Happy Birthday, Vade! – Site Update

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theVade 3.0 – HappyBirthDay Update

Well, theVade has officially turned 1 this past week, and I have conjured up an update that has been in the works for literally months. This update includes a lot of minor tweaks that ultimately add up to a ton of larger improvements. As you all could tell from the recent posts on here, I have put a lot of time and effort into this update to help improve navigation (especially on mobile), extend continuity, and refine the design language that was first featured in the Same Vade, New Look Update from last August. Yes, it has been that long since a formal update on theVade. So.. lets get into it! This update includes:

  • General Design Changes
    • New site logo (title text and V)
    • New site header
    • Updated welcome text
    • Updated social media profiles to reflect design and new description text
    • Removed site background
    • Removed gray background on page columns
  • theVade Movies Improvements
    • New Archived Movie Reviews customizable page views (originally published in January of 2017)
      • Poster View (default view) shows posters of every movie we’ve reviewed in order of our publish date
      • List View shows every movie by title in alphabetical order
      • Rating View shows every movie sorted by theVade Review Bar rating
    • New theVade Movies site navigation
      • New navigation icons on all movie related pages
        • Note: this is featured on both mobile and desktop platforms
      • New “Click to Go Back Movie Reviews” button in Archived Movie Reviews
        • Note: this is featured on both mobile and desktop platforms
    • New theVade List
      • Note: previously known as the Movie of the Year List
      • Note: the name was changed to improve continuity throughout the site in terms of movie lists and reduce confusion with the list’s description
      • theVade List is a special list designed by us to hype up, and predict the success of a yearly movie
    • New Movie of the Year List
      • Note: the previous list of the same title has been changed to theVade List (read above)
      • The Movie of the Year List is list of movies that we believed to have been the best movie of the respective year
    • New Archived Movie Reviews logo
    • New header text for each movie related page
    • Updated The Golden V design language within reviews
      • Reviews given The Golden V will receive “Straight V’s” instead of a “Very Good” on theVade Review Bar
      • Added a new banner to film’s poster when receiving The Golden V (example)
    • Updated theVade Movies logo to match design language
    • Updated theVade Review Bar to match design language
    • Updated theVade Movies navigation tabs to match design language
    • Improved movie reviews
      • Movie reviews will start up again on theVade this time being a lot shorter and completely spoiler free
    • Removed Movie News
      • Note: this is due to page traffic not being high enough to consider maintaining
  • Recent Posts Improvements
    • New header text
    • New RSS links for theVade posts
    • Updated Recent Posts to show post samples
    • Updated post archive widget to have a pull down menu (sitewide)
  • Categories Improvements
    • New header text
    • Updated categories text to match design language
    • Removed News category
      • Note: theVade specializes in blogs and movie reviews thus we didn’t feel this was a useful posting category any longer
  • Connect Improvements
    • New header text
    • New icons for social links
    • New featured image for the page
    • Removed meta links
    • Removed Twitter and Facebook post previews
    • Removed Twitter follow button and Facebook like button
      • Note: you can follow our social profiles through the new links provided on the connect page
  • About Improvements
    • New header text
    • New previews of headers from older versions of theVade
      • Note: clicking on the photo will send you back to that update on theVade (small time machine)
    • New version of theVade text
      • Note: this allows users to see what the current version of theVade is
    • Updated about photo and logos
  • Blog Post Improvements
    • New time machine links in every blog post
      • Note: if you click the the date of each post, you will see the previous year’s post
  • Server Improvements
    • Improved server RAM (doubled)

So yeah, a lot has changed. This update has been in the works since early January of this year, and ultimately continues to increase continuity, navigation, and design language. I’m extremely proud to finally bring you this update and be able to thank you all for making theVade a successful platform of social media for me. Like I mentioned above, I plan on writing movie reviews again very soon (a well deserved break), and I also have plans to start advertising our reviews on social platforms later this year as well. theVade is constantly evolving each day, and I can’t thank you all enough for the great feedback and continued support on theVade. If any of you have questions please comment below (or contact me). I’m open to any forms of criticism, both positive or negative.

Thanks again, everyone! Enjoy the HBD Update, and I hope you enjoy the new look, continuity, navigation, and content. Cheers to another year of Vade!

-Zach, King of theVade