Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!
Welcome to the all new oggybloggyogwr.com.
Apart from banner and widgets alterations, the blog has been fundamentally unchanged since January 2012, so a major reconstruction was long overdue.
It's been worked on-off since January, but I decided to launch it today - the blog's fourth birthday. I'd like to thank my brother Ross for helping with the technical aspects.
I hope you find the new layout crisper, easier to navigate and as easy to read on mobiles and tablets (which make up a growing proportion of views) as desktops and laptops.
It's probably worth going through the main changes.
Firstly, it looks better. Although I've done the opposite to Cardiff City - and would've preferred to stick to red - it didn't work so that's forced a colour scheme change (notwithstanding that blue and white are Bridgend colours anyway). As you can see, there's a complete re-brand with a poncy new logo too.
It's one last throw of the dice. I don't know how long I'm going to be doing this, but hopefully it'll leave a better legacy and I can go out on a high whenever that is.
I've de-cluttered the side column. There are now three tabs for : my blogroll, the post archive and popular posts over the last 30 days (a new addition). The good thing is they occupy the same space so you can just click from one to the other without endless scrolling.
Ditto for the main page. Because my posts tend to be long, it was a chore scrolling down to the bottom of the main page for just five posts. You don't have to do that anymore.
The labels, as they were, are gone. They've been replaced by the drop-down menu below the logo. Some labels were so broad – like "Economy" or "Health" – they were effectively useless. So I've relabelled everything to make it easier to find specifics. So for "Bridgend", you can now find posts specifically relating to Porthcawl, Bridgend Council etc; "Health" has been split into things like "hospitals", "public health", "ambulance service" etc.
The scrolling features box is a new addition providing links to pages and posts of interest. This way I can flag up a series of core posts or a single popular post and pin it there, ensuring it doesn't slip down the front page.
There's now a quick e-mail box at the bottom, along with Facebook page details and Twitter feeds.
There could be teething problems. Firstly, the scrolling box has a habit of "sticking" - I don't know if it's a browser problem or not. Secondly, although the url/address has changed, the RSS feed remains the same. It shouldn't affect feeds to/from other blogs, though I'll be keeping an eye on it. At the moment it looks to be working, though it seems to take longer to update the feed on other sites.
Oggy Bloggy Ogwr continues to go from strength to strength, with healthy readership levels for a site that deals primarily with the dull, dull world of Welsh politics.
There might be a new look, but the content will stay the same.
