Finish Home and background img

[abettermap]

Home-specific

• [x] finalize/decide on video's placement and size
• [x] wire up video via wp. hardcoded currently.
• [x] finalize feat card layout (should be reusable or nearly so for other pages using it)
• [x] finalize "recent" section. 3 cols max? with title, date, except? w/title linkable? if card layout, use same as other cards' styles, e.g. on Latest
• [x] Don't hardcode showcase totals

bg image pattern

• [x] needs to be controllable via wp, e.g. in Site-wide Settings of Front page. using pattern instead

[abettermap]

@rperlin-ela not super sure what to do with the Recent Posts list (or really the Home page in general, ha). the posts just get lost in the Read More sea with the Featured's:

there's probably a better approach but i'm just wondering:

1. how many posts i should expect to show?
2. how different do these cards need to be from the Featured's?
3. is there anything else that will go in this section? should we resurrect the FB feed? i tried it again but i'm still not feeling it any more than before, it just looks a little tacky.
4. should i expect shorter excerpts for the Recent's? currently i think they are using the default WP-generated excerpt (if i did it right, the true Excerpt-Excerpt field should be hidden from the wp admin and only our custom Excerpt remains, albeit with the same name)

ignore the background haha, i just got sick of looking at a blurry map.

[abettermap]

how about something like this to break up the Cardy McReadmoreage? it's pretty cliche but looks aight IMO:

the only thing is i'd like to... not add 15 more things for you to customize in WP 🤷‍♂️ So, if you're into this (i'm calling it a "Showcase"), let me know these things which 3-4 things to use (aka pages to link to) with this info for each:

1. which icon from our old friend, react-icons
2. title. if we use langs and projects though, i can get the count dynamically of course.
3. body text
4. ??? although i'd say that's enough

if we do roll with Showcase, let me know if anything sucks about the colors, font, etc. I've been looking at it too long, can't tell. i know the site's background image will dictate a lot of the colors here though.

[rperlin-ela]

Some way of distinguishing Featureds from Recent Updates visually a bit would be good. Don't need to be super-different but maybe just different enough so that people can tell at a glance that there's some distinction. And it looks like the Showcase will definitely help break things up.

I think two posts might be sufficient, went ahead and changed it in WP, but if having 3 gets us a different-shaped card and something more distinct from the Featureds, then let's go with 3.

Shorter excerpts for Recent Updates would also be fine, maybe half the length?

Still on the fence about FB feed, but if it helps with the design of Home then definitely worth trying

The Showcase is really not half bad as is, even down to the icons, not sure I'd change anything!

[abettermap]

Some way of distinguishing Featureds from Recent Updates visually a bit would be good. Don't need to be super-different but maybe just different enough so that people can tell at a glance that there's some distinction. And it looks like the Showcase will definitely help break things up.

indeed. the Featured's have an image and a gradient title. seems distinctionized enough to me, esp. w/the showcase buffering the two worlds.

I think two posts might be sufficient, went ahead and changed it in WP, but if having 3 gets us a different-shaped card and something more distinct from the Featureds, then let's go with 3.

i'd like to not have a sixth variation of card/list things if that's ok with you. we'd have:

1. featured cards
2. regular cards
3. showcase items
4. new card thing for literally just the 2-3 Recent Posts cards
5. projects landing cards
6. lang landing cards (they're unique enough to count as different)

i threw in the showcase as kind of bonus + attempt to make Home better, but my intent from the scope's onset was like... 2 card types, 3 max. So, Hard No on a sixth card type unless there's a mega need.

Shorter excerpts for Recent Updates would also be fine, maybe half the length?

k, you're driving the WP truck so all you!

Still on the fence about FB feed, but if it helps with the design of Home then definitely worth trying

i think it's more about whether or not it's useful to you. there's no way to control FB's styles so IMO it makes the design worse since it doesn't match the rest of the page. plus we probably want users to stay on the site longer, and an fb feed won't help with that.

The Showcase is really not half bad as is, even down to the icons, not sure I'd change anything!

cool, i'll run with it. the totals will take some work though, so it might have to wait until the weekend. And the colors may change for any limbo floaters w/o a white BG like this, depending what you and Dan think about site bg image.

btw this will be a one-column vertical layout from wide phones and down (as will the Featureds, once i fix it).

[abettermap]

and just make sure you don't get a second Mission, otherwise Future Jason will have to fix that hardcoded 1

😄

[rperlin-ela]

Ok, all sounds and looks good. Wasn't calling for another card type, just reacting to what I saw in your screenshot above, where it looked like the card shape for Recent Updates was already different in a good way. But with Showcase I think the problem will go away anyway. I'll assume I can go freely back and forth between 2 and 3 Updates and that the layout can handle it. I put excerpts for the last two Recent Updates, in case we want to make sure they're coming through.

[abettermap]

cool, looking good. and i went with side-by-side icon and inner content for showcase on ipad, it looked weird stacked (but i used stacked on phone-ish):

I'll assume I can go freely back and forth between 2 and 3 Updates and that the layout can handle it.

as free as the day is long. but it'll wrap at 3 is all (same layout as other card lists with 2 columns). i tried 3 in a line and sometimes it was ok but it really depends on the size of the summary/excerpt/whatever.

2 is a safe bet though, from pretty much ipad portrait and up.

[rperlin-ela]

Maybe let's change "In the News" to "Introducing ELA". I'm envisioning this ultimately as a more of an intro video we'll make ourselves.

Question re: leather-nunchuk: by chance is there any simple way to make the text under the hero (e.g. "Founded in 2010..." on Home) a little more readable against the background?

Tiny question re: System-Wide Systems > Logo (in WP): old logo is there but new logo is appearing fine?

[abettermap]

No problem on the video heading. I figured my In The News wouldn't hold up but was worth a try!

Hard to explain but logo is hardcoded. I know we discussed giving you the WP flexibility, so let me know if that's an issue, but I figured the logo wouldn't change too often. If it's cool then let's axe the current WP setting to avoid confusion.

Agreed on hero summary text. There are a few ways to increase contrast:

• Use lighter text. Doesn't get any lighter than white though! ⛄
• Add dark text shadows on those words. This is how I got the hero title to stand out, BUT in my experience it doesn't work well with small font sizes because the characters overlap with the shadows of neighboring characters. And if I make the shadow smaller or lighter, then... can't see it.
• Make the page background overlay darker, or have it transition to dark sooner. This will help but then the leather nunchucks limelight will fade.

That last option is probably the best tho so I'll play with it this weekend, because yeah it's tough to read on taller screens! iPhone no problem because the overlay transition happens sooner (it's a percentage of the total screen height).

Ahhh that's probably it. I'll just make the transition a bit different for a couple different screen sizes. It won't be perfect because the summary length changes, so I'll just shoot for Home looking good across the board based on the current text. I know that's kinda fragile but that's all I've got 🤷