Deeker's Message of the Week

June 23, 2002

Like a dirty diaper, a web page needs to be changed every now and then, well. maybe more often for the former. I have made several changes, actually, namely to give the site a little bit different look, but more importantly, to reorganize it and to make navigating the site easier. This site has evolved greatly in the past few years, and while the stories are and will continue to be the primary feature of this site, it has expanded to include extensive surveys and diaper sighting reports.

The biggest change I made was to the front page. The old interface used for linking into the various sections of the site is entirely graphical. It's cute and it's colorful, but it's not easy to modify when changes need to be made. This is one reason why I added banners to the most frequently visited pages (and so I could also promote the new sections). The new interface uses buttons along with a brief description of each section. It may not be as pretty, but it does make things much easier for me to add or delete sections. A lot of you told me that you liked the design of the front page, so I still have it posted for those who want to look at it.

Other changes include:

• New buttons:The buttons used before were blue, designed to blend in with the blue color scheme used throughout this site. Some people indicated to me that these were difficult to read because the text on the buttons is also blue. The new buttons are dark red with yellow text, which makes them easier to see.
• Links to all sections more readily available:Before these changes were put in place the links to other pages at the bottom of each page varied. Usually there was a link back to the main page and a few relevant links (e.g. links to other story categories on the different story section pages). This has been standardized so that now on most pages every section on this site is just one mouse click away.
• Miscellaneous section revamped, new Articles section created:The miscellaneous section has become more or less a "catch-all" for any item on this site that is not sufficiently represented by similar items to warrant the creation of a dedicated section for it. Since several articles-- written items that are not stories-- were listed in Miscellaneous I decided to create an "Articles" section for them. More forthcoming articles are being planned for inclusion in this newly created section, and submissions are welcome.
• Preambles: Many sections of this site have included a preamble (pre- ramble, perhaps), an introductory passage. Quite honestly, I don't know who, if anyone, reads these. I imagine first-time visitors may read them, or they may just skim over them. Since frequent visitors likely don't read the preambles, but yet still have to skip past them every time they want to view a page with a preamble on it, I decided to relegate these introductory statements to their own pages so that each section's contents are more readily accessible.
• Drawings: While I have made my Diaper Boy Drawings available upon request for a few months now and have posted a few samples, this section has likely remained unknown to some, perhaps a majority, of the visitors. Because of the limitations that were imposed on this site by using a difficult-to-modify graphical interface on the front page (as opposed to the text-based interface, which is easier to edit) the only place I had links to this section were in my Messages of the Week. As this is now a regular section of the site it is now included in the front page's listing.
• Links no longer shown with ../Icons:This section has come full circle, more or less, in terms of how it has been presented. In the beginning the links were in a plain list, nothing fancy. I decided to spruce it up and add some color, so I took ../Icons, banners, etc. from these web sites and included them with their respective links. This also made it easier for me to remember what each site looked like without going to it each time. While this may have looked pretty and decorative, it also increased the load time for the links page, which was especially bothersome for dial-up users. In consideration for those with slower connect speeds and for those who really didn't care to see the ../Icons I created a links page without the ../Icons and gave users a choice between the two pages. This created twice as much work for me every time I added or deleted links (not to mention having to remember to delete the icon file after it is no longer needed), which is one reason I have been admittedly slow about adding links when requests are received. With all this in mind the links page is once again back to the way it was to start with, plain and simple.

  I hope these changes will make the site easier to use. Please let me know if you find any broken links or missing graphics that may have been created in the process of this overhaul.

  Top Ten Story Downloads for Week of 06/16/02 to 06/22/02

  Rank	Title	Section	Hits
  1	My Neighbor	Contributed Stories	1489
  2	Johnny	True Accounts	936
  3	Ryan	True Accounts	915
  4	Dave #3	True Accounts	900
  5	Tim #2	True Accounts	843
  6	Trial of Timmy Walker	Contributed Stories	657
  7	Timmy's Dream Comes True	Archived Stories	365
  8	Baby Teenager	Contributed Stories	343
  9*	Forever in Diapers, Parts 81-90	Deeker's Stories	306
  9*	Gary #2	True Account	306
  10	Baby_B.txt	True Account	292

  *Tie

  * * * * *

  Stay happy and thickly diapered!

  

  Other Messages of the Week

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