The complete overhaul of TheUrbanShogun.com has now finally been completed. I honestly never thought it would take me a whole weekend on and off to do everything but as I started getting serious into the site design, the designs became more forward thinking and soon became rather addictive seeing everything come to life from sketches with pen to paper and it coming to life on screen.
For those of you who were asking, my old site design was never meant to be permanent, it was just a temporary solution to get the ball rolling as it were and also a way for me to experiment in this rather new territory of having a website. For someone who’s more proficient at this than me (which isn’t hard) it would’ve probably taken them a fraction of the time to build but it’s been a very very long time since I’ve photoshopped anything and the combination of HTML + Flash + JavaScript … well, let’s just say, makes my eyes feel like the result of a particularly unhappy encounter with a mutated Bee.
That said a big shout out needs to go to my lil brother Edgar who gave up almost 2 hours of his time towards helping me design the logo you see on the left of the main header .. Admittedly it would have probably gone a lot quicker if I'd had just let him get on with it and not been so nitpicky with every single pixel .. He's an absolute demon on photoshop and is lethal with a pencil in his hand so if you can, definitely check out his DeviantArt gallery at: http://eduku.deviantart.com/ and in case you don’t have an account and want to send him a message or anything, use the contact form right up at the top and I’ll pass it onto him. 
Now here’s a list of what's new and what you can do on the site ..
Some new Additions:
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UI - The main differences from a user point of view is probably just the User Interface and overall look of the site. I’ve redone a lot of the texturing and site graphics from the old site to the new one with a lot of them from scratch.
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Contact the Shogun - Again, a totally different and redesigned interface here because the old one was giving me problems with not being able to keep track of the emails coming into me and incorrectly marking them. So this ones been done by me from the ground up and so give it a go .. go on .. you know you want to.
- Who is the Shogun? - a total overhaul of the rather lame Google contact page and instead a flash/JavaScript based thing I did for fun. [still under construction]
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More Stable - a lot of things have been moved to my own server account and so not so dependent on free services. Should lead to parts of the site not going down so much but that remains to be seen.
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Navigating - Made it easier to navigate around and pinpoint things quickly especially with the new Three-Tabbed Menu on the right.
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Columns - Moved from a wide two column format to a mix of two and three columns, breaks up the pattern, made use of a lot more screen estate (you guys do like your Widescreens according to my GA) and is easier on the eyes.
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Re-arrangement of Sharing and Bookmarking - Now to bookmark, click on “Stay up-to-date with the Urban Shogun” to access RSS feeds, Feed aggregators and the likes if you like the site. Also if you like a story, please share it around either through re-posting it on your Facebook or any of the dozens of social networks available via “Sharing is Caring” as it only takes two secs and it really helps to boost Traffic back here.
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Problems Solved - Not sure what was up with the last one, but had a ridiculous amount of trouble getting the images to size properly and with really weird side-effects like images deciding to go on walkabouts and feeling happy-go-lucky. But hopefully I’ve solved that now and for all and finally everything’s working like bullet-points etc etc.
So I hopefully this was time well spent and that in the very least, it’s an improvement on my old site design. Even if it isn’t I’d appreciate any comments down there *points imaginary finger at the bottom* and yup if you meet any bugs or have any suggestions, I’d be more than happy to hear them. At the moment the site is still actually about 90% done, there’s a few more things I have planned for the site but for now I must succumb to some sleep.
Oh and I should probably mention that I'm writing this post out on the BlogPress app on my iPhone which is surprisingly easy to use and infinitely more so if you’re unnaturally fast on the onscreen keyboard 
. Plus I'm on my long long train journey (no thanks to National Rail) and bored out my wits .. Damn, you know you’re an Apple Fanboy if you’ve typed half an essay out onto the iPhone (just because you can). [except for importing the image and a few typo’s edited out on the laptop]
What now? Anyone got a paper? Anyone? *… sighs ... *
-- Post From My iPhone
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