Update 3: Blog Navigation Update
Official Release Date: February 5th, 2025
Update 3 is the update that introduced a navigation system into blog posts. The goal of the update was to make blog navigation easier by having a concise navigation tool to go to different pages.
When I first started work on the navigation feature, I had a clear vision for what I wanted for it: I wanted it to be able to access the first and latest blogs in the website, it can flip between the previous and next blogs based on the current blog, and I want it to be able to access the blog index page. Much like with the header and footer, I used a separate file to make the blog navigation, but unlike the prior two, this one would be a PHP file. The reason for this is because it is meant to be a dynamic file that can adjust itself to match the needs of the current blog page.
The blog nav was designed to have five "buttons", which serve as links to different pages based on what the button represented:
- "First" represents the first blog post created, Update 0.
- "Prev" represents the previous blog (Ex: Update 2's "Prev" button would link to Update 1).
- "Index" represents the index page for the blogs.
- "Next" represents the next blog (Ex: Update 2's "Next" button would link to Update 3).
- "Last" represents the latest blog created. At the time of making this update, the "Last" button would link to this page, Update 3.
In addition to this, I set up logic in the blog navigation to check for the index number of the current blog page provided by the page itself. With it, I could have the navigation enable or disable certain buttons based on page number via basic math and checking if the index number matches the start or end index. This is done by making the active "buttons" stylized links that can be clicked on to navigato to another page and inactive buttons be custom div classes that simulated a deactivated button that cannot be clicked on.
Trivia: While the primary focus of this update is the creation and documentation of the blog navigation, the update also featured minor display changes by making the title and release date of each blog centered and adding a direct link to the most recent blog on the home page. I also remade the screenshots to be 900x800 images to both standardize the blogs and make it easier to keep images on a consistent scale.
