About two weeks ago, I got word from Phillip that he would be discontinuing Dumbrella Hosting, which has been a very good home to Real Life for the past 7 years. I cannot thank Phillip enough for all he has done for me, and it’s bittersweet that I’ve had to find new hosting. But find new hosting I have, as Real Life will be moving to a VPS at DreamHost… and if you’re reading this, then the nameservers have been switched over, and you’re seeing the brand new version of the site! (Looks familiar, don’t it?)
Since we’re migrating from a very custom service provided by DH over to a more open system based on WordPress with the Comic Easel plugin, it means I can finally start to stretch my legs a bit and use PHP… as well as spruce up some elements that have long needed sprucing. A few new things:
- The archives page has been updated to include all years up to 2013, with space for more. The most current year in the archives will only show months that have taken place (Like, it won’t show July until July starts)
- (Slightly) Enhanced strip navigation – you can now click on the comic itself to go to the next strip! Because BUTTONS ARE HARD.
- The social navigation box has been spruced up a bit, and now the “Like” button will like the Real Life facebook page, meaning you get any comic-related news and updates right there in your feed. The share, tweet, and G+ buttons all allow you to share a link TO THE CURRENT STRIP… meaning no more sharing the main “www.reallifecomics.com” or having to wait until a comic has gone into the archives in order to get a permalink.
- I’ve added strip transcriptions right to the page the comic displays on, meaning 1) the comics will now be accessible to screen readers, and 2) the comics will now be searchable. Granted, it’s going to take me a LONG time to get all 3000+ strips transcribed, but some of that was done in the past and I will be importing it. Even so, there’s still about 2500 comics not yet transcribed.
- I’ve also done a little CSS tweaking – the news posts on the homepage are now a little tilted here and there… I mean, they WERE tacked into the board by hand. No reason they should all be straight, right?
- THE COPYRIGHT AUTOMATICALLY UPDATES NOW. You can stop e-mailing me. :)
Feel free to kick the tires a bit and see if there’s anything that’s not working properly for you – it’s been 5 years since I designed this new version of the site, and I’ve come a long way with PHP and CSS since then, so I’m much more able to fix problems than I once was. Thanks for reading, and I hope you all enjoy the new site!
