I’ve added a few more items to the list of trimmings I’ve made around here. All things, so far, that I have wanted to do for a long long time. Somehow I found that over the last few days I’ve been able to work extremely focused on this site, and I’m afraid that by doing so I have neglected a few other things, such as content. But you’ve gotta build the boat before you load it with people, right? At least, that’s the way it works in Civilization 3.
So for you people waiting for the Kubrick theme, fear not, since that design and this, are basically the same, all this code clean up will be good for you too.
Here is a list of the things that I have yet to do. One of Rikke’s friends is staying with us until Sunday, and I’ll have a good deal of time until then to work on this, the list of things yet to be done.
- Archives: Archives have been vastly improved, but still needs a little work.
- Gallery: Just like the photo gallery, the other gallery needs to work better. I want to try and integrate it into WP and use it as a CMS, but I don’t know if that’s possible…
- Categories: The categories are a mess. Too many, too diverse, too imprecise.
If there’s something that’s been annoying you, or something you would like to see more of, now’s the time to chime in.
As a note on the photo gallery side of things, have you looked at iPap? It is similar in appearance and function to your own and since it done by Markku Seguerra I’m figuring over time it will become more integrated with WordPress.
BTW, you comments form is broken. You are missing a closing quote on the form action.
There, the comment’s form should work again :)
Pictorialis II seems to be nice. It is basically a second install of WP, so the learning curve is relatively low. Basically requires you to stick your photos in a folder, and make the category. Then spits out a nice page based on the template you have.
For my photo gallery needs, I’m currently using Paul Griffin’s Simple PHP Gallery. It’s a quick installation and does its job without all the bells and whistles.
By the way, I’m digging the barcode at the top (I know it’s been there for a bit), very cool. Reminds me of the movie, The Fortress with that guy from Highlander (Chris Lambert). Otherwise known as Lord Rayden from the Mortal Kombat movie. Classic films with an actor with Myopia.
And Highlander! … He’s got Myopia?
Yeah, Myopia of all things. I remember him talking about the conflicts of his Myopia (or nearsightedness) when filming Highlander.
I believe he knicked Sean Connery a few times during their training scenes and because he couldn’t see far enough into the distance, a lot of times he just guessed where an actor was. I suppose he has an extreme case of Myopia, which in most cases can be improved.
Integrating PhotoStack with WP should not be that much work. At least not getting it to display the photos using the same layout as the rest of your pages. But making it work like a CMS system using WP will require some heavy duty coding.
1. Create a new WP page where you will put the new photos.
2. Include/require the default Photostack index file using PHP.
3. Voila.
One thing I personally miss a little, is a shoutbox/forum/something, where we can say something off-topic…dunno if this is something you chosen to not have?
Well, I wouldn’t so much say that it was ‘on purpose’. It’s just sort of the way that things have worked out. I have had a bulletin board on here, but it didn’t see all that much use, and it required even more maintenance of me, to keep running.
And while I enjoy the mini-community aspects of my blog, it is first and foremost a place where I can collect all my thoughts about the present and memories as well as ‘artifacts’ from the past (so to speak).
But it’s an interesting thought though. But ultimately I don’t see myself doing it in the foreseeable future (3 – 6 months).
Chris: Yeah, integrating PhotoStack isn’t that hard, while I’m happy you give me the instructions, I can figure it out :) — Also, it’s a bit more complicated than just that :)
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize i was talking to the PHP-wizard of the state of Denmark ;-)
Heh, well not to patronize you, or elevate myself, but each page on this site consists of something like 5 – 6 pages that get put together by PHP, so yeah, I know how it works ;)
hey michael, my devblog is wanting a new dress :)
btw: the links in white in the header logo a hard to read atm, sort of…
I too am looking at iPAP as solution for a WP photo gallery.
cheers
alex
My god that navigation is sweet!
Nice to see the bonsai back :) (remember it from the old grey background and collapsable sidebar thing) :D
Likewise, that navigation is nice. :) I dig it in that Disco Stu kind of way.
I really like the new navigation, looks great. May I ask how you are able to seperate the Trackbacks/Pingbacks and Comments as you have?
It’s a plugin from Jennifer
I’m giving another set of praise for the new navigation. All this blog work of yours has made me want to work on mine. I’ve found many many wordpress plugins that I’m trying to get up a running. For instance, the tb/pb and comments plugin. awesome work!
Yup, site looks fantastic and im certainly learning new things about CSS and WP from dissecting (what i can understand of) your site, in that ‘tweak it and see what it does” kind of way ;-)
By all means, knock yourself out :)
Cheers :-D
I’d like to force myself to have the minimal nav options like yourself, but I just cant bring myself to lose all my sidebar items.
I’ve been inspired so far to make the comments easier to read and also use the CSS shadow tag (subtly – I think) on my site from what I’ve seen/read on yours… Well that’s what I can remember anyway.
I am very very strict with my design, as you can see. It’s in my nature to constantly optimize, going over the same things again and again, until only the very most important parts remain.
I did do that a while ago, but the sidebar has unfortunately grown almost on its own :-) If i were to pair it down to what it should be I would have to create lots of pages and Id have to keep those up to date with any changes I do to the layout – at the moment Im not ready to have to deal with that level of complication as having 2 pages (index and stats) to keep the same is enough for me, and thats without worrying about when WordPress is updated and I need to try to work out what pages need replacing and what dont. Chances are Ill overwrite the wrong files, as I did last time.
Well done for keeping this minimal yet still navigable though, it works very well. The only suggestion I can think of which may help from a readers point of view is maybe a related posts listing on the individual post page. Im sure I saw some plugins but Im not sure how well they work, it could be useful for people coming via search engines to maybe see posts of a similar ilk. Im sure you could integrate it seamlessly, but then this is your site so ignore my cheekiness if you like ;-)
Matthew: One of the things I’m going to do today, is actually look at what I can do to improve navigation out from permalink pages :)