Thursday, January 26, 2017

Interstate275Florida.com to get a new makeover!

Since 2003, Interstate275Florida.com is and continues to be a great resource on Interstate 275 in the Tampa Bay region.  But coming soon, Interstate275Florida.com will be getting a fresh new overhaul.

I know, Interstate 275 in Tampa just got a major reconstruction from Exit 39 (FL 60) to the Hillsborough River which was finished in 2016.  (Got to like those four lanes of traffic each way for a total of eight lanes and that wide median for hopefully commuter rail someday!)  What we're talking about is Interstate275Florida.com the website, and I have given it a major overhaul!

With that in mind, here are some of the new features you will see on the revamped Interstate275Florida.com:

First, I decided to rebuild Interstate275Florida.com - the website, that is - from the ground up.  I decided to use a web design software product called CoffeeCup HTML Editor which gives me a lot of flexibility in coding the HTML needed to run the perfect website.  In fact, I have even converted my other websites, EdwardRingwald.com and the Edward Ringwald Websites Portal, using CoffeeCup HTML Editor.  Additionally, another website of mine that covers the drawbridges of Pinellas County, DrawBridgeAhead.com, was built from the ground up using CoffeeCup HTML Editor.

Like what I have done with EdwardRingwald.com, Interstate275Florida.com was written using Microsoft FrontPage when I first introduced Interstate275Florida.com in 2003.  I have made so many changes over the years in FrontPage; unfortunately, Microsoft ended support for FrontPage and a majority of web hosting providers - including the web hosting provider which hosts my websites including Interstate275Florida.com - no longer support FrontPage written websites.

Besides, a FrontPage written website depends on FrontPage-specific features that are maintained on the web server end, which are called FrontPage Server Extensions.  Once I began to find out that Microsoft no longer supports FrontPage and web hosting providers no longer use the FrontPage Server Extensions, I had to find another web design product which would let me code HTML the way I want without having to depend on something on a web server end to make my websites work.  I looked at a lot of web design software out there and I found a great web design program that would best serve my web design needs, and that is CoffeeCup's HTML Editor.

As I mentioned earlier Interstate 275 in the Tampa Bay region from Exit 39 (FL 60) to the Hillsborough River west of downtown Tampa has been reconstructed, and the pictures that were there was that section of Interstate 275 in Tampa before reconstruction.  What I did is I incorporated the old pictures on some of the Tampa pages along with new reconstruction pictures just to give you a perspective of what Interstate 275 looked before and after reconstruction.

On the sections of Interstate 275 in Tampa that were reconstructed a longer time back (before the mega-reconstruction of 2016) as well as Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg and Manatee County, I have refreshed the site with newer pictures.  After all, the pictures that were on there were getting a little stale and the website needed newer pictures.  In fact, this is what I tell my students when I give my presentation on web design at the Great American Teach-In that content should be updated as needed in order to avoid having stale content.

As you go through the new Interstate 275 Florida website you will see a Page Highlights on the left hand sidebar that tells you the highlights of the page in question.  On the top part of the page you will see a navigation bar that is customized based on what section of the website you're in.

Another new feature you will see is the pictures themselves.  I have arranged them in a photo gallery format, which is you can click on the thumbnail version of the picture to see a full size version of the picture.  In fact, while you're in there you can page through the photo gallery by hovering over the top left or top right corner of the picture and clicking on the Previous or Next button to see the previous or next picture.

Moreover, I made some updates to the Interstate 275 Frequently Asked Questions and the Getting Around the Tampa Bay Region from Tampa Airport PDF document pages.  And there is one new page that I made that I feel is definitely needed - a Tampa Bay Region Transit Page, as the need for other forms of getting around in the Tampa Bay region, especially rail based mass transit, is very crucial if we want to be competitive among other Florida metropolitan areas such as Miami and Orlando.  After all, both Miami and Orlando have commuter rail systems in operation and commuter rail is the key to making the Tampa Bay region competitive.

I know you are very excited to see the new look and feel of Interstate275Florida.com, and I am very excited myself to launch the new version of all things Interstate 275 in the Tampa Bay region on the web.  All the pages are done, and it's just down to checking to make sure that all the links work properly and to do a test of the new pages in the web browser to make sure that everything renders correctly.

The actual changeover to the revamped site will take place in a few days, but I can't provide an exact date just yet.  Once everything is all said and done, I will post another blog entry letting you know when the actual changeover will take place.  While we're on that subject, if you or someone you know has web pages that link to a specific page on Interstate275Florida.com please make sure to test your links when the changeover takes place to make sure that the correct page is being displayed.  For instance, if your link points to a specific page it will more than likely end in .htm; the new pages will have an .html extension, so that you will probably have to change the file extension in order to keep your visitors from seeing the 404 error page.

When the actual changeover takes place it will take I would say about a good hour and a half to two hours so that I can delete the old FrontPage based content and upload the new CoffeeCup HTML Editor based content as well as the pictures and their thumbnails.

Again, after the changeover is complete and the revamped Interstate275Florida.com goes live please check your links as well as your bookmarks to be sure that you are seeing our content.  If you happen to notice a link when the revamped site goes live that does not work for some reason please feel free to contact me and it will get fixed.

After it's all said and done, I can finally uninstall FrontPage from my computers and put FrontPage on the shelf.  Onward!