Not My Base

OK, so I’m really procrastinating now. I’ve still not started any serious revision for Monday’s exam, and I just have the urge to do everything else, evident by the rise in posts per day on my site from less than one to around sixty-two.

When I first worked on this new site, I came up with a series of goals, and some of them have been fulfilled. I’ve redesigned the header, and the colour makes the search box a little more obvious then when it was purely white like the search box itself. I’d still like a status in the header, and I promise it wont be as obscene as my Facebook ones.

As for sidebar widgets, I’m still getting used to the site management so I’m still figuring out what is genuinely useful and what is just clutter. Speaking of clutter, I need to tidy the menu up a bit.

But I now have a new issue, allow me to explain. Take a look at everything I’ve posted about this years tour of Japan (I still get all giddy when I say that), what I’d really like to do is have the map stickied to the top half of the page, and for the bottom half, have a slide-show of the other posts in the topic. I already have a few idea’s on how to do this, but I really should get revising.

Yup, you heard, this seems fine, so I’ll stick with it. I’m using the “Atahualpa” theme, as it’s designed to be (and is) very customisable. I’m still deciding what widgets to put in the left and right margins, I could probably do with widening them actually. A few other changes I’d like to make:

1. Change the icon to be a Zig fighter.
2. Make the search function more obvious.
3. Make an appropriate header image, the default one is some flowers, not my style, so I’ve hidden it for now.
4. Add a temporary status widget, similar to what Twitter has to offer, but without using Twitter. This is for things I want to say without it leaving a permanent mark on the site, passive comments such as “Weathers a bit poo today”.
5. Add some kind of “now listening to” widget just for fun, I could probably find one linking to Last.fm if I tried.
6. Spam content, it’s all so empty at the mo
7. Get some smileys on the go.

In the words of Leeroy Jenkins.. LETS DO THIS!

Just for the record. I do not play WoW, I hate it with a passion. Please do not confuse me for a WoW player, I will gut you, at least I got chicken.

The truth is, I’ve spent so much time working on the new MSUOTC website that I just can’t bare to touch any more html, so for now, I’m back to using a CMS (wordpress). The plan was to make my own site from scratch, not only because I decided Drupal was rubbish for what I wanted, but also simply to demonstrate my web dev skills. I’m also fed up of just having that blasted “coming soon” splash screen, every morning I wake up with things I want to write about, only to get frustrated at not having a site to publish them on. I have great stories to tell of running along Hadrian’s Wall firing off an FN Minimi at wannabe lieutenants, kiting accidents rendering me unconscious on Brancaster Bay, and nightmares of blood, gore and penguin/goose hybrids stealing orange tango from McDonalds. I want to show off my fractal terrain, Lego robot and “Top Secret” projects, and get peoples feedback.

So far I’ve tried Joomla and the later version of Drupal, I thought both were a bit bloated, so now I’m trying out WordPress. So far it looks like it’s onto a winner, perhaps I could show off my skills simply by making plug-ins for this.. we’ll see.