Post by PostmasterGS on Apr 6, 2015 21:19:55 GMT
I'm pleased to announce the public unveiling of version 2.0 of my website, GermanStamps.net. For those who've never visited, the website is my way of sharing my collection in digital form.
I first launched GermanStamps.net back in 2006, and it was time for a redesign. Version 1 of the website was powered by ExpressionEngine v1.7 content management system (CMS), which was good for its time, but was beginning to show its age. I lost the ability to upgrade the software when ExpressionEngine stopped supporting the photo gallery that I needed to run the photos, and the sheer volume of pages and photos was beginning to test the limits of the backend.
So, in early September of last year, I began construction of GermanStamps.net v2.0 using Wordpress as the CMS. I've put in over 500 hours on the rebuild, manually uploading photos of, and entering data on, 4,467 stamps (to date) and building 778 pages.
The complete rebuild allowed me to present a more modern-looking product, and implement some enhanced features to help the average collector using the site.
First, the new system allows me to better embed photos within the text. This allows much better explanation of the finer points of certain stamps.
Second, I was able to revamp the menu system so that no page is more than 2 clicks away. The only negative feedback I ever received about the original website was that the collapsible tree menu wasn't very user-friendly. It took numerous clicks to drill down to the lower levels, and it wasn't obvious to many users that the tree was how to navigate the site.
So, I switched to a more traditional menu system. The main categories are displayed in the main menu.
Once a category is selected, a submenu appears and allows navigation to the specific stamp or set.
Third, and most important, I was able to make wholesale changes to the search functions on the site. One of my goals was to make the content more useful to non-specialists who might just be trying to identify a stamp. So, there are now multiple ways to search.
There's the option to search the text of the pages. This wasn't possible with the original site.
A search will generate a list of all matching pages on the site.
There's also an option to search the individual stamps in the collection. This search now has many more options, including color, denomination, keyword, etc.
The results look something like this (I searched for color "pink" and keyword "yacht").
Feel free to stop by and check it out. Comments are always welcome. There's a feedback box at the bottom of every page.
I first launched GermanStamps.net back in 2006, and it was time for a redesign. Version 1 of the website was powered by ExpressionEngine v1.7 content management system (CMS), which was good for its time, but was beginning to show its age. I lost the ability to upgrade the software when ExpressionEngine stopped supporting the photo gallery that I needed to run the photos, and the sheer volume of pages and photos was beginning to test the limits of the backend.
So, in early September of last year, I began construction of GermanStamps.net v2.0 using Wordpress as the CMS. I've put in over 500 hours on the rebuild, manually uploading photos of, and entering data on, 4,467 stamps (to date) and building 778 pages.
The complete rebuild allowed me to present a more modern-looking product, and implement some enhanced features to help the average collector using the site.
First, the new system allows me to better embed photos within the text. This allows much better explanation of the finer points of certain stamps.
Second, I was able to revamp the menu system so that no page is more than 2 clicks away. The only negative feedback I ever received about the original website was that the collapsible tree menu wasn't very user-friendly. It took numerous clicks to drill down to the lower levels, and it wasn't obvious to many users that the tree was how to navigate the site.
So, I switched to a more traditional menu system. The main categories are displayed in the main menu.
Once a category is selected, a submenu appears and allows navigation to the specific stamp or set.
Third, and most important, I was able to make wholesale changes to the search functions on the site. One of my goals was to make the content more useful to non-specialists who might just be trying to identify a stamp. So, there are now multiple ways to search.
There's the option to search the text of the pages. This wasn't possible with the original site.
A search will generate a list of all matching pages on the site.
There's also an option to search the individual stamps in the collection. This search now has many more options, including color, denomination, keyword, etc.
The results look something like this (I searched for color "pink" and keyword "yacht").
Feel free to stop by and check it out. Comments are always welcome. There's a feedback box at the bottom of every page.
