Start Here to learn everything about Alton.net

This site is over 15 years old and is part of the Wildfire Internet CityPage network which operates in the Illinois Metro and St. Louis areas.

Whether you are new to the site or have been a long time user, this reference page should help you understand what is available and how it works.

Description of Version 8

New Release - List of changes
posted by sykes : Sat. Jul. 3, 2010, 10:30 PM
At 12:01 July 4th, Wildfire begins updating the CityPages to version 8. The previous major release was over 8 years ago. You may remember the look with the picture of a girl in front of a City landmark with a river (curly blue line) running along the top of the menu bar. We then migrated to the look which ran for years with the pulldown menu and the 3 columns.

Since then, the Internet has changed the way webpages are displayed. The way we manage data in the background, namely databases, remains the same - thank goodness. The CityPage database manages over 10,000 discussions, Hundred of thousands of comments, 60,000 yellow page entries, between 15,000 and 20,000 unique visitors and between 150,000 and 200,000 page views per month. The databases put into place years ago may run on faster machines these days, but are built to run for years.

If I have to define version 8 in one word, that word is "Clean". The banners which had filled much of the page are now gone focusing more on content, references and the user experience. Of course, there are still banners and sponsors, but they are presented in a "Clean" manner.

USER INTERFACE

One of the first things you'll notice about V8, yes programmers have a strange sense of humor, is the pulldown menus are gone. The user areas will be shown in a color menu bar. (Red for Granite, Orange for Edwardsville, Purple for Collinsville, Red for Alton, etc.) Across the top of the page, you'll find site information and references. There is no left hand column. The new design is 2 column. Sub Menus for the page you are working are displayed to the right.

THE LINK NEXT TO THE CITY NAME

You might notice a link next to the CityName at the top. If you click on that pulldown a list of cities pops up. Select a City and you'll be linked to the same page within the sister city.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK

I'll guarantee there are pages which might look odd on release. I've worked through most of the key pages, but I know there are more.

At midnight, Wildfire will continue testing and fixing as we see pages misbehaving.

If you see something which does not work, link or behave, post it in this thread. This goes for content as well.

LATIN

Along the lines of "What doesn't work". In some cases, when we build pages, we place filler text in. Don't worry. Those pages will be updated, but if you see a few sneaking around after a few days, post here.

DISCUSSION DISPLAY

The one page which I know is not 100% is the Discussion View page. The discussions and comments are displaying in the correct order, but the header colors are not working. I'll fix shortly.

THANK YOU

To all the daily users, thank you for using the site. You may be the only ones who remember how the site has grown over the years. New users starting today will only know the new site.

Did we Miss anything?

Have you seen something on the site which isn't documented? Let us know?

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