New look and feel with great new features

The Style Update

Over the course of the last 2 weeks, the development of this website has taken a turn for the better. As the new chart watch functions and dashboard functions were being implemented, a major realization was made. The further along the development of this site gets, the more work it will take to make this site look the way it is supposed to look. As a result, the development took a turn to focus one the site’s frontend styling so it is ready for responsive design.

New Look and Feel
The biggest and most important overhaul of this week’s update was restyling the entire site. There was nothing wrong with the old style’s of the site, but it looked unprofessional and was not responsive ready. The goal of this new layout is to make it look and feel more like a news website. Users will feel like they can trust and possibly rely on the information provided by this site if it looks like a trustworthy and functional news site. With this style overhaul there are new advantages to the site’s functions. In the previous version of the site there were only 3 sections of the site body (not including the header and footer). Now, there are 5 sections with a more innovative content feed system.

New Article Display Format
Articles used to be displayed with the first 250 characters of the article below them. Although this was a good way to tease articles, it did not look good and often would not preview what the user was about to read. Now, the articles caption is displayed under the title in the content feeds and acts as the articles sub-heading or hook. This means that the captions will now have to be written with the intention of grabbing the reader’s attention.

Dynamic Content Feeds
Each page now consists of 4 - 5 sections that are fed dynamic content rather than 1 central feed in the center. The five sections include the pre-content feed (full-width at the top), primary and secondary sidebar feeds (sometimes the primary sidebar is not displayed), and the upper and lower content feeds. The pre-content feed will display custom page headers set in the dashboard, the slideshow (on the homepage), and advertisements. The primary and secondary sidebars display smaller content feeds such as trending posts, related posts, recent posts, and sub-navigation depending on which page the user is accessing. The primary side bar (on the left side of the page) will display a list of recent broadcasts, trending news, and advertisements when the user is on the homepage. However, the primary sidebar does not exist on any other page as of right now. The secondary sidebar (on the right side of the page) dynamically displays modules depending on the page currently being viewed. The upper feed sits between the sidebars and displays the main content currently being viewed. The lower feed display categorical content and takes up the full width of the page.

New Home Page Layout
The homepage now features every section of the site as an overall site preview. The left sidebar will eventually show recent broadcasts then trending posts and an advertisement. The first main content panel shows featured posts that are set in the admin dashboard. The second panel is a list of the 12 (or more) most recent news articles. The third panel display the most recent comparative analysis and chart setups from the chart watch section. Then there are many possibilities for the panel below that one. For now It will show the most recent library articles. The right side bar will display the 5 (or more) most recent investing posts and eventually the top 5 most liked/commented posts.

New Image Gallery
Adding images to site elements was very inconvenient with the old gallery sidebar, and it had many limitations in it’s current state. Now, the gallery widget has been replaced by the new and more advanced image gallery popup. Click “Open Image Gallery” in any of the admin pages and the Image Gallery Popup will open with a list of all available images. You can copy the image link by clicking the “Copy Link” button, delete unwanted images by clicking the “x”, and you can add images right to a post by clicking “Add Image.” As of right now, the add image button only works when you click “Add Image from Gallery” when creating a new post or editing an old post. Now, images are uploaded via the Upload tab in the image gallery rather than within the post form body. As the rest of the admin functions are fixed to work with the layout, the add image button will be more useful for adding images to inputs such as for the slide show and adding images to article body.

Responsive Styles
The main purpose of this styling update is to prepare for making this site compatible with mobile devices. Right now, the site supports the following screen widths: 1440+px, 1280px, and 1024px.
However, these responsive styles are not supported on any admin-level pages.


Small fixes

• Fixed the 404 and 403 pages - now they do not redirect.
• Streamlined security checks to match 3 parameters in a consistent fashion.
• Added image previews to new-post and edit-post page.
• Made the chart checker into a popup.
• Removed depreciated functions.