Changes to GC Theme and Reasoning behind them.

GC has been receiving a HUGE increase in traffic, roughly 10 - 1 over previous years.

The former GC layout was fine when the site was a lot less popular, but at 2mb the index page was a near sumo sized website, x that by the amount of guests per day (excluding members)

The former layout at Off peak was sending over 75.000 requests to the server at any given time.

The new layout reduces wasted resources by allowing people to toggle open or closed which sections they wish to see (an added bonus reduces scrolling)




Red Arrow = Showing where you can find the toggle
Blue Arrow = Shows the "new post/unread" notifier for child forums
Orange arrow shows where to click to view the section in a closer to "old style manner"

A new Logo is being designed by a professional designer and should be ready within 24-48 hours.

the previous one was simply to large, it resized terrible on mobile devices and added over 10% to page size.

 

For post bit, the toggle allows those who don't want to read the whole "kitchen sink" of info with ever post to keep it closed.

This also reduces the load on the server (less queries per page load)

 

Richard thanks for the explanation. It makes all the difference knowing what's happening and why.

 

I was just looking at the front page and thinking: "Oooh, like that!"

Well done, Richard

Looking forward to seeing the new logo, too!

 

Will be fixing that, however why dont you use the smile tab?

 

and i managed to save your clouds

compressed the image .. about 25 times.lol

 

Aha!!! So, it was all Marley Farley's fault hogging the bandwidth

 

I use the drop-down as they are all on the one list, rather than having to page through them [as per the TAB] ... but there is a "pause" whilst it loads (never quite understood that, would have expected that they would have got themselves cached somehow ... but clearly not!)

 

Many thanks Richard ....i could have helped you know...

Seriously...job well done...especially the clouds

 

Just got back from a few days away and thought I would see what was happening on GC. WOW a whole new look will have to have a good look around and see what it's all about.