Keith Lord - Online Portfolio

With the new release of version 0.8 of BBPress, or Desmond as it has been dubbed, Michaels plugin to allow images in posts no longer seems to work.

So I took a look at the “formatting_functions.php” file located in the “/bb-includes” folder and found what needs to be changed. Where it says;


function bb_allowed_tags() {
$tags = array(
'a' => array(
'href' => array(),
'title' => array(),
'rel' => array()),
'blockquote' => array('cite' => array()),
'br' => array(),
'code' => array(),
'pre' => array(),
'em' => array(),
'strong' => array(),
'ul' => array(),
'ol' => array(),
'li' => array()
);
return apply_filters( 'bb_allowed_tags', $tags );


You will need to add;


'img' => array(
'alt' => array()),


Between the ‘em’ and ’strong’ array values.

We at (pre)determined do love music so and are always on the look out to expand our musical horizons. So its no surprise that when a site like Jamendo pops up we do not fail to wander over and check it out.

Jamendo is a website with a revolutionary model that allows artists to promote and publish their music. Artist have the opportunity to show their creativity to a broader audience, and the public has a place to listen to, download, and share new music.

With 2000+ albums all tagged up in the various genre’s its pretty easy to find something you might be interested in and find new independent artists.

Jamendo | digg story

It has been around 6 months since Tristan last released a verson of Zenphoto, and they we get 2 builds at the same time (ok so build 1.0.4 had a problem with short tags). I am exceptionally happy because with these builds comes a “stepping stone” to the implimentation of subalbums, a feature I have been greatly impatient to obtain.

It has yet to be fully implimented yet (which is apparently what will happen with buil 1.1) but the features are there for testing which I shall be experimenting with later. I might go ahead and upgrade the albums on DJC to use the new build if all looks well.

Not quite sure why I expected FireFox to automatically upgrade to version 2. I decided to download it myself in the end, pretty shiny looking. Not only that but before I was using an extension that set your browsing up into sessions so if you crashed you could bring up the pages you were looking at prior to the hiccup. Seems Mozilla incorporated it into version 2 which is nice, my only grumble is the fact that Aardvark doesn’t work with version 2 apparently, not sure about that given that the demo works just fine its installing the extension that throws up an incompatibility issue.

Recently chucker mentioned in his “Remix” post about the tagline in wordpress, which states “Code is Poetry” and ventures the possibility of Code being Art.
This leads me to wonder if Code is Poetry what does that make the Kubrick style sheet? A Haiku perhaps?
I was wondering if I was the only one frustraited by the messy CSS code of Wordpress’ default theme, but as it turns out I wasn’t.

So I decided to do something about it, I went through and removed all the conflicting values (duplicate values) and added a few more to make customisation easier (some people know how to change values but not write new ones). I wrote this sheet in a structured way that I find works for me, not sure if others will find it usable as I can never tell if my CSS decent enough for people really. So here it is;

• Kubrick Style Clean (.txt format)

As chucker points out, Kubrick is third party and so doesn’t really fall under wordpress’ “Code is Poetry” line, this of course would depend on whether the line itself refers to just wordpress code or code in general.

“..and I told him you were a perfectionist and you were always working on better ways to make your layouts.”

Jennifer is quite right of course, I am a perfectionist, I never used to be but I am now. Nothing I design seem good enough, I might like it first off but after a few weeks I am looking at other design concepts to impliment instead. It is almost like one is addicted to designing sites, I do not think I am of course but work on my sites never seem to end.
Take greyskiesstudios for example, now this is my online portfolio site previous layouts have been, in my opinion, lacking in a professional look about them. So after browsing the internet looking through what the fashions are on the internet I realized that most of the “web 2.0″ gimmicks when utilized in more contrasting colours that aren’t whites, light greys and violent pinks or blues, can actually bring a “professional class” to a site. Whether this site is deserving of the “professional class” or whether it attaches the illusion of remains to be seen. So like the traitor I am, I embrased gradients, shiney images and rounded corners (although rounded corners are not really a gimmick in my opinion they can add some much needed dynamics to a site) in the bid to make my site look professional. In doing so my site lost some identity, it became another site on the internet that looks similar to countless others.
The site needs to serve several functions in my mind, it needs to be professional, it needs to say “this guy is a genius hire him”, it needs to be easy to see what visitors want to see and it needs to have some degree of personality attached to it so it can give potential employers an indication to who they are hiring. Well what about having an “About” page for people to see some personality Tweek?
Quite so that could possibly do the job, however when you take into account the following it might not be so good for everyone. First off the attention span of the regular internet goer is very short, some say with online marketing you have approx 6 seconds to generate interest in a product, so would someone be willing to read through a long about page. Of course this can be countered by having a short and simple about page (my current one is very short and isn’t actually very informative but I shall get to this in a moment). The second factor is the site owner themselves, I personally don’t like talking about myself in a positive light as Jen can attest to. So writing about myself, what I’ve done and accomplished is not an easy task, infact I find it almost impossible. So I think expanding ones personality into the site design itself is a good way to get across an indication of what the site owner is like.
My problem is finding that balance, finding a layout that ties in with the sites name, looks professional and contains personality.
This explains why I want to redesign greyskiesstudios again, but what of my other sites? DJC for example the new layout is done and the site isn’t fully uploaded yet and I have been thinking of changing things, perhaps theres a different reason for each site.

So me and amon were talking about updating various sites we run today, when he mentioned the “Redesign and Realign” statement I had on the beta build of greyskies which I had read about last year on A List Apart and it got me thinking.
I have been designing websites for almost 10 years now and when I started I couldn’t design a nice looking layout for toffees, this of course changed over the years as I learned how to better use Photoshop and apply the knowledge gain at Art School to what I was working on. This combined with looking at website codes taking them apart and seeing how they work taught me how to create beautiful looking websites but with not much thought to semantic markup and user end interface.
Since making the change (for which I give amon credit for introducing me to Jeff Zeldman and Designing With Web Standards) I have found that I am more interested in making the site as pleasent and easy experience to the user than I am in having the site look pretty. Asthetics will always be a apart of it as I love to create its what I do its why I am an Artist. Take DJC for instance, I have worked on DJC since I was introduced to Myst back in 1998, when the site first went up it was on fortunecities (and we remember how nasty those sites looked) as I became more interested in designing features of the site myself instead of using masses of animated .gif’s and starfield backgrounds I started using MS Word (how could you I hear you cry, well I was new to this so give me a break). It was only when I started visiting RivenGuild that I learned about more complex coding and different programs to use (ie frontpage express), I had used WYSIWYG editors since then up to 2003/2004, it was only when I met Jen that I started working with CSS and divs and using notepad to code with (I used both notepad and WYSIWYG editors).
I am however now free of such devices, I only use Photoshop and Notepad++ for my websites and have felt better for doing so, I am at the stage where I know my code is valid XHTML before even validating it because I have written every fragment of the code and don’t have a WYSIWYG editor adding nonsense code, misreading tags and bloating my webpages up with items I do not need. This means its so much easier to go through my pages to change sections and has cut down the amount of server space used for a site. Not only that I find my sites working nicely on IE, FF and safari which means users aren’t met with;

“Site best viewed in Firefox at 1024×786 resolution.”

I know from my experience as a user of varous sites, if people are looking for information they want to find it quickly and easily, hiding information away behind “mystery meat” navigation and throwing adverts in the way is just not the way to go about it. Last thing I want to be doing is reading an article and having an advert smack bang in the middle of it (which is often the case when reading articles posted on Digg.
Although I still have alot to learn I think making the change has been very worthwhile, and if people find it alot easier to find what they are looking for on DJC then I have done what I was aiming for.

Blog Upgrade & npages

With the new update for WordPress released I figured it was about time I upgraded my blog to the new build, I have been meaning to upgrade for a while but haven’t had the time to do so. Think I might work on a new theme for the blog too, possibly incorperating it into the beta version of greyskies.
I have also been looking at npages, which is a CMS from amon. Its pretty nice little application, needs a few changes here an there obviously but its promising and for the most part very easy to use.

Surprising how idea’s come about, was browing Myst Blogs and my In Character Uru Blog, Beneath. When suddenly I had an idea which became Uru Blogs.

Whats also strange is I pretty much knew how I wanted it set up to begin with, the colours I wanted were dark green/browns and paler shades and I wanted it to mimic Myst Blogs as I envisioned it as a kind of “sister site”. Thanks to amon for the scripts, the site it working as it should be, still needs a few kinks ironed out in the CSS but thats not overly important oh and the side bar is on the left side instead of the right like I wanted it but thats cause IE was being a lil bastard as usual.

I’ve decided to discontinue creamsoda, I just don’t have the time to dedicate to it, might restart it in another 4 years

Tom will be annoyed he wanted me to finish the current story arch.

Oh and anyone who subscribed to my old feed might wanna update with my new one which is; http://feeds.feedburner.com/tweek/pre-determined

So I have been thinking of upgrading the old DJC forums. The problem is going from v1.3.1 to v2+, means you need to completely rewrite the skin.

Seems they are relying on CSS sheets more in the newer versions which is nice, made skinning a lot easier. Still not brilliant though and trying to remember what effects what on a forum that has so many pages causes headaches. I did have to dive into the root HTML files and add some new elements in order to get what I wanted.

So the new forum skin looks ok, I might write a better skin later but its no longer at the top of my “to do” list. Seems more integrated with the new site build too which is nice, there are some elements that kind of break out of their boxes (basically when one is setting up a new registration).

My main concern is the upgrade messing up the SQL database, but I have plenty of time to figure that out. The forums won’t go up until the new build is released, and until I fix this issue with the “News” section thats not going to be up any time soon.

Really optimistic about the new site, content is better sorted, easier to find for new players and old players plus a lot of new info to be added.

Now I admit I approached IE7 with a biased view on it. I like many others feel that Internet Explorer is a poor browser, and the constant jumping through hoops I need to do to get my sites displaying in IE properly has annoyed me so much that I don’t ever see myself seriously using another IE product for the rest of my days.

After reading this article I am a little paranoid when it comes to Microsoft’s installation set up, I know that some programs and applications like to force you into agreeing with a policy you hate just to see the software work.

As a result I was looking at this more from a web site designer than using it for every day browsing.

Anyway I installed it, rebooted, and opened the program. It crashed right off the bat, I was impressed, and by impressed I mean bemused.

I am most aware that it is beta and there are going to be some issues. I think it crashed pretty much every time I used it, I gave it 3 or 4 tries before uninstalling it on the last try.

First thing I checked when I opened the browser was my websites, I wanted to see if they worked in IE7 (given that my sites, aside from the current DJC build, are all valid XHTML and CSS, I don’t see why it shouldn’t) which they did.

As for the User Interface, I wasn’t impressed. I find that they tend to go for the looks over the usability which is a sign of a bad design in my opinion.
Even in the image above you can see one of the issues I kept having regarding the URL bar.

One item I did like is the apparent ability for new tabs to have a different homepage set up, something I think FireFox could use.

This isn’t a huge in depth look at IE as the consent crashing kind of stopped me from taking a good look, it is more a brief look or an initial thought of the browser.