Site redesign

As many of you know, i have been meaning to redesign my website for many months, well, after the first redesign very quickly got on my nerves for both technical, and visual reason i decided i would have another go.

The though behind this design was that i needed to make something clean and readable. Another large aim of the site, was to have a template which was flexible enough to incorporate many different design layouts.

There are a few sections which will be having more work on them shortly, and there are also some ideas on the way for some really “unique” touches.

As always, for the backend of this site i am using textpattern which a few choice extensions (more on those in the future) and for the front end i have my own XHTML / CSS template. For a few of the more visual effects ( like this one I am using the tried and tested slimbox

I have also produced a cleaner implementation of the hCard microformat on this version of the site. It is sat there down in the footer. I will be expanding the use of microformats on this site further i also have some plans for different way of displaying the ones allredy in use.

So, that a little about the new design. I look forward to the comments and feedback, and when you do find somthing which is broken (because you are) please e-mail me before anyone else notices. i wouldent want my site in a mess no would i (actully dont answer that)

Published: 15 February 2007 | Categories: , Permalink

Laptop Doctor

Doctor: hello lappy, whats the problem

Lappy: i dont know Doctor

Doctor: well what are the symptoms

Lappy: i find it diffcult to load in the morning, keep ejecting when i am sure i shouldent, and i am having great difficulty playing Dawn of War Dark Crusade and generally feel quite sluggish.

Doctor: is this a recent thing? or has it happend before

Lappy: the Dawn of War problem is doc, I use to be able to play it fine, no problems at all. Do i need a new processor doc, please dont say

Doctor: i dont think that would be possible, what have you tried allredy?

Lappy: i have tried reinstalling Dawn of War, i have defragged, run every antiviris and anti spyware scan. increased virtual memory. I tried that after i kept getting blue screen of death with memory errors

Doctor: hmm, i cant think of anything else you could, are you thinking of getting a secound opinion

Lappy: yes i am

Do you think you could help Lappy with his problems? if so please write it in on a pstcard to…... or, just leave a comment on drop me an e-mail

Published: 10 February 2007 | Categories: , Permalink

A little bit of complication

Sometimes on my adventure around the internet i encounter things which remind me how “mindless” computers are. Often it is a CMS generated page that has nowhere to go next in a resonable place and annoying things like that.

I have found in the last h months i have seen less and less of this, but this evening while i was looking up how to set up my VPS server, i saw this beaty of an ad manaagment page.

This has been caused by an admanagement system which does not know enough metadata (data about data) about the advert it has been tasked with placing. This is not that uncommon, but it took my attension today as i have been thinking about this sort of thing recently.

The advert placement, and choice has severely damaged the accsessibility of the page. both visually and in the code.

The colors of the adverts, and the animation on the page make it very hard to read the pages content. And this is just the start of the issues with the advert placement. In Technical issues this advert in the middle of the page is not “contant” and thus is presentation and should not belong in the main content area. or should not be included into the structure of the document

I think it shows on the screenshot that the adverts are all form the same series in the campaigners campaign.

I have been experimenting with Microformats on both the publishing and parseing side and they have started to open my eyes to the way complicated data can be simplified with an agreed way of adding metadata.

I have been developing an advertisement rotation system recently, and this has highlighted the fact i need data about who the advert is for and what series of adverts it is from.

What can we do?

Thinking about the problem i can think of two items of data which organise the adverts better. this meta data is very simple.

the first, the clients name, the secound the series from whaich the adverts has been taken.

This would make the managment sytem aware of the cleints and client “seiries” on the page. so if a client has two adverts on the page, then they are two different adverts, not three identical adverts from a campain.

What other Benifits are there

other benifits include the ability to mesure the number of advert shows a client has had, and provide a more detailed break down of which type, and from which campaign.

how this could be implimeented is likley to be the subject of another post,

Published: 5 February 2007 | Categories: , Permalink