After eight years with only running changes, by 2016 the Midwest 356 Club web site was looking a bit dated and running on a less than up-to-date chassis.  So we have reworked it from the ground up to have a more contemporary look, better road manners and a modern technical architecture.  It's kind of like what Porsche did in 1965, except that in this case what has been replaced will not be remembered as a classic.

Here is a closer look at what has changed.



The first thing you will have noticed is that the picture on the home page has expanded to fill the entire window.  As before, the image you see on the home page will be selected from a collection we maintain, and the selection will change each time you refresh or revisit the page.  Because the text is now superimposed on the image, only images that allow the text to be legible will be used from now on.  (All the old images are still available to view, stored as a past event in 2015.)

The navigation menu for the site, which used to be on the left side of the page, now occupies a bar of black buttons across the top  When viewed on a computer screen, there are seven buttons:  one showing the club logo and six containing text.  You may recall that the old site menu contained many items, 18 to be exact.  The new one gets by with seven by using submenus.  Notice that the menu buttons for Member Pages, Resources, and Club Info all have a little arrow after their text.  That means they contain submenus that will appear when they are selected:







This arrangement allows the items you are likely to use most frequently to appear in the main menu bar, keeping it uncluttered while making all the other items easily accessible in submenus.  An additional benefit is that the menu does not disappear when you scroll down the page!

On smaller devices such as phones, the text buttons are replaced by a single button on the right showing three white bars, which when tapped causes the text buttons to appear below it in a vertical array:

On any device, the upper-left button with the Club logo will always be visible and will always return you to the site's home page.

For any tech nerds out there who may be interested, this behavior is all handled seamlessly behind the scenes by a software library called Bootstrap, which allows each page to adapt its presentation to the size of the screen being used.

The content of the non-home pages is unchanged from the old site, with a few formatting changes, most of which are inconspicuous.  The only page that has changed at all radically is the one listing past club events.  At present, that list has reached 45 items over the span of 12 years.  That's too long a list to comb through to find an event, so we have now grouped them by year into what's called an "accordion list" where you can select the year whose events you want to see:

If the list for any year is already open, opening another year will close it:



That about covers the redesign of the site.  As always, if you have problems using the site, or if you are a member of our Club and would like to contribute content to the site, please email webmaster@midwest356.org.)