Over the years my little ol’ blog has evolved from the restoration of my Mustang to looking after it, pampering it and showing my treasured car. The restoration how to, guides and pictures are all still there in the menu headings, along with another called “Car Detailing Reviews” appearing about a year ago.

That was an idea that came to me when I was asked what I used to keep my car looking nice and clean. So I thought I would let people know what I used, that included what I liked and what I didn’t like. The reviews of many different detailing products had been born.

I must be said that ALL of the products that I reviewed or will review, tools, parts or detailing products have been bought by me or bought for me. Therefore my reviews and comments are completely independent and not biased in any way, I have nothing to gain from giving top marks. On the other I would have liked to have got some free products to review (who wouldn’t). Alas, none have come my way and I haven’t asked for them from companies either. Maybe in the future I may get some, but my reviews will always be the same; independent and not biased. I don’t like giving top marks just for the sake of it.

Where am I going with this? Well, the menu bar at the top of page had been updated with each product I used and reviewed. All was fine until I did a few additional product reviews a couple of weeks ago. The problem was when I tried to save the additional reviews in the updated menus. WordPress crashed and wouldn’t save the changes I made and corrupted my headings, I was not a happy bunny. Since then I have been in correspondence with WordPress about the problem. It seems that the menu headings has reached a limit that I was trying to go beyond. When saving my changes an error caused the ‘overload on their server’ so they tell me, I was in a no win loop. Some of you may have seen a real mess for a few hours over the weekend while I was trying to sort it out.

An example of the menus presentation that I liked and used is here, the manufacturer, sub menu then a list of products to choose from. Easy to see and look for.

The menu errors now means that I have had to find alternative ways to do it. Particularly aggravating I must say and not a slick process that I wanted it to be. 🙁

I have been thinking about alternatives a fair bit and tried a few options on my dummy site. The best idea i came up with is to create an ‘Index Page’ for each particular manufacturer such as Mitchell & King, Meguiar’s, Chemical Guys, Auto Finesse, DoDo Juice and the others. Those pages now have a list of each of the products and links to the actual review. Instead of going to the Menu, Car Detailing Product Reviews -> Mitchell & King -> Waxes -> Lily etc. and clicking on the title for the review to appear. The new style is a page per manufacturer with hyperlinks on the images and the product name, a few examples as below.

Mitchell & King page;

Meguiar’s page;

Chemical Guys page;

I think the format works with actual pictures of the product and links to the corresponding review from the title of the product or clicking on the pictures. I even copied a few bullet points for a few summary points from their relative websites.  

I have already made the changes and hope that my readers like the new style and format. It has taken me umpteen hours to trash previous ideas and create this one. With any luck finding your way around the site and the review pages. The massive downside is that the heading menus now won’t update with the newest reviews, but the pages will.

I do apologise to those that don’t like it, but it appears that I sort of outgrown my blogsite now. What’s on the menu? Less than before at first glance. I also suspect some more changes as I try to slicken the feel a bit more going forward and stop the rather annoying menu crashing when I try to save.

Keep Safe Everybody.