I spent a little time this week improving the site structure and fixing a few things that were broken.
First off, I tweaked the Photos index page to add a link to my Flickr photostream and another link to the Sam’s Story index page for people looking for pics of Sammy.
And speaking of which, I redid the Sam’s Story index page. Before I had maintained a separate weekly gallery of Sam’s Story pictures, with links to the individual blog entries for each week. Problem is, this had to all be done by hand, resulting in tedium and mistakes like broken links. Boo! To save time I set up Movable Type to automatically create an index of stories all on one page. I really liked having pictures on that page, but MT couldn’t recreate what I had been doing, so the compromise is to have one picture from each week accompany a short description of and a link to the blog entry for that week. See for yourself.
And speaking of which, having all 120 (and counting) Sam’s Stories plus 18 Pregnancy Update weeks all on one page with pictures from each week is kind of amazing. I spent a lot of time re-reading some of the early entries and looking at the pictures. Sam hardly looks like the same person. I mean, compare this picture to this one. While it takes a long time, you have to admit –that’s a neat trick she can do.
And speaking of which, I’ve also instituted something I call “The Sam’s Story Restoration Initiative.” In short, I’m fixing stuff that got broken in the last redesign and which I’ve never bothered to go back and fix. Shuffing the directory structure around made things easier for new content, but it resulted in missing images and broken links in some of the older entries. Because of the long tail of Sam’s Story and other categories, I’m fixing one a day until they’re all pristine.
And speaking of which, one of the first targets of my restoration was the Flash slideshow I put together for the 100th Sam’s Story entry. It’s pretty neat (well, I think so) but it got broken in the redesign and I woefully never got around to fixing it. Until now. Here, I’ll even repost the collage I created, just in case you’re the kind of person who only likes to click on images:
Enjoy.
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