new Look Site – some site changes – and HELP!

new Look Site

I have a new theme for this site so it will look a bit different as of now. Admittedly it looks very, very similar. But…

The initial modifications I made to the new theme were to make it replicate what was there before plus adding in a few extra links on the homepage. I changed the font, I think, as well just because I could. Longer-term the new themes should enable me to better control some minor tweaks I would like to make, that said I’m generally happy with the site at the moment. The only two remaining areas that I believe I need to improve are

  • Mobile (AMP pages). My understanding is that there are quite significant changes being politely asked for by Google to make most sites based on AMP. ‘Politely’ means if you don’t do it your site will be penalised. So, I think I’ll do it.
  • Adverts. I have run some experiments now that I can better control what is displayed. My intention has been to deliver a usable experience with the most intrusive ad types removed. Thus I hope you can see fewer ads in the main body of text and no in-image ads and no or few Video ads. This has reduced my ad revenue by WELL OVER 50% of what it could be and that has been done solely to improve the reader experience. I appreciate the remaining ads are annoying and many people want a free ride experience, these are your options:
    • Free ride: Become a free follower of the site and login using a WordPress ID. This will give you a reduced ads experience where the ads should generally be of better visual quality and fewer in number. Perhaps you read this site regularly for entertainment and you also use the links to buy stuff. You realise I get a commission from those links and so you don’t feel you should pay extra and also be a subscriber…fair enough. Become a follower!
    • Become awesome. The only way to become awesome is to become a subscriber to the site. Really, there is no other way. This will give you an essentially ad-free experience and nothing shown should annoy you unless it’s about the Apple Watch, which I know annoys some people.
    • Ad blockers. Let’s say the government increased taxes by 5%. You could afford to pay it but you wouldn’t like it as you are being deprived of cash in your pocket. Well, when you use an ad blocker that is precisely what you are doing to me. “Do unto others“…for all you religious and humanist types, it literally is the Golden Rule. Anyway, I have tools to make it annoyingly difficult for you to view the site if you use an Ad Blocker and they will be progressively enabled.  Please follow or subscribe and turn off your ad blocker.
    • Only read the reviews. I tend to make all key reviews ad-free to everyone on the assumption that Ads might make you less likely to click one of my BUY buttons. Sometimes there are ads when I’ve just posted a review and it might take an hour for them to disappear…or I’ve forgotten to press the Ad Kill-Switch.

Special features

  • Copy and paste. Unless you are quite resourceful, only subscribers can copy the content from here and paste it anywhere else, including images. This hasn’t been done to annoy you but rather to make it harder for other sites to copy and monetise my content. I hope you understand.
  • Edit comments. Subscribers can edit their comments. I’m not sure how long after posting a comment you are able to edit it. Perhaps 5 minutes?
  • Supporter-only content. Various posts cannot now be viewed unless you are a subscriber, these tend to be ‘interesting’ in some way like a view of the Garmin Fenix 7 for 2021 or extremely time-consuming for me to create like the Apple Watch 6 ACCURACY results.
  • Free 5K plan. If you are a subscriber I’ll give you a free 12-week personalised 5k plan. It’s very flexible in how you implement it and is a good one (IMHO). It’s been proven to work over MANY years of tweaks and suitable for runners of 25:00/5k down to sub 18:00/5k (60-80% age-graded performance levels). There are lots of notes that come with it. You still have to run fast as it doesn’t wave a magic wand.

 

Help!

If you are an Apple Watch developer I’d be interested to speak with you, I have a project that is halfway through. in**@th*********.com

If you have any site suggestions or spot any bugs please let me know and I’ll try to fix them. It’s impossible for me to test changes to the site on every possible platform/browser.

 

Known Problems

I know there are problems with how IMAGE CAROUSELs are displayed. They look perfect to me on my desktop but often simply don’t work on AMP. This is a known wordpress/AMP bug.

 

 

 

Reader-Powered Content

This content is not sponsored. It’s mostly me behind the labour of love which is this site and I appreciate everyone who follows, subscribes or Buys Me A Coffee ❤️ Alternatively please buy the reviewed product from my partners. Thank you! FTC: Affiliate Disclosure: Links pay commission. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

6 thoughts on “new Look Site – some site changes – and HELP!

  1. The new theme looks slightly ‘cleaner’ to me, as a subscriber on Win 10 PC, iPad and iPhone. So far so good from a cast of one!

  2. On my Macbookpro 16inch, on Chrome, the menu is taking 2 lines which looks very weird. I have normal DPI settings

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