Just thought I'd say that yes, I am still here. It's all been very quiet on this page, but very hectic in life. Work's extremely busy at the moment. On top of that, the SunRunRally has started to take off (check out the site!). And I've also been drinking copious amounts of coffee whilst trying to do a million things at once!
Having said that though, I've tweaked the design a little here. I've changed the fonts & various related bits as I think it looks a little nicer.
I've also discovered TextPattern, a free, PHP-based advanced Content Management System. As hard as it looks, it's rather easy to use once you get used to it! And the host of plug-ins available are quality! It doesn't have the following that WordPress does, but wordpress also needs more resources, and to me, textpattern is just as good! It has it's problems though which I may go into at a later date.
I've re-jigged the ClubTrinity.co.uk website so that now uses TextPattern as opposed to Coranto. I wanted a MySQL backend & the ability to comment. I couldn't really rely on CGI after previous bad experiences. I also put the SunRunRally website onto TextPattern too!
And it's this platform that i'll be using on my new site that i'm currently developing. It'll purely be a portfolio for my works as i have no place to showcase! But I've been working on that for the last 7years!! So it wont come any time soon!
Never mind. Oh, and the car has hit 100k miles and it still works! The CV Joint has gone again though!! D'oheth!
Showing posts with label Portfolio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Portfolio. Show all posts
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
ClubTrinity.co.uk
clubtrinity_preview Hosted on ZooomrI first designed the ClubTrinity website over 4 years ago, so last summer, i thought it was high time it got a bit of a re-design!
I started, concocted, re-invented, scribbled, and played with various different designs until i came up with something i was happy with. After a few more weeks of playing, coding, testing etc, I finally got into XHTML & CSS. So i re-built the new design using my new skills and now it's a hell of a lot cleaner (code-wise). I also had fun using syndication with the forums & galleries at ClubTrinity.
I also managed to get an RSS feed working for it (wooo! - That'll come in handy!)
Anywho, click on over to ClubTrinity.co.uk and let us know your thoughts :)
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Ain't it always the way...
Sooo, as mentioned earlier, i spent a fair bit of time today "updating" the look of this blog, as
well as testing my new-found css skills. True, most of the work was already there, but i've
built on that with what i know. I wanted to re-design the site with my knowledge, what i've
learnt so far, and no searching for help on google. I was happy with what i had created.
I then realised that Blogspot had a "blogger beta". Not one to miss the boat or anything, i immediatly looked into it. And there are a few features that would come in handy, HOWEVER, in order to take advantage of the new layout features, i'd need to rebuild the site as there's no way to import the current design. So i may be working on that over the next few weeks.
I Must admit, i am really enjoying web design at the moment. I first got into it 8 or 9 years ago. I was a big fan of UK Garage music, but had trouble finding any decent websites purely because they didn't exist. So, whilst browsing through the magazines at a local news-agent, i found a magazine with an article called "build your first website". Armed with some demo software (Claris home page to be exact), and the magazine feature, i got started.
At this point in time, it was the summer break between terms at college, i was having great fun designing, and was learning & redesigning my website on a weekly basis. Finally it got to a stage that i was happy with and it started gaining hits.
About a year (and several redesigns) later, my UK Garage website was quite popular. I was getting a couple of thousand hits a month and i was happy with how things were going. On top of that, i had formed a partnership with a friend of mine to run an artist promotion agency.
With this, i also started receiving requests to redesign other peoples websites. It seemed as if i was always behind my computer tapping away at the keyboard in Dreamweaver, knocking out graphics in Fireworks, or perousing the web for inspiration! And i loved it!
Anyway, after a couple of years (2002), i met my wonderful girlfriend and my time spent on websites dwindled. At around the same time, the use of CSS & XHTML started to become popular. More & more websites were popping up with accessability in mind, proper functionality. All of a sudden, webdesign was more than some hefty table layouts & some round corners. As i mentioned though, it was at this time that i stopped designing.
Over the past 2 months (ever since reading an article on devlounge.net, i've become hooked on webdesign again. I've lost count of the amount of hours that i've spent tapping away on this keyboard recently working on table-less layouts, closing tags (grrr) and scouring the web for tutorials.
And the one tool that's REALLY helped me do this is my Kingston U3 Datatraveller pendrive. Due to it's U3 capability, i can carry around my notepad application (EditPad Lite) & my FTP program (FileZilla) wherever i go, and i can design from any internet-enabled PC with a USB drive! I couldn't recommend these things enough!
So, after spending 2 months working on CSS & XHTML, learning, and reading, and reading some more, i can definatly say i am REALLY enjoying myself. So much so, im already working on 2 other websites. I've completly removed all tables, and im excited about launching them! I guess i better get back to it! Wooo!
well as testing my new-found css skills. True, most of the work was already there, but i've
built on that with what i know. I wanted to re-design the site with my knowledge, what i've
learnt so far, and no searching for help on google. I was happy with what i had created.
I then realised that Blogspot had a "blogger beta". Not one to miss the boat or anything, i immediatly looked into it. And there are a few features that would come in handy, HOWEVER, in order to take advantage of the new layout features, i'd need to rebuild the site as there's no way to import the current design. So i may be working on that over the next few weeks.
I Must admit, i am really enjoying web design at the moment. I first got into it 8 or 9 years ago. I was a big fan of UK Garage music, but had trouble finding any decent websites purely because they didn't exist. So, whilst browsing through the magazines at a local news-agent, i found a magazine with an article called "build your first website". Armed with some demo software (Claris home page to be exact), and the magazine feature, i got started.
At this point in time, it was the summer break between terms at college, i was having great fun designing, and was learning & redesigning my website on a weekly basis. Finally it got to a stage that i was happy with and it started gaining hits.
About a year (and several redesigns) later, my UK Garage website was quite popular. I was getting a couple of thousand hits a month and i was happy with how things were going. On top of that, i had formed a partnership with a friend of mine to run an artist promotion agency.
With this, i also started receiving requests to redesign other peoples websites. It seemed as if i was always behind my computer tapping away at the keyboard in Dreamweaver, knocking out graphics in Fireworks, or perousing the web for inspiration! And i loved it!
Anyway, after a couple of years (2002), i met my wonderful girlfriend and my time spent on websites dwindled. At around the same time, the use of CSS & XHTML started to become popular. More & more websites were popping up with accessability in mind, proper functionality. All of a sudden, webdesign was more than some hefty table layouts & some round corners. As i mentioned though, it was at this time that i stopped designing.
Over the past 2 months (ever since reading an article on devlounge.net, i've become hooked on webdesign again. I've lost count of the amount of hours that i've spent tapping away on this keyboard recently working on table-less layouts, closing tags (grrr) and scouring the web for tutorials.
And the one tool that's REALLY helped me do this is my Kingston U3 Datatraveller pendrive. Due to it's U3 capability, i can carry around my notepad application (EditPad Lite) & my FTP program (FileZilla) wherever i go, and i can design from any internet-enabled PC with a USB drive! I couldn't recommend these things enough!
So, after spending 2 months working on CSS & XHTML, learning, and reading, and reading some more, i can definatly say i am REALLY enjoying myself. So much so, im already working on 2 other websites. I've completly removed all tables, and im excited about launching them! I guess i better get back to it! Wooo!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
