Tag: WebGUI

I feel like I just found the button that turns my car into a giant mecha

… though it’s still got some weird bugs, and the same clunky interface.

… though it’s still got some weird bugs, and the same clunky interface.

Okay, so I’ve been plugging away at the teamvancouver.net redesign. The new graphics are sort of coming along—I’ve been redoing them a dozen times, but a few days ago I had a burst of inspiration, so I think I’m finally on the right track. Then again, I’ve said that before.

Anyway. The thing about teamvancouver.net is that it’s built on an actual CMS: WebGUI, to be precise. The learning curve was steep and painful, since it was my first stab at mastering a CMS, the interface is pretty unfriendly, and it turned out I wasn’t even working with the real admin account! The one login I was given had a lot of editing privileges, but not nearly what I needed to do a proper job of redesigning and administering the site. Lots of functions were missing, whole directories were locked, etc…

So I eventually called the hosting provider’s support team to clear this all up, and figure out what I could and could not do. It might be that these restrictions were a matter of policy. But no, it turned out I was just using the wrong account. Finally, I have the godlike powers I’ve been been craving all along!

And now I’ve got a confession to make: part of the reason why I enjoyed working on VGVA.com more than teamvancouver.net was that working with WebGUI this was was like swimming through quicksand, and I wasn’t sure I could deliver on my ideas. vgva.com was under my complete control. Though my little PHP scripts did less, they were all mine and I knew exactly what they could do.

But that’s how it works, and the thing is, I’ve done this before. Long ago I dropped homemade PHP scripts for WordPress (still running on PHP, so not that big a stretch), with my blog. It may be that someday, if I’m still webmaster, I’ll do the same for vgva.com*. No rush, though. In the meantime I get to explore another CMS, with a different code base, it’s true, but no less interesting and powerful. I’m finally seeing it can do all I wish, and more.

(* Well, it probably won’t be WordPress)

Blue!

No, not me. I’m still between jobs, still looking, but I’m not letting it get me down. I’m keeping my brain active, playing around with cool Web technologies like jQuery and Flex. It’s fun.

In addition to learning new tools, I’m building my portfolio.

No, not me. I’m still between jobs, still looking, but I’m not letting it get me down. I’m keeping my brain active, playing around with cool Web technologies like jQuery and Flex. It’s fun.

In addition to learning new tools, I’m building my portfolio. This is something I wouldn’t have considered a year ago, but recently I’ve been working on a few interesting websites. Of course, you already know about VGVA.com. All it needs now is routine maintenance and content update, with the occasional new theme. I’ve got a few ideas for improvements, but for now it looks nice and it works.

Also finished earlier this month, a project I hadn’t mentioned before: http://loucrockett.com. This is the portfolio of a friend of mine, originally done all in Flash. Problem was, the code was old and failing in most modern browsers; since I didn’t know Flash and the original developer was unavailable, I decided to re-implement it in PHP. The functionality’s just the same, minus some pretty eye candy, plus a couple of little extra features. I bet there are lots of other tricks I could do to make it even prettier, once I get the hang of jQuery.

Which is not gratuitous or useless. I’m just showing off my skills, is all.

Third: Team Vancouver. I’ve been working on this site quite a bit in the last few weeks; the design’s not done yet, but we’re well on our way. I tell you, there’s no feeling like looking at a half-finished design and suddenly seeing how it’ll all come together in the end. Instead of the blah green design, I took my inspiration from the new Team Vancouver uniforms and put together a kicky blue palette with sharp lime green accents, that has zing and pizazz and all sorts of “z” words. Add a revision of the site structure and content, a reshuffling of the layouts, and we’ll have ourselves a site that’s fun, fresh and eminently usable.

So that’s what I’m up to lately. Once I get all that out of the way, I’ll have time to really get cracking on redesigning this blog.