« Archive of the web site updates and improvements over the years »

Changes to Ackadia made around 2004

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October 5th, 2004

Finished the RPG section are working on Anti-Spam. Getting there, slowly.
Also added a digital camera glossary to the photography section.

September 29th

Still a long way to go, but several section have now been revised to meet all the W3C WAI WCAG 1.0 guidelines to 'AAA' standard. Phew, try saying that when you are tipsy! Anyway, 'Books', 'Search', 'Popular' and 'Reference' amongst others are all done.

I also written another website for Joe in the form of DVDigiCam for a neat little pocket digital camcorder, 4 Megapixel camera he has. There's a nice guide to digital terminology I've written for them too. Really must remember to copy it to my photography section.

Drafted another layout for Elaine at Sketch!nks. Catchy name, eh.

I'll probably never remember to use it, but I have created a blog at Ackadia.blogspot.com. Don't expect great musings mind, I have enough on my plate trying to keep this place updated!

September 13th

Revised the headers and cleared out obsolete <b> and <i> tags.

I've also made an online wedding album for my niece Michelle and her husband, Rick.

September 3rd

I've tweaked the style sheets again to improve the look across all browsers
The 'popular' or 'general interest' section is finished and should now comply to 'AAA' standard for accessibility
I've also removed all links that open in a new window, again for improved usability.

August 24th

Revised accesskeys to be more intuitive for those that use them.
Added a sitemap and a privacy policy. Both are to be revised as the revision progresses.

August 22nd

The 'about' and 'contact' pages are all Triple 'A' rated for accessibility now.
Note: this excludes the CGI based guestbook (now removed).!

August 20th, 2004 ~ On Google page ranking...

Now there's a thing!
Never thought much about it before but someone ask for a reciprocal link, claiming a Google page rank of 4. I said OK anyway then went to look what they meant. I run a few on Ackadia and was shocked. Nil, nada, zip. Then I ran it on the old .html pages - I only tried a few, but I was - I am - as high as 6 in a few categories, perhaps higher. My point being, I know search engines hate redirects so I went to the trouble of individually adding a link from the old files to the new pages. Sure, it will take a while to cross over, but in doing so I have retained a rather decent Google ranking which I'd have otherwise lost.

August 20th, 2004

OK, biting the bullet, seeing as few others are, it seems! It will take me at least two months for this years revision, and that's best estimate. However, I don't ever want to go through this again, to I'm biting the bullet and doing it now...

Stage 1: Move all possible, applicable pages to 'AAA' compliant pages
Stage 2: Sort out a Privacy Policy
Stage 3: Revise all pages from XHTM 1.0 transitional to XHTML 1.1 (strict)
Stage 4: There is no stage 4. Woohoo! Oh, Content... Right you are!

August 12th, 2004

Still working on layout issues, but I've rehashed the style sheets to use "em" sizes going off a default body text size of "small" What this means in practical sense is if you use MS Internet Explorer the text resize option works. Personally, I'm of the option that if you want to (easily) resize webpages, the Opera browser is your best option by far as it's a simple matter of using + or - AND it resizes the graphics to keep the balance!

August 10th, 2004

I have just added Guestbook… (though I later removed this).

Giving thought to changes and improvements for constancy for now.

Meanwhile a re-index on our search engine shows:

Finished: Indexed 990 files (14,567KB) with 746,679 total terms.

Overall, with the change in graphics, bandwidth use has more than halved, which is great news for everyone. However, visitors seen to have dropped slightly, though this is picking up again. Hopefully it will settle when the changes have filtered through the internet's caches. Everyone I've asked so far has been very positive about the update, but please do let me know what you think too. Ta!

August 5th, 2004

Merged CSS files during cross-over
Replaced sub-directory index files with index.php version
Primary check and validation of pages and links with CSE HTML Validator
Created static redirect pages from html to php*

To do:

Replace links with WAI friendlier ones
Replace tables with css divisions
Accessibility keys page
Site map
Professional Privacy policy
maybe cookies to help improve the site ever more
...
Go through the lot yet again for AAA WAI validation.
...
Start thinking about 2005 !

August 1st, 2004

First stage complete - initial design.
Second stage complete - copy html over to php.

*Yes, PHP can get the name and redirect, but I want a number of archives left alone. The easiest route isn't always the best path, eh.
Also, friendlier to external links to Ackadia during links checks
Also better for Search Engine Optimisation. Besides no broken links, no redirects, which are frowned upon.

July 2004
Finally moving over to v6.00 code!
Given the size of Ackadia now it will probably take a few months to wholly move from html and tables to php and css, but you should see an immediate improvement in all pages, both in terms of overall look and, especially, downloading as pages are substantially smaller.
I've also added Google ads out of interest. If I decide against them, due to the simplicity that it PHP*, I can remove them drop every page in under a minute. Needless to say this passes across to future revisions
* Yes, yes, shtml has something equivalent, yes, I can pull pages from asp etc... ... but I like php!

Out with the old, in with the new!
News, like everything else is on hold while I update Ackadia's design...
If will take a good month to fully move over though the first, primarily change to .php will be done in a week or so. Besides adding (hopefully) unobtrusive adverts, the overall result will move smoother, smaller pages that load faster and even easier to navigate.

Most of the links will be broken until I finish the update, but if you are reading this latest entry, you can already see it.

The next major changes after this are to make all the pages 'AAA WAI' - Triple A web accessible rating so even blind readers will be comfortable visiting us.
That and a truly massive IT database aimed at computer dealers, vendors and resellers, but accessible to all.

June 2004
Nothing major the past few months, but a number of pages have been updated.

General:
Advert, TV and movie songs and theme titles

Web Design:
I've just added a page on images and alignment and an starting on the CSS tutorial.

As soon as that's done I'll begin my annual update of Ackadia and move it all to PHP, I think.
I've a few other projects in mind but I'll keep quiet until I've decided on the order.

January 2004
Last re-index for our search engine gave us these results:
Finished: Indexed 492 files (11,164KB) with 553,810 total terms.
Total run time: 3 minutes 7 seconds

~ I've finally put in a decent Forum!

I was going to wait until I was happy with it but I've had a commercial forum for six months and not released it. Anyway, for now it's mostly a straight install of phpBB until I get a minute to reconfigure the style and setup, but it is live and ready for users.
Feel free to post any thoughts, queries or requests for help.
Also developing a number of other sites for myself, friends and acquaintances...
These can be found under HTML on the By Ackadia page