Welcome to The Coaster Critic’s Blog 4.0
As the blog enters it’s fourth year, I figured I’d give it a facelift. Welcome to The Coaster Critic’s Blog 4.0! I spend my winters (the theme park off-season) launching new projects like Theme Park Syndicate and on redesigns like this one.
The changes to the site aren’t as big as the last redesign a year ago, but there are a few beyond just the new look. The featured content section on the home page will allow me to showcase several posts where I could only highlight one post at a time before.
All throughout the site you’ll notice that rather than full posts, there are excerpts with thumbnails. It’s going to take me a while to generate thumbnails for all of my posts, but the summaries will allow more content per page with less scrolling. There may be a few other little quirks I’ll be working out over the next few weeks, but for the most part, the new site is ready to go. Now I can get back to blogging!
Subscribe to The Coaster Critic’s Blog
Since I’m working on adding my subscription widget back to the sidebar, here are two ways that you can subscribe:
Subscribe Via Email:
Subscribe Via an RSS Reader:
Use my RSS feed url to subscribe to the blog via your favorite RSS feed reader, like NetVibes, My Yahoo!, or Google: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheCoasterCritic
What’s Your Take?
What do you think of the look? Got any feedback or suggestions? Leave a comment below.
January 11, 2010 at 19:22
Great new look! Love it, and same thing with CFC.
January 11, 2010 at 22:59
My computer seemed to lag whenever I get on your site. Now, no lag. Is it just coincidence, or did you fix some bugs in the site, CC?
January 11, 2010 at 23:51
The new look is excellent – frontpage in particular is much easier to navigate and I like the thumbnails. Congratulations!
January 12, 2010 at 12:39
Woah, Nice Site! Looks like you`ve gone to a lot of parks.
January 16, 2010 at 02:58
Thanks
We've been to quite a few – but still dozens out there left to try…
January 12, 2010 at 02:08
I checked this out at 5:30 a.m. and was groggy enough that I thought I made a mistake. (Or maybe I was dreaming!) I had me a cup of caffeinated tea and a shower while the computer re-booted and sure enough, things still looked completely different! Better yet, I actually NOTICED that you posted about the site changes. I guess I should stick to checking the site later in the day when I'm fully awake. The still sleepy me likes the changes, though. I especially like the "You might also like" section of thumbnails.
January 12, 2010 at 02:54
Yeah, it helps you find othger posts you`d otherwise never find. CFC and Judy are right, It feels even faster!
January 12, 2010 at 21:02
I'm glad to hear that the site's loading faster. I know that the home page definitely will as your browser won't have to load all of those entire posts and videos. I'm not sure what would make the rest of it run faster, but again that's great to hear.
Thanks for all of the feedback.
January 13, 2010 at 03:26
yeah, great site… but i've never had the loading probs
January 13, 2010 at 12:28
A coaster friend of mine wants to sign up to get email notification whenever a new topic is posted on the blogsite. I can't find where you go to do that on the new page layout. Can anyone help?
January 13, 2010 at 17:36
I wasn't able to add my subscription widget to the new site's sidebar. While I'm working on an alternate solution, I've added an email subscription box and a link to my RSS feed url to this post.
January 13, 2010 at 13:24
Go to the Coaster Critic`s Blog Version 2.0 post and find the "suscribe" thing. follow the dirrections from there, bacause i`ve never tried. There used to be a little "suscribe" thing on the sidebar, but it dissapered when CC gave the site a new look.
January 13, 2010 at 16:46
Joel, I know you recently went from posting the last 5 "recent comments" to 10, but these guys are posting way too fast for me to keep up! Is there a better way for me to make sure I don't miss out on any comments? Since I can't ride any coasters for a month or two, I'm counting on these discussions to keep me sane for the winter! I've noticed that other coaster-related sites seem to be dead (or at least in hibernation) recently, so congratulations on continuing to give us all the "fix" we need. I like your other sites, but the blogsite is still my favorite!
January 13, 2010 at 17:33
Gotcha covered Judy. Just click this link and enter your email address. I just set it up, but you should get an email every time a comment is submitted. Your email might get a little full, but it's the only way that I can think of that you won't miss a comment.
January 14, 2010 at 18:43
I'm in! Go ahead and clog my email mailbox, guys. By the way, are there any other females that visit this site?
January 16, 2010 at 05:01
Carolinagirl, nobody realy says.
January 16, 2010 at 08:55
well, not me!
January 14, 2010 at 17:07
Thanks for the subscribe thing, very handy.
January 16, 2010 at 20:47
I noticed that some of my posts that are older than a year (when I switched from Blogger to WordPress) have some formatting issues. I'm going through them and will be cleaning them up over time. Please pardon their appearance.
Thanks!