Long post alert!!
For those who are interested in some technical details, I have spent approximately the last month rewriting the HTML for Garden.org. The last time I did a full rewrite was back in 2012, when I rewrote it to make it smartphone-friendly. I wrote it 100% from scratch and it worked very well in most browsers, but had some serious limitations.
This latest update moves us away from my custom solution over to a platform called bootstrap, which is a really nice set of open source CSS and Javascript libraries that allow really nice mobile web development. Moving Garden.org to this framework means that I'll have better tools to continue the development of the site. The web is always evolving, and it's important to continue to evolve our website along with the web. Moving to bootstrap enables me to do exactly that.
The left navigation bar will be removed, replaced with a navigation bar at the top of the page. There will be pulldowns for the major sections of the site (Articles / Plants Database / Community / Tools & Apps).
The look of the site will also be toned down a little bit, so that the actual content stands out better. We're experimenting with different header images. In the past we feature a daily new image in the banner at the top, and we will probably change to have that part only appear in the community part of the site. The rest of the site will have a more consistent (from day to day) look that doesn't change each day.
Other than the navigational parts of the site, much of the look won't change. The threads will remain looking almost the same as they do now. Same with the plants database. Over time we will likely improve the layouts of the various features of the site, but I don't foresee dramatic changes. I'm pretty happy with the way our threads look right now.
One really exciting thing is that I have developed a dashboard feature, where you can customize what you want to see, and where you want to see it. You drag and drop sections into columns. So right now you go to the homepage and you see the items that I chose for you, in the order that I chose them. After the redesign launch, you will be able to use the dashboard feature to only see exactly the new items you want to see.
For example, maybe you care more about seeing new photos, so you'd put the "Recently Uploaded Database Images" at the top-left of the page. Then "Recently Uploaded Multi-Plant Images" at the top right of the page. Fun random images can go on the right side. You get the idea.
I've been using the dashboard for a few days and I absolutely love it, and I know you all will, too. This site redesign has enabled me to develop this feature, and many more really nice ones like it are in store for the future. I'm actually quite excited to show you all what we have made for you.
