Well this took a bit longer than I hoped. Welcome to Vanilla Days 2. Back in Febuary 2007 I rebranded the site and called it Vanilla Days. Hilariously I only spent a month working on that design back then. This one has taken 5 months.
So whats new?
- + All new design based on Wu Wei theme. I say based on but it looks so different I should just call it my own theme. Anyway, new design. Bigger thumbnails across the site. White borders on 95% of images are gone so they sit better in the black viewing frame. (Rounded corners don’t work in IE.)
- + Click left hand side of image to go back. Click right hand side to go forward. (Always wanted this. Took a while to write regex for 6 yrs of content)
- + <3 feature. Top right hand side theres a heart, a number and a plus sign. Its similar to Facebook’s “Like”. If you like a photo click the plus sign. Thats all there is to it. Sometimes you’ll see a photo and like it but won’t want to write things. So you can simply <3 it.
- + Search from anywhere. Search available on every page so you can easily get around the site.
- + Sign in with Facebook or Twitter. Saves you having to enter your name etc.
- + EXIF info. If its in the image the EXIF info will appear just below it to the right.
- + Tags. Old categories are now tags. Basically the same thing.
- + Categories. This is still unfinished. Categories are now smaller more refined galleries of about 20 images. Some of the old categories had hundreds of images, and they still do as tags. I wanted to have a way of showing off the best of the best. So when I finish it the galleries feature will launch. Its an easier way of getting to the best photos on the site.
- + Buy print, card, license. Ok so this has been around for a few months now but I wanted to highlight it anyway. Much easier to buy a print or even license a photo now. Just click the button and follow the instructions. Its available on almost every photo.
- + Subscribe to comments. You can subscribe via email so you get notified of responses on photos.
It may not seem like much but it has taken a while mainly because I’m such a perfectionist. Sometime after Xmas I restarted the entire thing and scrapped the design I had spent a while on. But then I only plan to do this every few years so its good to spend time getting it right now.
Why this image? Its a cliche for sure and I’ve taken better. Its also a sign of change. Mann Island looked like this back in April 2007. Its changed quite a lot. The warehouses are gone. That dock has gone. The buildings behind the warehouses where you could buy a Porsche have gone. That view has been hidden away behind the new development there. Liverpool is always changing and I hope to continue documenting that change here on this site. Hopefully this redesign will be better received than the destruction of that view 😉
