Website update 5/9/22

The start of the academic year … I hope you are filled with anticipation for what lies ahead, what will this year bring?!

This is a quick update on the site and what we’ve been doing in the background with an important announcement about the near future.

I feel the need, for speed

Since our last update, we’ve been working at making the site more speedy by reducing some of the bulk that has been added from the huge amount of plugins that have been installed since the website has been built. Unfortunately to get the functionality needed in WordPress requires the addition of plugins which can each add bulk to the loading of the website and over time, slow it down.

Obviously since the upgrade of our servers, we want the site to perform to it’s best ability, so the last few weeks have been about cutting some of the bloat on the website and speeding up the initial page loads. According to our stats, it’s roughly 1.2 seconds faster at loading now than what it was before!

Upcoming updates

Unfortunately this week, a close family member has passed away so due to this, updates to the site will be reduced while my family and myself deal with the shock and administration of this passing. As soon as this is dealt with we will be getting back to our regular schedule – thank you for your understanding.

We have started off some other updates concerned with styling and accessibility which we will update you all on as soon as we are ready to.

Signing off

This was unfortunately, only ever going to be a quick update to keep everyone in the loop. While this is certainly a blow for us, please know that we remain committed to improving and adding to the site in the future. It might just take us a while longer!

Many thanks for your continued support.