Category Archives: Website News

So What Do You Think So Far ?

  By Dean | April 6, 2012 - 11:00 pm | Website News
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Those of you who stop by here on a regular basis may have noticed that I’ve been putting a bit more varied content into the site over the last month or so. I felt that it was turning into a bit of a “news and nothing but the news” site and I wanted to get back to the roots, back to how I envisioned things way back when I started.

So I’m trying to get back to a good mix of news, reviews, articles, interesting bits and pieces I come across in my travels like interesting photos, informative film footage, high quality builds that inspire me, and small photo collections taken from the several thousand I’ve saved over the years. This is a similar, but more personal, approach to that which I’m using on the other two sites.

So let me know what you thing, I want the site to seem a little busier, but not too busy, a little more interesting and informative without overwhelming everyone with endless dross. So I’m genuinely interested in if anyone has noticed the difference over the past few weeks and if so do you think it has made the site better or worse.

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What’s Ahead In April For MilitaryModels ?

  By Dean | April 5, 2012 - 1:00 am | 3. Articles, Opinion, Website News
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Much of the same really. I think I’ve pretty much finished tweaking the categories so now it’s time to start really getting back to basics. I did feel the site was becoming too much of a “news releases” site and was losing the personal touch, so you can expect a more balanced approach from here on in.

I’ve got a dozen or so reviews that will be going up throughout April, these include stuff from the likes of Tristar, PlusModel, Dragon, ICM, Miniart, Amusing Hobby, Tasca, Minor, HK Models and K59 Productions. I have to admit that some of these date back to last year. I had a bit of down time after I decided to try enlisting the help of a few other people to do reviews and discovered the hard way that handing out kits frequently results in no kits and no reviews.

But life goes on so I’m just pulling up my socks and getting back into it. More importantly I’m getting back in to finishing off a couple of stalled builds as well as starting a new one, my first WWI build, so hopefully I can pick up a few build logs where they left off and bring them to a conclusion.

I’d also like to get some more “outside” input on the site, so if you have a build you’d like added to the gallery I’m happy to put it up there, it gives people something pretty to look at while they’re having their coffee.

Lastly, but not leastly, the walkarounds will roll on as I still have around 100 to add and due to the time they take to put together I’m only managing four or five a week so I imagine this will go on for a few months yet.

I’ll be back again at the end of the month to astound you all with yet more of the same no doubt.

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A Few More Tweaks To The Site

  By Dean | April 3, 2012 - 12:00 pm | Website News
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You may or may not have noticed recently a few little tweaks to the site. These are mainly in regards to creating a few sub-categories to allow a better “filing system” of posts, which in turn should make the site just a little easier to find stuff on.

The main changes of late were the walkarounds I mentioned a few days ago, but I’ve also added subcategories to the photo section which used to be called “Interesting Photos” but has now been renamed “Photos And Videos” with new sub-categories. Likewise the “Model Gallery” has been changed to have sub categories. though for now while there’s only a few I’ll leave them all on the same page that’s accessible from the top menu tabs.

Most of these changes weren’t really urgent, but I figured as things go on I would have more and more stuff being shoved into general categories so it made sense to do it now and carry on as I’d like things to be. It just makes things a bit tidier and now I feel more like everything has its rightful place.

Later on as content gets larger I’ll add new lower level pages and break the main pages down into those lower tier categories , but for now if you’re browsing the site via the “categories” section on the left sidebar it allows you to be more refined. For example if you click on the main category “Photos and Videos” you’ll get everything under that category, but you also have the option of just bringing up all the videos without having to wade through all the photos as well.

Hopefully that all made sense, and hopefully that’s made things just a little easier to use. I still have to do the same to the reviews section so that they’re selectable through the “category” section, but that’ll have to wait for another week, all this back-end stuff can get seriously tedious and I need to go and build something to get my eyes used to 3D again instead of a 2D computer screen.

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Trying Out A New Feature For The Site, Let Me Know What You Think

  By Dean | March 31, 2012 - 11:00 pm | Website News
5 Comments

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I’ve added a lightbox feature into the site so that people can view thumbnails easier. What this means is that on the photo collections and walkarounds ( or anything else that uses thumbnails ) the photos will display on the page as thumbnails but open in fullsize overlaying the main page and working with a slider to scroll through the images. You’ll still be able to pick and chose from the thumbnails which image to start with.

The main advantage to this is that it allows me to use the site’s gallery feature which uploads photos a lot faster and in bulk. I haven’t used this till now as it doesn’t allow for resizing of the thumbnails or for opening images in a new page so every time you click on a thumbnail you have to use the back button to go back to the thumbnails for the next one.

So the upside is that it eliminates that problem, but one small downside then is that if I use the site’s gallery feature to make uploading photos faster the gallery will only work with the site’s default thumbnail size which is three across. I can still manually upload these and change them but they have to be done one at a time and it does require quite a time commitment to do a 50+ photo post. As it stands because the gallery will only work with the default three across it means that some posts will be a lot longer with larger images which may effect the page loading time. Though that should only apply to posts with 40 or more images.

To see what I mean in regards to the look of the gallery this is an example below, if you haven’t already encountered the lightbox feature by clicking on a thumbnail to see what it does now just click on any of the thumbnails below.

Anyway, the upshot of all that is let me know if you find the lightbox is an improvement or not.

Site Changes To The Walkarounds Area

  By Dean | March 29, 2012 - 12:00 pm | Website News
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Those of you who are new here won’t notice any changes and those of you who are old here may not have even realised they were there but we have an ever growing walkaround area ( with another 130-150 walkarounds to add over the next couple of months ). You used to only be able to access it by searching through the category links or through the dropdown menu under “Site Map” which took you to a single page where they were all listed chronologically with no real order.

That was fine when there was just a dozen or so but now that there’s more and will soon be a LOT more I felt it needed a make-over. So walkarounds are now accessible from a tab at the top with dropdown menus for each category as I have now broken these up into different sections ( Allied, Axis, Armour, Artillery etc, etc ) to make them easier to use.

If anyone ever thinks they know a way that the site can be streamlined, made easier to use, whatever, feel free to sound off, I’m always happy to consider constructive input.