You may have noticed that the Joyful ‘toons website looks quite a bit different. Here’s an explanation of why it changed, and what’s new about the website. I should mention that I’m no web designer, I don’t know much about html or css, but I’ve managed to get along by reading books and websites on the subject.
I first built the website back in 2007 using Adobe GoLive 5, which I later upgraded to GoLive CS2. Adobe no longer supports GoLive, replacing it with DreamWeaver. When my old Apple Macintosh G4 died a while back, I replaced it with a newer Apple iMac. Because the new computer uses an Intel processor chip, I was no longer able to run GoLive. So, I either needed to spend the money to get DreamWeaver, or find another solution.
In 2009 I added a blog page to my website using WordPress. Eventually I realized that I could use WordPress to design my entire website. It is fairly user friendly, up-to-date, and best of all, it’s free. So, I have designed a new website using WordPress. There are a lot of ways to customize a website using WordPress, and as I learn more about it, I’m sure I will be taking advantage of those options.
There are several things about the new website that I think are improvements over the old website. The Home and Blog pages are still pretty much the same as they were before, but now there is a sidebar at the right side of the page. Collected in this sidebar are several elements that were previously scattered throughout the site. Here you’ll find links to my Facebook and Twitter pages, a link to my Zazzle store, a link to my PayPal donations page, a form to send me an email, a form to subscribe to the email list, and links to other websites that I like.
There’s a new feature at the top of the sidebar that I’m really excited about: a search bar. I’m sure you’re familiar with this: you enter a keyword and click search and the results will appear on the page. The best thing about this is that you can search keywords that are assigned to the cartoon image files. So, if you want to see if there’s a cartoon for a certain Bible verse, enter the scripture reference in the search field. Maybe you’re looking for a cartoon that had a boat in it, enter boat in the search field. Or perhaps you need a cartoon for Christmas, just search Christmas. This should make it a lot easier to find a particular cartoon.
The old Info page has been replaced by two new pages: FAQ and About. The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions, in case you didn’t know) page has a lot of the same information that was on the old Info page, but now arranged as questions and answers. See a question that you would’ve asked? – click on it to reveal the answer. Most of the questions and answers are about how to use the cartoons. The About page has some background about me and how I started drawing the cartoons.
The ‘toons page has changed quite a bit, and I think it’s an improvement over the previous page. You can select either NIV or KJV from the ‘toons drop down menu. I’ll be adding Spanish and Portuguese ‘toons pages in the future. The ‘toons pages now have a gallery of thumbnail images of all the cartoons. Hover your mouse over the thumbnail image to see the title and Bible verse for each cartoon. You can view the full size cartoons in one of two ways. First, you can click the Show as Slideshow link to view the cartoons in a slideshow. The slideshow scrolls through all of the cartoons automatically, or you can click on the image to advance to the next cartoon. Currently, I don’t have a way to show the comment with each cartoon on the slideshow. The second way to view the cartoons is to click on a thumnail from the image gallery. This will open up an image browser. Click on the arrows to advance to the next cartoon, or to go back to the previous cartoon. The image browser does show the comment with each cartoon. Currently, the ‘toons pages only have a small percentage of the cartoons. It’s going to take a while to add all of the 170+ cartoons, as I am adding the search keywords to each file as I go.
So that’s it. I hope you like the new website.