Alot on my site is changing pretty quickly over the last few days. (Make sure to hold down the shift key and click the reload button if you see something wierd.)

A few of the more important things that I have changed:

  • Textile is now in full effect
  • The layout!
    • “creatimation.net” is no longer prominent
    • Drop down “projects” Only works if you have a decent browser .
  • Of course, back end updates
    • Admin Pages
    • Comment moderation
  • Fancy link pop-up titles
  • Categories!

Textile

After thinking long and hard about a way to make sure my site is going to be easy to keep track of, I’ve decided to switch my post format from xhtml to Textile formatting.

Doing so for several reasons:

  1. It’s much easier to write posts quickly. Not nearly as much mark up.
  2. Easier to move regular text to/from the server as opposed to HTML which always gets mucked up
  3. Want to be able to use a “translator” for the future. This way down the road when xhtml is updated, I can simply replace the conversion function and my site will still be completely valid.

Of course, converting to Textile entries means I have to go through and edit all my entries.

What a nighmare

I have over 160 posts dating all the way back to 2001 (3 years ago!) and lets just say, back then the font tag was very acceptable. sigh It’s going to take quite some time to move all the posts format. However it is worth it because once I am done, almsot the entire site will validate.

In addition to moving the posts to Textile, I have also put Textile to work in the comments section. So instead of HTML (which actually gets stripped now) you can format comments using Textile.

The Layout Change

The layout change is actually not that signifigant. Still two columns + header. So no big difference there – it’s the subtle things that I have changed.

“creatimation.net” missing?

What I mean is that at the top there is no longer a “creatimation.net” string of text. I used to have it there since this site began – it was my site’s branding.

However, it is time to move on. I am going to be out of school and ready to start really getting into the field in about a year, so I want to start establish and identity … a brand.

For my professional site, which I have recently redesigned, I made a nice two letter combination logo. While I hear it’s pretty common, I still think it looks great.

I have taken this “JM” mark and placed it where “creatimation.net” would have gone in order to do some cross site branding.

IA changes

In addition to the “JM” change, I have gone and changed the menu for the site. Previously consisting of over 6 menu items, I felt it was just getting to long.

In order to simply things I broke it up into only the most important links:

  • home
    It’s a home button. Duh.
  • archives
    This is a journal site. It only makes sense that the archives are fairly important.
  • portfolio
    I want people who come here to know that I am a professional – and I want them to be able to easliy find their way to my work.
  • projects
    This is where everything else goes.

The “projects” section is special to me. I do little things all the time. 1-2 day projects that are just tons of fun and quick. This is where I am going to list these things now.

More programming mumbo jumbo

In addition to updating the look of the site, the admin section is getting upgrades as well.

Having put well into the hundreds of hours into this site, the backend system is starting to become fairly powerful. Remember, with the exception of the Textile converter, this entire site is programmed by myself. So for me to say that the feature set is getting close to professional blogging tools such as Moveable Type and Word Press is, IMHO, a powerful statement.

Now, it’s not as good as these systems yet (they have much better templating tools), but it is getting there.

Comment moderation

Oh yeah, a very useful feature my site has been missing was added – I can easily go in and edit your comments now. Yay!

I’ll be adding a comment preview function at some point as well. Very badly needed.

NiceTitles

Originally from kryogenix.org, NiceTitle is an unubtrusive JavaScript that adds a very elegant pop up on links that have a “title” attribute.

Adding a nice transparent image to the background and you have a very neat effect.

Add, on top of that, a conditional statement hack for IE to process an AlphaLoader, and you get the nice background transparency in IE too. Snazzy! And using the conditional statement allows site and the css to still validate. Oh yeah.

Categories

Last, but definately not least, I have got the categories for the site working. When you go to the “permlink” (or the “more” link) for any entry, you will see the categories it is listed under at the bottom. Clicking one of those will take you to a page filled with other posts from that same category.

A full categories listing page is available as well.

Things left to do

  • Update all the entries on the site
  • Comment previews

That first one is going to take a good long while. :/