Looks like everything works.. now lets see how the users will break it :)

Though honestly, I’m looking forward to seeing how the site will evolve as users play with the features. As Slartibartfast said: “Great things are afoot”.
Read on…

I was thinking about the sites I’ve been to during the course of my internettin’ and one of the things I notice more than anything is the shiny bright bubblyness of many sites these days. Now, I’ll be honest: I like it generally.
Read on…

Sure, you want a nice image on the top of a post. Yup, that’s what I wanted. I looked at how others had done it, sifting through their code. There seems to be a few (complicated) ways to do it. I used the excerpt field. I have to wonder if all the tutorials I saw an the subject were for an older version of wordpress, without the excerpt option. Then again, I could have added it as a plugin at some point. I’ve used so many versions of wordpress, and installed (and deleted) so many plugins, I honestly don’t remember where anything comes from or where I got it anymore. I hope this happens to everyone, and is not just a sign of my deteriorating mental acuity.

The saddest part of my struggle to get such a simple thing done (an image at the top of the post), is that I’ll look at it for a few days, decide I don’t like it, then put everything back to the default (just like the mail center icons I lovingly crafted, that no one will ever see).

Bah.

Today I tightened up all the back-end pages, and re-built the tpls and css to match the new bloggy front end. It’s funny how one gets all excited about working with a new theme… until you have to recreate that theme for a completely different cms. Some of you are likely very good at that kind of thing, and will scoff at me, but I just started this php stuff, and it still makes my brain wiggle from time to time. Lately I’m learning how to fix all kinds of annoying php and css quirks, as info comes in from our testers.  I’m thinking that building sites with multiple, interacting databases with different shortcodes and handlers is a bit like being a marriage counselor. I don’t know any marriage counselors personally, so I have no idea if this simile is realistic, or if I’m just too tired to process my own random thoughts on things no one is likely to care about…

I’m rambling… sorry.

-J.

I wanted to credit SamK for the theme on which I based this page. It’s from his “Pixeled” theme, which is available here.

It’s a really well laid out theme with a lot of cool built in features and is a great foundation for any type of bloginess.

I admit I thoroughly abused this theme to get what I wanted out of it (ie “customized”), but I wanted to credit the originator, as I think he did a swell job.

…is live. We’ve been meaning to do this for a while, as I think it will benefit the group in several ways. First and foremost, it will allow the main site to have more visibility, by having useful articles posted on the blog, readers will have more cause to drop ’round, maybe spend some time with us. Social networks and search engines will comb this area more effectively than the main site in some respects, and every bit helps.

It will also give us the ability to showcase our artist’s work, as well as provide a good resource for artists around the world by providing articles on such topics as; design, marketing, freelancing tips, etc.

We think this will be an excellent venue to get more eyes to the site, as well as making M60 a useful source of information to the art world at large.

Expect a few tweaks here and there as the weeks roll on, and as always, suggestions are welcome. Contact us at info@m60designgroup with questions or comments.

-J.

Btw.
I’ve copied the previous posts from news section of the main site to get readers up to speed. News will be posted both in the news section of the main site, and here as well going forward… I’m beginning to think I’m saying things like “going forward” too often… I’m starting to sound all corporatey.

Posted on Monday 01 December 2008 - 15:52:32

M60 has been officially released into the wild… on a limited basis.

We decided to open the site for new users in a couple states, so that we could do a little testing with actual people. The site is at 99% functionally right now, with updates coming on a daily basis, so the site currently does all it says on the tin. We hope that our early adopters will come across things that we haven’t thought of, to make the site more functional and easier to use going forward. That will be one of the things we concentrate on even as the site goes national; consistant improvements based on customer feedback. With member input, in addition to subscriber dollars, we will be adding new features, creating affiliate discounts for our members, and generally making this site bigger and more useful as we go.

We’re just gettin’ warmed up here folks. The best is yet to come.

Posted on Monday 01 December 2008 - 15:41:16

Just wanted to note that the Journal section has been tweaked to allow for greater usability (and readability). I also thought this would be a good time to mention why the Journal exists, and what it will be used for.

From my journal entry on the subject:

So, you may ask: What is this Journal thing for anyway? Well, I’ll tell you.

We wanted to have a place where members could write sort of a mini blog, where they can update other users on their goings-on. It can also be a neat little project coordination tool, allowing users to know what artists and/or companies are doing and when… so that they might contact the Journal writer and get in on the action. Plus, it’s a nice place to spew ideas and whatnots that are too long for a forum post (or a place to link to in a forum post to provide the reader with more extensive info on a post).

In the next few weeks, we’ll be starting an official blog. The idea is to take journal entries submitted by our users, and posting them to the official blog as sort of an online magazine, with the relevant links to the authors and their homepage (if any). This will help drive traffic to our service, in addition to driving traffic to the writers site. For those without their own site, this can be a good way for those users to get some exposure, by linking their article to their gallery on M60.

Helping each other get exposure is one of the primary goals of this site, and the M60 Journal is a solid chunk of that. As always, if you have suggestions on ways to improve this section, or if you have other suggestions on how to increase our collective web presence, feel free to write us at info@m60designgroup.com

Posted on Saturday 01 November 2008 - 03:35:18

I think I’ve fixed most, if not all, of the rendering bugs betwixt browsers. It was an enormous hassle, but I think the code’s a bit cleaner for it. I had, at one point, all these little bits of hack to trick explorer into seeing things my way. I took most of those out, and just re-wrote a lot of the css to ease up on the overall styling a bit. I felt that the function in most cases was more important than the form, particularly if it meant that everyone would see the page and interact with it in the same way. Plus, I had a feeling that the more pieces of code tape I slapped into the thing, the more likely it was that something would eventually break… that’s a counter intuitive metaphor, but you take my meaning.

-J.

Posted on Wednesday 29 October 2008 - 08:17:17

So:

I installed the new gallery release. I gave some serious thought to the whole affair before I did so, and decided the new features weren’t worth the risk of crippling this fledgling site. Naturally, I ignored my own better judgment (as I am wont to do) and installed it anyway. First, the upgrade process didn’t work as planned, unless it planned to destroy my database, in which case it succeeded admirably. I was forced to do a clean install, which worked out for a bit. I tested all the new features; some great, some not so great. Then, it all disappeared, the whole bit, all of it. The main gallery took a dirtnap, and I couldn’t create a new one for some reason. I figured I’d give it one more go.

I deleted the whole kit and started over (again). Installed, tested, working, gone.

In the end, I re-installed 2.2, restored my previous database, punched the cat in the face and went on about my day. Now it all works again, and I discovered most of the new features were already in the plugin database, and worked fine with 2.2.

So all’s well that ends well I suppose, except I lost 2 days of development, and the cat has a black eye.

-J.

Ps. I made up the whole cat thing. I don’t even have a cat.