August has come and with that, comes the dog days of summer. Its good for a freelancer like me because I can acquire a couple gigs at this time. I have been spending alot of time at home cleaning my workspace and getting ready for the fall season. Rosettes and CSS shall be done by the end of the year, but hopefully sooner.
Joomla was originally going to be my choice for R&C given some of the rich extensions offered for portfolio sites. In addition, I felt it would let me get acquainted with a CMF that I have been feeling very touch and go about. Each CMF is its own beast. Each has its own motivation for its inception and each has its navigation setup for particular website types and from the creator's ideas on how layout might be best optimized.
Due to the latter, I think that is why Joomla continues to confuse me so. I have been open to learning it, as I know there will be a client who desires a Joomla site some day and I want to at least have some facts I can advise them on. Joomla has a method of its madness that I still to this day do not understand. I suppose to many people I speak to, "categories" and "sections" seem to feel like they are the same thing. This forum post shows a good example on how it confuses many not familiar with Joomla's "older cousin", Mambo. I was patient and found myself toiling over it in the last month trying to learn the interface. I cant lie and say that I wont get a client who insists on having a Joomla based website.
That said, I kept an open mind but overall found much disappointment in one of the few well written and opensource portfolio extensions. For some of you who have worried that Joomla is not the most secure CMF, you might be further convinced when I say that I found this portfolio extension to have been taken over by a spam Viagra/Cialis site. At that point, I just simply gave up and searched some more. Sorry, Joomla.
Enter ImpressCMS. It doesnt have nearly the headway that its more known counterparts have, but it is a very promising CMS. Rosettes and CSS does take the mentality of its creator, with the desire to research new solutions and support those creating a road less traveled. A small community develops around it and I am hoping to contribute whatever I can in the near future. Despite its evolution (and seperation) from Xoops in 2007, ImpressCMS has garnered some awards.
A new graphic arts assignment starts this week. A bit of extra pocket money to say the least but Im already finding some fun in the work. Hoping to post more in this blog soon. When I am ready to migrate this blog, I will surely up my blog content quality.
Showing posts with label function. Show all posts
Showing posts with label function. Show all posts
Tempus Fugit
This is a phrase I seem to use more often than not. They say that time flies fast when we are having fun. I suppose that still applies to my "work" of a web and graphic artist. The real work for me is just getting myself started on modifying this theme amidst much change which has happened, both in the Wordpress world and in the world of my home office.
About 60% of my SHM theme was complete before Wordpress 3 released just a few weeks ago. Heck, I even manage to get the hang of jQuery with a few of my jQuery-savvy friends online. It truly is becoming the "write less, do more" solution for me. I see much potential for future projects. Overall its going to be useful for any site that might need content manageable beyond simple pages and blogs. It is true that Wordpress 3 does have new content types that can be added via functions.php but it still cant replace good ol' PodsCMS. I found this video quite useful in getting an idea of the direction that Matt Mullenweg wants to take his creation.
This past week, one of my young laptop hard drives gave out. Just 6 months old, the thing already served me an IO error. With a Linux operating system, the headache was not as great since I didn't need to take out 3 million software CDs to reinstall things on the new drive. My only shortcoming is that the copy of Maya that I have is not compatible with a 64-bit OS so I had to do a bit of finagling on it.
Overall, all is well. In the end, it was a nice reset to get me back on track. Before the crash, I was too caught up in designing The Perfect Checklist for an ever-changing CMS like Wordpress is. It I figured if I could just get an idea of all the Default CSS and CSS that should be included in any Wordpress Template, than I could streamline the process with use of a checklist. While this was written for the version 2.9.2 days, I do like DigWP's Default CSS Checklist that they made. It sort of was helpful but Im still finding myself wanting to start fresh with Thelonious serving as an example.
I still have yet to touch the widgetized sections of my site. One advantage of a pro-bono project is that (at least, usually) no deadline exists. Its about creation "when you can". Most of my pro-bono clients are attracted to me not only out of the idea of getting free work, but because I have a perchance for learning new things if faced with needing to do something a different way than what I have been in the past.
About 60% of my SHM theme was complete before Wordpress 3 released just a few weeks ago. Heck, I even manage to get the hang of jQuery with a few of my jQuery-savvy friends online. It truly is becoming the "write less, do more" solution for me. I see much potential for future projects. Overall its going to be useful for any site that might need content manageable beyond simple pages and blogs. It is true that Wordpress 3 does have new content types that can be added via functions.php but it still cant replace good ol' PodsCMS. I found this video quite useful in getting an idea of the direction that Matt Mullenweg wants to take his creation.
This past week, one of my young laptop hard drives gave out. Just 6 months old, the thing already served me an IO error. With a Linux operating system, the headache was not as great since I didn't need to take out 3 million software CDs to reinstall things on the new drive. My only shortcoming is that the copy of Maya that I have is not compatible with a 64-bit OS so I had to do a bit of finagling on it.
Overall, all is well. In the end, it was a nice reset to get me back on track. Before the crash, I was too caught up in designing The Perfect Checklist for an ever-changing CMS like Wordpress is. It I figured if I could just get an idea of all the Default CSS and CSS that should be included in any Wordpress Template, than I could streamline the process with use of a checklist. While this was written for the version 2.9.2 days, I do like DigWP's Default CSS Checklist that they made. It sort of was helpful but Im still finding myself wanting to start fresh with Thelonious serving as an example.
I still have yet to touch the widgetized sections of my site. One advantage of a pro-bono project is that (at least, usually) no deadline exists. Its about creation "when you can". Most of my pro-bono clients are attracted to me not only out of the idea of getting free work, but because I have a perchance for learning new things if faced with needing to do something a different way than what I have been in the past.
This Template Arrives Fashionably Late
While having a part time job has been fun, it has been a bit more part time than I would have wanted. I suppose that gives me more time to do the kinds of projects that *I* want to do, if not for the running back and forth to doctors office and various degrees of administration run-around.
At least now, I have something to show for my Drupal ponderings and discoveries. This project was fun and let me look into functionality as well as design, allowing me to add more versatility to my overall web design portfolio. It may look like the design kind of lacks pizzaz but a simple modification of the Nista theme was what David wished for.
Submissions begin towards the middle of this year, so dont hesitate to submit one of your best stories, prose, or poetry. You know you want to.
Here is the finished product for my first overall Drupal learning project:
At least now, I have something to show for my Drupal ponderings and discoveries. This project was fun and let me look into functionality as well as design, allowing me to add more versatility to my overall web design portfolio. It may look like the design kind of lacks pizzaz but a simple modification of the Nista theme was what David wished for.
Submissions begin towards the middle of this year, so dont hesitate to submit one of your best stories, prose, or poetry. You know you want to.
Here is the finished product for my first overall Drupal learning project: