More on the New Site
When I finally decided to rebuild this site, I knew that I wanted it to be as flexible and yet as simple as possible. Flexible so I wasn't tied to only doing one thing, and simple so that I didn't have to work too hard to maintain and update it.
The Same but Different
The three basic sections of the site have returned: the journal, the sidebar ("meandering") links, and the photojournal. There are few major differences, though. What used to be the photojournal is now what I'm calling a visual journal - I'm hoping to play more with video and flash so this area will not be restricted solely to photography. The sidebar links will be tagged and will have a more comprehensive archive. (In the last version of the site, I never built archives for links that had rotated off the homepage.) And the journal will remain much the same as it always has, though with more focus on building my writing. Topics will range, but it will be more personal and anecdotal. I may introduce a separate weblog on web design in the future on another site, but that's still in the beginning phase of development.
Tag Crazy
In the months since I withdrew from weblogging, tagging and folksonomies have really taken off. Not to be left out, I played around extensively with the two front-runners of the tagging crew, del.icio.us and Flickr. There was a great deal there to like, but being the control freak that I am, I wanted the data stored on my own server.
My tagging implementation (on both the links and visuals) uses MovableType's categories. I considered using keywords so that I could simply add whatever words came to mind while posting an entry, but ultimately decided that using categories was simpler and would require a lot less PHP hackery on the backend. On top of that, using predefined categories should keep overlapping synonyms ("mac" or "osx" or "apple"?) to a minimum. Right now, it's a fairly basic setup, but over time, I hope to build more functionality into it. (Like tag-based RSS feeds, pulling related links from technorati, etc.)
Visual Calendar
One of my favorite things about Flickr (apart from the tagging) is the calendar. It's an easy way to see when photos were posted and to navigate between large groups of photos quickly and intuitively. I decided to recreate that with MovableType as a calendar on a monthly archive page. The thumbnail images are set as an ID'ed table cell background in a stylesheet defined in the <head> of the calendar page. If there's an image on a specific calendar day, the ID of the table cell is set to the abbreviated month and day ("Jan23"). Over top of that is an <a> element that's defined as a block with the same size as the table cell (width and height plus padding). The background of the <a> is set to a 2 pixel x 2 pixel GIF with 2 transparent pixels and two darkened pixels (thanks goes to Dave Shea for the inspiration); eventually, the GIF will be replaced by a semi-transparent PNG, but I couldn't get that to work on a first try so I put it off for the present.
A Work in Progress
As most web designers will say, no website is ever complete. There are lots of places on this site for minor (and major) improvement, but I wanted to at least get something out the door. There's no point waiting for perfection when it's never going to come. Over the next few months, I'll be making tweaks here and there to the site, based on my own desires as well as any feedback I receive.
About this Entry
This entry was posted on
Sunday, January 23, 2005 at 11:48 AM under the categories:
Site News.
Comments
1. On Thursday, Feb 3 at 9:56 AM, Donna said:
Yay! I'm very excited, and not just because I've had "I should e-mail Ste" in the back of my mind for weeks...
2. On Thursday, Feb 3 at 5:47 PM, Jeremy Flint said:
Great to have you back Ste.
Are you going to be at SXSWi05 in March?
3. On Thursday, Feb 3 at 5:52 PM, Ste said:
Donna: Well, you're still welcome to send that email if you like. ;)
Jeremy: Yup, all the plans are finalized - and I'm making sure to finish up work before I go so I can actually spend more time outside of panels having fun.
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