So it’s a bit of a radical change, but I thought it’s spring - time of renewal and all that. And anyway the last design was a few years old, and I was bored with it. Plus some parts of the site were becoming a pain to maintain so I took the plunge and moved everything over to Wordpress. Every single page on the site is now managed by Wordpress.
When I was thinking about the re-design the overarching graphic theme I wanted was ‘interference’. You’ll see that these dotted/lined backgrounds interact with each other depending on where they are placed on the page. Which then results in different patterns appearing. Sometimes the patterns cancel each other out which can then make some of the text hard to read - I know that - that’s how I want it!
I developed most of it actually offline, using my laptop running Wordpress. I used the brilliant MAMP which provided a whole apache/php/mysql development platform with just one click. I just thought that once the re-design was done then I could just export the Wordpress stuff from my local machine, install Wordpress on my live server and then ta-da, job done. Unfortunately nothing ever goes that smoothly.
You see I hadn’t figured on my version of MYSQL on my live server being 3.something. The one on my laptop was version 4.something. And Wordpress 2.1 needs MYSQL 4+. So after uploading all the files I then got an error message. To fix it I then had to install Wordpress 2.0 and also fix my template files, which were using some new 2.1 functions.
But the pain wasn’t yet over. To embed the Flash movies in my posts I was using the fab swfobject created by Geof Stearn. On my MacBook everything worked fine. But put that on Wordpress 2.0 and all the JavaScript breaks. Luckily a there’s a great plug-in for Wordpress which implements swfobject in a Wordpress post. Hurrah.
So no doubt there’s still things that are still broken. And I’ve still got more stuff to upload/add to the site. But with the whole site now being managed by Wordpress it means I can do a lot more with the content, and people will hopefully find stuff that was previously buried. Oh - and the whole site runs from one php page!
Let me know what you think - either by leaving a comment or leaving a visual comment via my new webcam based visitor gallery.
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Reminiscent of a television newscaster wearing a herringbone suit - painful to look at. But, it definitely represents your sense of humor and willingness to explore the extremes. A pleasant poke in the eye.
Craig Babcock / 08/04/2007