Nov 12, 2023

Considering Approaches To Blog/Art/Collection Pages

I mostly just want to doccument this, as well as open up any suggestions for any folk reading.

So... Currently, the way the Blog and Collection pages work is that, like the Home and About pages, they are an iframe set in the main index. The main pages act as kind of a link hub to the individual entries/archives, which are technically their own page, but are still set in the index's iframe just as the hub is. I was planning to do the Art page the same way, mostly because it's easy to set up and code and my little brain understands it easier.

However, I've realized one thing I don't like about this - I can't copy a link to an entry/archive page/etc and have it display the same as if you navigated there from the index.

For example: When you click on the Blog tab on the sidebar, the iframe loads the hub page for the blog. As of right now, if you click this specifc entry on that page, the iframe will instead load 2006sea.monster/blog/entry2. If you were to follow that link, it will be solely that page without the iframe's format and the index around it, which messes it up a little and makes it look weird. Then, if you were to click the back button, it would take you direct to the hub page also outside the index. It breaks the immersion of it all, I think. Not to mention how loading all those iframes sometimes lags my computer a tiny bit lol

This kind of sucks mostly for the collection stuff, but also a little bit for the blog in case there's a specific entry I'd like to share elsewhere. That's kind of just in the nature of using iframes like this as far as I'm aware, so the alternatives are suck it up and live with that or make a NEW page for each hub that ISN'T set in the index iframe, and then stylize those so they have some general formating and/or sidebars and such WITHOUT having using iframes. This is doable! But I'm not good at CSS, and i do like the consistancy of having all the pages connected directly to the index, so I'm hesitant.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions (or words of encouragement) please forward them!! I think I'll try tinkering with CSS formatting for a potential new style to these pages in the meantime.