Burning the Candle at Both Ends
I am gearing up to start work on the April client, but in the meanwhile, I am putting in more work on the redesign of my portfolio site. Click the above link to see some of the evolution in the design.
The main things I've added here are the My Latest Post, My Best Content, and About Me sections. You wouldn't think this would be 3-4 hours of work from looking at it, but there's a lot going on under the hood.
First of all, My Latest Post. I want there to be a thumbnail graphic for each post, but I don't want them to show up on the indvidual post or the blog listing, just the main page. So I had to create and configure a WordPress custom field for that. Also, it was more difficult than I expected to get a loop to list only one post.
My Best Content is another loop. I thought about using some kind of rating system or plugin to determine what "best content" is, but ultimately, I decided that I wanted fine control over what gets listed here. So I created a category that I can tag posts with, and it will then show up in this listing. The other thing I wanted to do was make excerpts available if a browser wanted them. See those little down-facing triangles? Click on them. The excerpt should scroll down via a jQuery effect. Click on it again, and the excerpt scrolls back up and hides. These are the kinds of little features I plan on peppering throughout the entire design. Wait until you see how the Bibliography and Portfolio pages work....
Finally, there's nothing terribly interesting about the About Me section, but it is pulling from a Page in the WordPress backend for its content. There are little widgets for text boxes in WordPress, but they don't have the kind of flexbility that I wanted. So any time I want to do that kind of sidebar static content, I can include it with a query pulling a specific Page from wordpress. I don't have to worry about that page showing up when I list pages, because I do those manually and not via WordPress template tags.
I need to remember that I want to filter My Latest Work from flickr with a tag so that I have fine control over which images show up there, instead of just the most recent one. Otherwise, that section is working well in Firefox and IE 6. This is the first project where I had to create an IE-specific stylesheet. I don't like the idea, but my dedication to delivering my original concept means sometimes, such hacks have to come into play.
By the way, in case you're wondering how moving my blog there is going to work-- this is going to be my professional face. But Wouldn't It Be Cool? will be an archive of old content. I will continue using the LiveJournal for my jpersonal life stuff. The blog here will be written more in an article style, documenting web design, writing, and photography. I'm treating myself as a brand in this re-design. It's not just a facelift--it's a paradigm shift in how I present myself online. Don't worry--if you're not interested in Web Design, and you're an RSS reader, you will have a range of RSS feeds to select from to include or exclude my primary areas of interest from your reading.
One criticism of the design is that it's a bit monochrome. I like that, actually, because what it does is makes the color images really pop and come to the front. That's my intent--the visual aspects are the focus of this site--my photography and web design. My fiction is a big component too, and you will see soon how I am going to present that information in a visually appealing way.
On a personal note, I can't keep up this pace of work. I start working in the evening after a long day of work at the day job, and I end up not going to bed until 12:30 or 1, and then getting up at 6:30. I don't handle sleep dep very well, and this morning, I felt border-line panic attack-ish due to lack of sleep. I haven't felt like that in many months, so I am going to have to start getting more sleep. I do not feel well today at all--I have those numb spots in my back again, and now I'm getting weird chills through my legs every once and a while. At least the wrist is feeling better. I think I will be taking the night off to recover. Burning the candle at both ends is not a good idea, and I have to remind myself this. It's too easy for me to get caught up in this work and lose track of time.
Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Man, I really wish I could develop WordPress themes for a living. I'm giving some serious thought towards building some freeware themes for SF Writers/Editors when some time opens up in my schedule. I'm worried that doing that might cut into my paid work though.