A little bit more info
1) Re the tutorial & tech sections merger, any content in here isn't specifically targeted at anything broadband related.
I've also had several people mention over the years that because the site is broadband orientated they had assumed that it would be broadband tutorials that were in this section. It is easier for now just to merge the two because that frees up a tab for future development of something else.
2) I've mentioned before about the cookie compliance script and how I wasn't too happy with the old one. Because the cookie compliance laws relate to the EU it relied heavily on a free plugin (
geoPlugin) to detect the readers country of origin before deciding what to dish out to the reader. Whilst geoPlugin is very good, the demands put on their servers because of cookie compliance means that quite often run slow. Over the past few weeks it has not only had slowness but also some total downtime, which meant my scripts were running slow and some pages weren't able to completely load. If the script didn't load and the cookie notification didn't show then it could cause compliance issues. I'm now using a simpler script that is hosted on my own server so page loads should now be quicker and no more waiting for other scripts to load because the cookie compliance one cant complete. IMHO the new one is more user friendly because once you've read it thats it done and
no more green button for a third party site hanging around.
3) Because every single page has been re-uploaded and has had page changes then its highly likely that caching issues will occur that will cause some display oddness. Pressing Ctrl + F5 should clear this.
4) I've not yet updated the cookie script on the main front page. The reason for this will become clear soon - but that's a job for another day/night.
5) I'm aware the tab bar is currently off-center. There's a reason for this which is tied in with the above. I have a new CSS file which sorts it, but it will be uploaded at the same time the front page gets its update.
6) The ad banner script should now be more efficient and streamlined. When cookie legislation came in I attempted to remove use of a cookie and made use of math.random - which as the name implies chucked out ads in random. I've now gone back to using a session cookie to properly rotate ads. Session cookies are not bad, they disappear when you close your window and its only there so that certain ads rotate properly rather than chuck out random. No information is stored by me, its just keeping count of 1,2,3,4,5 to rotate certain approved ads. Once you close your browser window the cookie gets destroyed. More info about session cookies and our cookie policy
here.
7)I know that the tab menus for the forum and wiki also need to be redone, but nothing more from me now - Im off to bed as Ive worked completely through the night on >500 pages.
The offline prep work had been done in every spare min over the past few weeks, but theres certain things that can only be done when traffic is least likely to be affected - hence the all nighter.
