives. Even though I say so myself!
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Site updates:
1) the much neglected “Resources” section has been tidied up and prettified. http://www.shootuporputup.co.uk/resources
2) the top menu has been tidied, removing the “Groups” and “Members” tabs which were never used
3) A new page for posting up Excel templates for blood glucose logging – http://www.shootuporputup.co.uk/resources/logging-templates/ -
Aha, I was wondering where all the tabs had gone. I find when I’ve logged to the ‘forums’ page, often the time of the last posting is say 59 seconds ago or something, but if I go to that posting in fact it was 20 minutes or 2 hours.
I have found the site less easy to use than others, which make sense very quickly.
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@lizz – the time thing being wonky is a “feature” (or “bug” as we like to call them) in Buddypress, so there’s not much I can do about it I’m afraid.
I agree – I think the Forums and Activity features aren’t entirely user-friendly; but I’m stuck with Buddypress as it was, frankly, the best of a bad lot which fitted my criteria for blog / forum integration. There is better forum software out there (older readers will recall the forums used to be completely separate from the blog and were accessed through a sub-domain and which used some different forum software) , but it just doesn’t mesh so well with the blog. I guess we just have to take the rough with the smooth.
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Hey @tim – how do I navigate to my scary article from the Resources section? Can’t find it!
PS – CGM one will be written on Monday.
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Good work @tim
Just to bug ya.. Need to short your blog description out for us using mobile like devices. I know, I know you could not give a rats ***, but we live in hope.. Emailed you a screenshot. -
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Good and good!
” iPad say’s hi **wave** ” -
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@tim – what you done to the theme? It’s hideous!
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@stephen – he he! Thanks! What specifically don’t you like? I only updated the header…
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You’re welcome
Personal opinion : don’t like the gradient – just seems to darken the whole page.
Professional opinion : blue text on grey background (subtitle) is not a combination I would use on a web site Blue text is dodgy due to poor reception by the eye anyway (especially my knackered ones!) but when used on grey it’s not terribly readable.In my humble opinion …….
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Didn’t you get the memo about not being allowed to express personal opinions on here?
There was a dark gradient there before (black at the top to navy blue below), so this one’s actually a bit lighter. TBH, I’m not really that keen on the look and feel of any of the site, but I don’t have the mad design skillz to improve it that much.
If you fancy re-doing the banner yourself to something you would like to see, then it needs to be 1250×125 pixels in size and the font is “London Between” which you can get from dafont.com.
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Open it up to the floor, perhaps a little competition and mini poll/vote to decide which one?
Just a thought?
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Ooh, I’d love to offer to help if only I was a talented web designer. In my opinion the banner that mentions rotting toes (nice) should be in orange (i.e. the same orange that shows times since recent activity) or white. It would stand out a lot better, unless you don’t want it to stand out :o)
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And by banner I mean the text in the banner that mentions the toes thing, not the whole banner! :o)
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As co-writer of this thing I suppose I should care about all of this but I’m afraid my anorak is in the wash so I won’t be able to join the pixel/banner/theme/colourblind/ipad geekfest. If I was to summon up every ounce of effort and force myself to have an opinion, I’d say that I like the new banner thing less than the old one but I’d struggle to say why.
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@alison, did you miss the revolution? Geeks are no longer anorak wearing losers! I present to you Geek 1.0 (yes I admit I stole the image for my avatar) vs Geek 2.0 (and yes I am that cool!)
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It’s not that bad a new banner, damn you all!
I wanted to use a new and more distinct font – which we could also use on the forthcoming video blog titles. So I redid the header and the colours too while I was at it. (As an aside, I’m really into fonts now, having read “Just My Type” (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-My-Type-About-Fonts/dp/1846683017) – a book all about fonts – over Christmas).
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@Stephen Loser is a bit strong. I’d have settled for the fact that you’re all a bit special. The husband is a fully fledged geek so I am experienced in these matters. I know you no longer have real anoraks, but I’m convinced you all have virtual anoraks that you put on at times like this. I’ve seen it happen too many times
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It’s a slippery slope into geekdom when you start bandying around phrases like ‘I read a book about fonts over Christmas’. And think that a remark such as ‘I’m really into fonts now’ can pass as an aside.
Although, actually, I have to admit… I LOVE browsing font sites. I often download something special for the weekend. Or a particular project. In fact I have a regular weekly update by email of new, spectacular, bright, crazy, cool or smoooooooth fonts.
Just off to put my bedtime anorak on.
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@Lizz – well, I would highly recommend said book above ^^ it’s quite an entertaining read. Especially the bit about the infamous antics of Mr Gill Sans.
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Hmm @tim – does the Facebook Connect not persist your logged in state? I hate having to log in each time I go to a site
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@stephen – I’ve no idea – evidently not. You can still use your old Shoot Up log in if it doesn’t do what you want.
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@stephen has found a minor glitch in my logging sheet (cheers Stephen!) – It only affects the graph of the bolusing on the 8th day. I’ve sent a new version to @Tim to upload, (for those who know how to use excel quite well it’s straight forward to correct, for those who dont, just use the new version when it arrives
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(If anyone finds any other problems, let me know – I tried to find all of the them (its mainly to do with where the graphs are taking their data from), but there’s always one that sneaks through…) -
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@Tim – is there any possibility you can allow editing of one’s own posts on the main blog? Not essential I know, but despite my best proof reading efforts the occasional typo slips through, it’s embarrassing!
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@teloz – you should be able to as you have “Contributor” rights – I’ll drop you an email.
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I’ve just re-jigged the links page to make it more user-friendly and actually slightly useful:
http://www.shootuporputup.co.uk/resources/useful-websites/
I will have missed approximately 16.9 million useful websites, so could you reply here or drop me an email with the ones I’ve neglected to list please? Ta!
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All good. Can I add http://www.bdec-e-learning.com/ that I was directed towards by @Alison for a quick carb counting guide? Just completed the course and whilst I’m sure it’s nowhere near as good as the the full-on DAFNE it’s a start.
Also for the manufacturers I’d add http://www.accu-chek.co.uk/gb/ as I like their meters and you can quickly ask online for replacement batteries and books etc – just don’t expect them to be too quick in delivery.
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I would second the BDEC course, good intro to carb counting.. Also something complete away from Diabetes – http://theoatmeal.com/ We all need a larf from time to time.
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In other news, I was looking through the stats today and loads of our traffic comes from search engine searches for terms like “king charles spaniel, king charles cavalier, cavalier king charles spaniel” and “Woof!” (http://www.shootuporputup.co.uk/2010/07/woof/) is one of our most popular articles.
More people come to Shoot Up by searching for dogs than diabetes. This is so depressing I don’t even know where to begin!
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@tim: Thanks to your site’s apartheid policy, my suppressed horde of limericks have no voting power…tut, tut, tut 🙄
Oh, and while your hands are all greasy with tweaking, can’t you enable users to specify their therapies (pump,pens,pills) in their profiles?
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Thank heavens for that – there’s 320-odd posts in that thread now!
In terms of greasy hands, your wish is my command – I’ve added a “About you & your diabetes” text box to the profiles, so you can fill in a bit more detail. You can edit your profile by clicking on your name in the top right corner > Profile tab > Edit profile > Fill in new box.
Don’t say I’m not kind to you!
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You’re not kind to @ckoei …Oh sorry, you said don’t…
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Upgraded blog to latest major release of BuddyPress – which might give us some new features to play with. Chief amongst these is the ability to use the search box in the top right to search the forums *and* blogs posts from the same place. Hurrah!
Updated the theme to latest theme – will fix the header soon.
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@ckoei – cool! I hadn’t noticed that!
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Hey! Cheers @ckoei – it didnt even look like a link anymore.
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If anyone cares, we’ve just turned down yet another offer for advertising on the site. Aside from the stripykat advert on the bottom right, we’ve always had a strict no advertising policy. Even ads from reputable pharma companies. This is because I hate blogs covered in ads and I presume you do too.
If you’re interested, Alison and I share the hosting costs for the site between us. They’re pretty modest and so we’re not prevented from running our second yachts, etc.
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More updates on the site – a new look (which is pretty similar to the old look, but just tweaked a bit). There’s also a new front page – which is designed to allow quick access to everything that’s on the site – both the forums and the blog in one place. Hopefully you’ll hate it and yearn for the old format again.
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My cheapskate non-fruit chops the front page category headers in half…and gives Shoot Up an athletic flavour
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@ckoei – that’s a feature not a bug – the feeds on the front page are cached to save them having to be reloaded every time someone visits – thus saving wear and tear on the server.
I guessed that most people come and have a look at the site at most once a day or so or every couple of days, so it should give most people an overview of what’s going on. The activity tab is – as always – the place for your latest Shoot Up fix!
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@tim: Pah! You should change “Recent” to “Past”, then…
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Well I like the new look!
Its rather tastefully done in ; -
Thanks @Mustard – I wanted it to be easy on the eye. I hate forums that have too much going on – especially forums that allow signatures at the bottom of every post – awful, just awful!
The blatant advertising is a very important part of the site – I think everyone should do their Christmas shopping over at stripykat.com – the Kindle cases are selling like hot cakes!
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Anyword on how the mobile side of the site goes?
I’ve gone from it being rather cluttered to just getting a blank page when I click on forums (the blogs page works though)Is this payback for complaining?
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@furrypaul – damned right, next complaint and you’re banned from the site!
Nah, I haven’t looked at it yet, but it’s working its way up the list.
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@furrypaul – I’ve tweaked the site and it should now display better on a mobile device. Can you let me know if it doesn’t?
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Whatever happened with the transfer at Lunch its sorted my phone out!
I can see the site again in a readable form, don’t press any more buttons on the server & I’ll do the same with my phone! -
@furrypaul – I fixed that about a week ago! But yesterday I also had to remove the compression doubry*, which might effect how you see the site too if you were using an older browser.
*”doubry” being a technical term
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The update last week let me access the site on the phone again but this ones actually made it so I can use it.
I’d been meaning to drop you a line to let you know but I’m more often on phone than by a pc.
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I wonder if the green used on the “Reply Posted” and other notifications would work ….. I’ve got some serious astronomy to do tonight but if I get 10 minutes I’ll see if anything springs to mind 
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