Tag: This Site

Reinventing The Wheel

It started when my old camera conked out. No display in shooting mode, no images recorded. Ah, we had some good times these 4 years, but I guess nothing lasts forever. So I bought a new one. And then I started thinking more about photos, and the work I have to do to put them online.

It started when my old camera conked out. No display in shooting mode, no images recorded. Ah, we had some good times these 4 years, but I guess nothing lasts forever. So I bought a new one. And then I started thinking more about photos, and the work I have to do to put them online. And creating a new gallery is indeed a pain: besides setting up the metadata, there’s resizing (3 sizes! sometimes 4, for pics embedded in posts, like this one), cropping, and uploading. Surely there’s a better way? Flickr seemed a good choice, so I looked into that. Popular, easy to use, with plenty of tools and a wide knowledge base. But the automated tools to blog photos only worked with established blogging software. And me, all I had was a few scripts I wrote myself.

So I thought, hey, if I’m going to use Flickr, why not go all the way and use proper blog software. It so happens that Dreamhost will install quite a lot of software on your webspace with the click of a button, including WordPress. So I installed it. And played around with it. And read the documentation. And played around some more. And I thought about how my existing content would fit in WordPress. The history project, quotes and links, older posts (which don’t have a precise date assigned to them). They’d have to be pages instead of blog posts. How to organize it all? What categories to use? Do I need a hierarchy? I checked out the dozens of available themes, and it was like looking at the CSS Zen Garden all over again (except, of course, not quite as awesome).

Boom. Another site redesign has begun.

I’m still in the preliminary stage, figuring out how I want to organise my site and exactly how to make WordPress do what I want to do. Fortunately there’s lots of excellent documentation and examples to use.

As for photos, I think Flickr is out—at least as far as my main galleries go. The problem is that I wouldn’t be able to keep the old URIs, I’ve got very little control over the presentation, and I’d lose access stats. But Gallery 2.2 is also available through Dreamhost, and that looks more promising. There doesn’t seem to be any way to apply my own styles to the galleries, and that’s annoying. But I’ll keep looking. Part of me feels happy with the little scripts I’ve got now, which maybe just need to be spruced up a bit. But no: half the point of this exercise is to try out new technologies. There’s a learning curve, sure, but a smaller one than if I tried to develop all these features on my own. And in the end I’ll have learned some useful skills, kicked my site up a notch, and joined a growing community of WordPress users. And that is a very good goal to work for.

A New Look

Rejoice, for I bring you a version change. Here’s what’s new:

A new colour scheme, inspired by my recently repainted condo.
A search function, powered by Google. One of these days I may implement one on my own.

Rejoice, for I bring you a version change. Here’s what’s new:

  • A new colour scheme, inspired by my recently repainted condo.
  • A search function, powered by Google. One of these days I may implement one on my own.
  • The sidebar is now identical for all pages. I’ve dropped the “previous” and “next” links in posts since it seemed to confuse the aforementioned search function if one searched by post title.
  • A couple new archive categories.
  • The photo galleries’ footer text is now consistent with the rest of the site. Likewise, the photo pages’ layout is more consistent with that of the galleries.
  • Speaking of photo galleries, all my old galleries are back online (with a few additions). ’Bout fracking time.

Finally, major props to Browsershots. Without it, I wouldn’t have caught the IE double-margin bug that seemed to show up only in IE 6. Not 5, not 7, only 6. And of course my site looks fine in Firefox and Safari. Bah. Stupid IE. And I couldn’t ignore it, ’cos that browser makes up 40% of my traffic (such as it is).

The Site Shall Rise Again!

I know, it’s been a while, but on the bright side I’ve made the changes I promised last year. Dynamic pages, powered by PHP with a MySQL backend. Cruft-free URLs. A new look and layout. A complete reorg of the writing section. Oh, and a new host. I didn’t promise that eight months ago, because I was still hosting the site on my own iMac. Experience has taught me that that isn’t the safest route.

Yes, I’m back!

I know, it’s been a while, but on the bright side I’ve made the changes I promised last year. Dynamic pages, powered by PHP with a MySQL backend. Cruft-free URLs. A new look and layout. A complete reorg of the writing section. Oh, and a new host. I didn’t promise that eight months ago, because I was still hosting the site on my own iMac. Experience has taught me that that isn’t the safest route. Dreamhost offers me oodles more services, space, bandwidth and better stats than my previous hosting solution, and at a lower price. Can’t beat that. My photo galleries aren’t finished yet, but I’m putting the rest of the site back up because, damn, it’s been too long.

No new content yet, but that’s coming up soon. I’ve still got some old comic reviews to update. I hope my writing muscles aren’t too rusty.

What I’ve Got Cooking

I’m currently in the middle of a big site redesign. The ball got rolling last month when I changed the index page to add a little PHP script. Nothing too fancy, but it got my feet wet. So here’s what’s going to happen:

I’m currently in the middle of a big site redesign. The ball got rolling last month when I changed the index page to add a little PHP script. Nothing too fancy, but it got my feet wet. So here’s what’s going to happen:

  • No more static HTML. It’s PHP/MySQL all the way! It’s more work initially, of course, but in the end it’ll make maintenance ever so much easier, and open up tons of design possibilities.
  • A slightly different layout. The main menu will go below the header graphic, and breadcrumbs will disappear (and be less important anyways, since I’m flattening the site structure somewhat). To replace them there’ll be a small bit in the sidebar to indicate the page’s location within the site. Speaking of the sidebar, it’s been sitting pretty empty on most of the pages, hasn’t it? Now it’ll contain more material: a short “about” bit (similar to what you currently find on the main page), copyright info and the validation links (moved from the footer), most recent posts, etc…
  • As long as I’m changing the file extensions, I might as well do it intelligently and have cruft-free URLs.
  • Some reorganization of my “writing” section. My comics reviews will be merged with my regular posts. Logical conclusion of the steps taken in the present design. My old articles and poetry will stay online, in their own sections as before.
  • A new look. Obviously. No details yet, I’m still working on it.
  • Content: all of my old comics reviews to be revised and updated. I’m already most of the way there: The only big one left to do is Sandman. Then, just a few Vertigo miniseries. And then I can go on to new reviews. But I need to take care of this unfinished business first.

I want to have all this done by the 10th anniversary of my site: September 26th. Gawd, I can’t believe it’s been ten years already… Meh, we’ll get misty-eyed and nostalgic later. Right now there’s work to be done.

Point Release

So I’ve been fiddling with the site’s styles a bit. Partly to clean up the stylesheets, removing redundant definitions and adding more comments so I’ll have an easier time maintaining them in the future, and partly to deal with some of IE’s frackin’ display issues. Stupid IE.

So I’ve been fiddling with the site’s styles a bit. Partly to clean up the stylesheets, removing redundant definitions and adding more comments so I’ll have an easier time maintaining them in the future, and partly to deal with some of IE’s frackin’ display issues. Stupid IE. Also, I’ve been worrying about the best way to display the breadcrumbs; I haven’t been totally happy with them for a while, especially since I’m thinking of moving the top menu under the header graphic. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I just want change for change’s sake. We’ll see.

But, you ask, are there any actual changes? Oh, yes: the home page now has an image and quote rotator (adapted from here) which adds just the right touch of class to an otherwise boring and static site. This is my first shot at PHP coding, and it won’t be the last.

And finally, a picture of me.

Host

I control the horizontal. I control the vertical.

Ladies and gentlemen, as of this weekend, I am self-hosting my site. Hey, I’ve had the hardware and the software for months now. In that time I’ve been reading up on what I need to configure and run my own Web server, and I’m finally ready to take the leap.

I control the horizontal. I control the vertical.

Ladies and gentlemen, as of this weekend, I am self-hosting my site. Hey, I’ve had the hardware and the software for months now. In that time I’ve been reading up on what I need to configure and run my own Web server, and I’m finally ready to take the leap.

What will it mean to you, the reader? Not much right now. Okay, I guess my site will be more vulnerable to power failures and such, but I’ve got lots more space to play with, tons more than I had with my old hosting service. And I’m backing up everything, so barring an act of Gawd on my computer itself, we’ll be okay in the long run.

As for me, well, I’m not paying for hosting anymore. And, for the first time ever, I’ve got complete control over the server side of things: configuration and access logs. That was something I’ve wanted for a long time: my old hosting company provided daily stats which were kind of useful, but not terribly informative. Now I’ve got access to everything, every possible bit of information. I installed the excellent (and free) AWStats package for a good overall view, and the raw logs are there for when I need just a bit more detail.

Just yesterday all of that came in handy, when I found out that another site was hotlinking to one of my photos to use as a background image. I wasn’t mad, really, just annoyed (and, I won’t name names: I’ve emailed the author, and it turns out it was just an honest newbie mistake. However, I have taken some precautions to prevent future bandwidth theft. (Because I’m not a bad guy, I chose to just send back a 403 code. I could have been a bit meaner but I guess that would have been a tad extreme.)

And, I know, if it had happened last week, I could have implemented this just as well with a .htaccess file instead of fiddling with the main server config, but my previous Web stats might not have told me (or not so obviously) that there was hotlinking going on, and they wouldn’t have led me to the offending page. And you know what? I’m thinking maybe I wouldn’t even have bothered to prevent it right away. But since the site is sitting in my computer, in my office, in my home, I’m a bit more motivated to defend it. It makes it all a bit more personal.

Maybe I won’t be able to keep this up forever; if/when my site becomes more popular, I’ll have to find another hosting solution. But in the meantime, with the relatively low bandwidth it’s pulling, I can easily afford this.

Left, Right, Left, Right

So. 51 days into the redesign, and where am I at?

It’s going pretty well, actually. I’ve converted all of the pages except the photo galleries to the new (provisional) design, and even those should be done very soon. That’s the easy part. Now that I’ve got the styles in place, I’ll be able to shuffle things around much more easily. CSS-based layouts are a godsend, they are. I’ve still got a lot to learn (no duh), but it doesn’t look so intimidating anymore.

So. 51 days into the redesign, and where am I at?

It’s going pretty well, actually. I’ve converted all of the pages except the photo galleries to the new (provisional) design, and even those should be done very soon. That’s the easy part. Now that I’ve got the styles in place, I’ll be able to shuffle things around much more easily. CSS-based layouts are a godsend, they are. I’ve still got a lot to learn (no duh), but it doesn’t look so intimidating anymore. At first, I was going to stick to my trusty old table-based layout; but when I tried to get a little fancier I ended up with massively nested tables, so I said “Fuck that noise!” and took the plunge. CSS all the way, baby. Haven’t looked back since. In fact, a while later, I decided to move the sidebar from left to right. All it took were a few changes in the stylesheet, and boom, all my pages had their sidebar on the right. Seriously, how awesome is that? If I hadn’t been enlightened before, that would have done it for sure.

But like I said, that’s the easy part. CSS and HTML, that’s just… coding (I always code my pages by hand). The real struggle will be designing graphics, because it means using a side of my brain that just hasn’t gotten much exercise. Left brain—analytical, logical, language oriented? No problemo. Right brain—intuitive, emotional? Ah. That’s a problemo. I’ll need to learn a whole new language. No, not even that (just showed my bias, right there), but much more basic—primal, if I may use the word—ways to express myself.

I think I got that particular revelation while visiting Web sites on Paleolithic art a couple weeks ago. The people living 20 or 30,000 years ago had no written language, and maybe not much of a spoken language, but they still produced some seriously kick-ass art. I have to watch myself here; can’t fall in the trap of thinking “Ooo, Cro-magnons were primitive and brutish, they had no left-brain thinking at all.” Which, well, is certainly very condescending and probably very wrong. But they must have had a very different mindset, and that’s something I need to explore.