Gallery Upgrades

All shrines around the network have had minor fixes and code updates (nothing plainly visible). Some display issues at Waterbound were found and have been fixed.

Awakening, Stormwind Gallery, Stormwind, Setting Sun, Sway, In Another Dream — Galleries for all these sites have been updated to fancyBox3 for better interface and zoom functionality. I'll think some more about what to do with the galleries on image-heavy shrines that rely on captions; fancyBox3 differs from fancyBox2 in that regard and I'm not convinced it'd be better to upgrade.


in bloom: In Another Dream, Sway, Waterbound, Setting Sun, Awakening, Stormwind, Miscellaneous

Revamp: Dornenkaefig

Dornenkaefig — About a week ago, on the 14th, this shrine received a new look as part of The Rose Keep's Flower Garden Layout Marathon. I had long wanted to make a new layout for it, as the initial one was rushed and uninspired, without anything to visually set it apart from my other shrines. (Though I did like it a lot at the time.)

The makeover inspired me to also revamp the content primarily to make it more visually attractive, as the content images were too small, and the walls of text monotonous. In the end, I edited nearly every other sentence on the shrine for better reading flow, cut out some other parts, retranslated many quotes, heavily restructured and rewrote Intro, and added various new images and passages all around the shrine. The little profile blurbs were a lot of fun to implement! The gallery was upgraded to use fancyBox3 as well, which enables zooming (ideal for reading manga pages), and thumbnails were remade. As I have made many shrines since this one, I added links to shrines with similar themes to the Site page, something I had already done for Sway.

Considering how much I love Idike and how important she is to me, I was also never truly satisfied with the way I wrote about her on the final page. Back then, I couldn't find the words to express my feelings, and ended up sounding very emotionally detached. I have added my true thoughts to the Site page now, which are also a result of some of the things I have learned this year. Coupled with the addition on Index, I think it is a more sincere and emotionally intimate shrine now, as it always should have been.

Although the colour scheme from the previous layout remains (due to symbolic reasons), with all these changes, this shrine now has a new identity to call its own. I'll add some more thoughts on the network page for it when I have time... Maybe I should revamp the network layout first.

See The Rose Keep plug topic.


in bloom: Dornenkaefig

New Layout Archive

Memory Prison — Made a layout archive over at Tumblr so as not to clutter up the pages around the network. I might add even older layouts from miscellaneous past projects later on.


in bloom: Miscellaneous

Browsing Optimization

Code has been edited for all of the below to keep things consistent across my shrines. Some functionality was added as follows:

Jamais Plus — All videos now open on-site for a better visitor experience.

Setting Sun, Dornenkaefig — The galleries now utilize a different script.

Joker's Wild, Baton Pass, Sway — Navigating has been facilitated: Smooth scrolling was added to the first, and page leafing links to the other two.


in bloom: Sway, Baton Pass, Setting Sun, Jamais Plus, Jokers Wild

In Control: Revisions

In Control — This shrine has received a minor revamp, mostly consisting of minor content rephrasing and edits to the code to bring things up to my current standard as well as to make certain elements consistent across my shrines. I will be doing that for the rest of my shrines very soon. A major addition was made to the "Site" page, as I have always felt that my own appreciation for Yuyuka didn't come across as strongly in the content that I had up.


in bloom: In Control