The New Era for RENDY'S BLOG, Yet Again!

"I'm sorry, the old RENDY'S BLOG can't come to the phone right now."

Ladies and gentlemen, after years of blogging, I present you the new RENDY'S BLOG, now with improved new look and better coloring, plus an additional feature to search for my posts! I know that I advertised this as "3.0." but looking back, I believe I am now at "4.1." - Super Falcon Punch was the 1.0., this blog was founded with this new url as the 2.0., then came GARAGE-R which made it 3.0., and finally the re-designed RENDY'S BLOG which made it 4.0., these changes vs. the first 4.0. justified the "4.1." in its name, which I would rather use than 5.0..

It's been a while that I re-designed this site since transitioning from GARAGE-R days, thoughts of re-designing came since last Sunday amidst my continuation of my final paper work where I wanted to create a dark-themed style in a more proper way, removing the background picture and the header image I previously had which could affect loading times. I proceeded working on this on Monday morning, editing the CSS and the layout to fit my vision of the re-design.

Although this is far from complete, the design is now much better compared to the old one. The site is now wider, has more curated color, and not to mention a slight color change on the bottom borders for post titles and section titles on the right hand side, which should give more edge and variety. The removal of the background picture also improves the readability of the body text in all sections.

But in case you missed it, the navigation bar has a new friend above it: the search bar! It is now possible to search for a particular content based on the search query by entering your keyword and press the Enter key when you're done. It's all pretty much self-explanatory for the search function, and yes, it could be better, but for now it's a good start. To top it off, this search bar has a lighter shade background color to create a glossy gradient effect on the navigation bar in general. I initially wanted a red border to separate both navigation bars, but the result wasn't satisfactory, but it's ended up as the search bar's text field.

Another (minor) addition to the tags navigation is the "fandoms" tag along with the existing ones, which officiates a new topic I would explore since my post about Isak and Even fandom's venture on a polling competition. The posts under this tag might be more of a personal take of fandom activities like polling competitions or the fandom culture in general in contrast to what I post on my other blog, and perhaps do not overlap with television (and perhaps movie) stuffs should I post one (e.g., non-polling award shows, show/movie review, character tribute). Even if there might be reposts from my other blog, I'll try to make it less copy-paste as possible. Another set of tags will come soon as time passes.

Search bar goals – the AJV1 Beta site is my inspiration for the addition of the search bar.

The decision to add the search bar is inspired by one particular site: the AJV1 Beta, site of one of my favorite content creators Adam Johnson, best known for his stop motion works in the past and is currently promoting wrestling culture and into gaming through the YouTube channel Armbar Arcade (I recommend you readers to subscribe to this channel! They have funny playthroughs!). I was hoping to implement not only the search bar function his site has but also the way the navigation bar works when you scroll the site for the sake of better User Experience (UX), but right now the time constraints do not make the work for this replication possible, but I would love to do it someday!

Apart from that, nothing much has changed, though the next plan in my to-do list is to improve the "My Networks" part you can see on the upper-right hand side from the start of the article. I would plan going for the same style as my LiveJournal blog where there are only social media icons acting as the link to the social media in question. In the meantime, there's always more to come...

~[R]