A quick look at the homepage for abandonedrails will reveal a change to the "abandonedrails: pictures" section. Each type of picture group is now listed, along with a representative thumbnail from that group. Thus begins the "icon" look for the website.

I am hoping to extend this layout to the other sections on the homepage, save for "the yard". Once I get the thumbnails and the layout of each section complete, my only worry would be that the page is too busy and may discourage the user from browsing.

By the way, the reason for the change is just that: user browsing. After looking at the logs for the past couple of months of what pages users were visiting, I noticed that the only picture types users are visiting are those listed on the homepage (which only listed three of the five picture groups). So to get users to browse around the site more, I decided to include all five picture group types on the homepage. This led to monotony, though, since all the links were the same. Thus, I needed some way to distinguish between the links at a glance, and decided that a representative thumbnail from each group would do.

My once concern, which I have mentioned, is that too many thumbnails may clutter the page. I fear this is already taking an affect on the group type page; a resolution to this has been implanted into my subconscious, so expect a new design for this page in about 6 months.

Happy new year!