Talossa.com (http://talossa.com), the Kingdom's primary website, has had a major face-lift so that we can integrate the site with our social media efforts.
A new template has been installed, which provides more 'real estate space' by widening the width of the overall site design on desktop devices and providing a new 3-column layout. Many elements from before have been retained so that the overall impact of these changes isn't too drastic - such as the red gradient style header bar, the top bar navigation layout and overall sitemap.
What changes have been made?
- The choppy animation bug of the top navigation bar that affected some users has been fixed.
- New 3-column layout.
- The new left column provides new space to integrate our social media elements. The top of the column contains icon links leading to the Kingdom's official Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages and there is room for more if ever needed. These social links are also featured in a new site footer.
- A Facebook Page widget has been installed on this column providing the ability for site visitors to like our Facebook page without being on Facebook itself. It also provides another hyperlink to the Facebook page.
- The next thing on the new 'social column' is a widget that displays the recent Tweets made by the Kingdom's Twitter account. This is currently set to display the 3 most recent tweets. It also provides links to 'heart' (like) our tweets, retweet and visit our Twitter page.
- Next on this column is a blog widget displaying L'Chronica posts and provides easier navigation and better display of the blog than we had previously.
- The right hand side bar contains the same elements that it did before (links to Witt, Wiki, etc), however these links have all been revamped into graphical displays.
- All site content except the front page remains the same. The front page content has been expanded to include quotes from a previous "Why do I love Talossa?" campaign and some additional paragraphs have been added, which were ripped from the "become a citizen" page so that the front landing page of the website has more of a 'call to action' power.
- The copyright notice has been moved to a dedicated spot on the footer area.
- The footer area features a new 'scroll to top' button.
THE WEBSITE IS NOW FULLY MOBILE RESPONSIVEThis new site template will adapt it's layout depending on the device being used to access it, meaning a better experience on mobile devices. The top bar navigation of the previous layout had animated drop downs, which made using the site on mobile 100% impossible for myself, for example. The site will now only feature the animated drop downs on devices that supports them and on mobiles the menus will (should) switch to 'hamburger' menus with full click/press functionality.
As said before, the new layout has freed up a lot of 'real estate space', which has allowed us to marry our social media stuff with our main site. However, this extra real estate will also serve a future purpose when we fully launch the new Talossan Labour Exchange/ Job Centre pages and the upcoming New and Prospective Citizen's induction courses.
If you encounter any problems or bugs please report them to the Ministry of Stuff, preferably by posting in 'The Webspace' sub-forum of Wittenberg.
Enjoy, and please share your feedback and comments.