New CMS, New Blog, and a whole new set of toys.
Well as you may have noticed, over the last 5 months this blog has pretty much been inactive, for the last month, the blog has not even been online (mainly for the reasons below). I decided one day that it was time to completely overhaul the whole back end of my portfolio. After a year I was getting a little sick of its lack of functionality. Starting up a new version while keeping the older version as the live copy, I ripped into it, rearranged how the back end worked, and totally scrapped the old database (except for the content). In the past when I was setting up my site, I did everything in pieces, instead of sitting down and pumping it out in one go.
When I first created this version of the site, I started with the design and production. I built the site in a very simple way, using php includes for each portfolio entry. A few months later, I added a cms system to control the portfolio entries, a month later, a custom tracking system (from scratch) to track hits on projects, so I could see what people were getting attracted to. Then came a projects section, and an archiving system. By the time the smoke cleared I had a stack of sub sites all accessing their own database tables, and they were all starting to get to me. I had features I really liked in some that I didn’t integrate into others, so thats when I decided to change everything.
I started out by fiquring out my content, since that is the most important part of any site, and tackled the databases one at a time. Deciding on what needed to go, and what was staying, I created a short list of necessaries. On the front end of the site, you will most likely not see much change (as far as content, not design) since a lot of what was on site was working. The content as getting me quite a few hits, and as well was the most useful information about the projects.
I then created a brand new database with one table… yes only one! This allowed me to bring all the content to one place, calling one table, but differentiating the content based on a few variables. I included a column to tell me what kind of content it was, ie folio, projects, in the works, or archived. On top of that, it could all be interchanged. I build into my cms the ability to switch an entry from one section to another, on the fly. I could add a project when I started it, then move it to the live portfolio when it was all wrapped up. I had always wanted to better track when a project started and ended, that, the old archive was doing quite well, but until now I never integrated it into the portfolio.
So along with a new database, also came a new cms, with more options, more information. I cleaned up all the calls, perfected the functions, and created better name based variables. Overall, it was perfect, at least to me. I no longer was going to 5 different places to manage everything, the uploaders (for the site previews) were well rounded, and now removed the old screen when a new one was uploaded. Some might think this is not that big of a deal, but when your writing everything from scratch, its just satisfying to see everything work so problem free. Basically I am building my own, personal, custom, wordpress cms, from scratch. I have plugin functions, feeds, config docs, global headers & footers, etc.
By the time I had everything wrapped up, a month and a half had gone by (don’t forget I am still working a full time job at Free Agency Creative, as well as had a number of side contracts going on at the same time). At this point it was almost ready to launch. My new and improved tracking system was up and running, as well a few external site statistic systems, like the new Reinvigorate (which is currently still in beta, but works so well), and google analytics. I wanted to get as much information about my visitors as possible. That way I could tweak my site in little ways to make it run smoother for everyone, including the friendly search engine spiders.
I always made sure my content was presented in a logical order, and have always been obsessed with making sure it still looked good with no style sheets. So I could not just up and abandon this now, I went the opposite direction, and made it better. Integrating multiple microformats into my site, I am giving the user more information. One of them included an hCard, which allows users with the Operator toolbar for Firefox to automatically pull content on the page (styled with specific classes) and convert it to a vCard for their address book at the click of a button. For the web savvier clients and contractors, its saving them the time of having to manually find the information and add it.
So all in all, a lot of time has gone by, and as you may have noticed, the design has changed here. After the new site & cms system was live (on the old design) with all the new features. I then decided to sit down and work out a new design. It has been a long time coming, and every time I had sat down to do it in the past, I felt I could not make it any better well keeping the same simple flow, so I would just leave it. But then it came to me, I started with a concept and ran with it, so basically what you see is what you get. I took my time, made sure everything was perfect, and it took me about a month (between work, my girlfriend, and friends) to get everything to a place that I was happy with.
I just hope everyone likes what I have done. I would love to hear what everyone things, so please post a comment if you have time. Thanks for the patience, in waiting, and reading of course. This turned into quite a long post.
