ERROR…

To cut a long story short, after a little Google and WP Forums sleuthing, I was informed that I must’ve missed uploading a couple of files. So I went through the whole upload process again and voila, all was well again and I proceeded to update the site’s database and get the site back in running order.

Back in the day I used to have a little more help and direction when dealing with WordPress issues, but these days I’m pretty much learning to fly solo. Not an altogether negative experience, but it has it’s learning curve. Besides, I’m pretty cluey and resourceful, and I enjoy the odd puzzle now and then… although, not the frustration that comes with it.

Anyways, I got everything running smoothly again, except my front page preview images were all screwy and low res. So I went to the NextGEN Gallery settings and lo and behold, I had to update the plugin. So I did. After that rigmarole, my preview images don’t show at all. The image links work OK, as they display the ALT text, but the images have gone AWOL, and it seems to be directly related to the NGGallery.
And that’s where I’m at now.

I’ve done some sleuthing and searching for answers but so far have found none, but it seems to be that some sites have problems after the upgrade since I’m not the only one who’s encountered this.
I’ll keep looking around and posting on forums, emailing people and what-not until I get it fixed, I guess.

In the meantime, please bear with me while I get this sorted or find some other alternative.

WPAU

Coincidentally, during my search for answers I came across something that might make future upgrades a little easier. The WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin..

According to the site this plugin “automatically upgrades your wordpress version to the latest files provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.”

It looks to be fairly straight forward and by all accounts seems to do the job so I kinda look forward to trying it out for the next upgrade.

Now I’m off to work….

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It’s been a while since I last posted on here, hasn’t it?

Well, I got somewhat discouraged at WordPress and some other stuff and the headaches it was giving me affected my creativity but I think I’ve managed to get that all worked out now.  In addition, my sister’s family came to stay with us for a while so the house was a somewhat busy (and noisy!) there for a while.    My younger brother also graced us with his presence, so it was somewhat of a family get-together.

And on top of that, I’ve been working on some icons for the 2008 GUI Championships.

Shutter Reloaded Headaches

Basically, what was happening was that the way I was using the Shutter Reloaded plugin for WordPress to display image previews on one of my posts was causing some major drama and the post just wouldn’t save after a certain number of either characters or perhaps images were shown in the post.  So I had to troubleshoot for a while, but I think I finally resolved it with a little help (yup, you guessed it.. Steph saves the day again ). 

It seems that what I was doing was adding way too many characters or something and it made the post choke or some such so it wouldn’t even save.  Once I’d cleaned out the superfluous code however, things got a little better and I was able to continue with the post, which coincidentally, needs only a final proofread and I’ll be able to post it. 

The Gonzalez family visit

My sister Carol and her husband, their son and newest daughter flew from Mt. Isa in Queensland to grace us with their presence.  During their visit, they lodged in our humble abode and managed to displace me from my usually quiet study, in which I would normally be found up until midnight on most nights… except while they were here. 

Anyways, I got to meet my newest niece and see my youngest nephew also.  Lily (aka. Lily-Bean) was cute, (mostly) quiet and smiley little thing.  She has a habit of breaking out in a huge but cute toothless grin at the slightest provocation.

We pretty much all took advantage of their company while they were here, though “some” (no names given ) managed to monopolize their time more than others.

Lil’ bro also visits

Juan also stopped by for a visit.  He stayed at dad’s and was pretty much visible around town and at our various family functions. He’s a bit dorky but it’s always good to have him around.

Got you that time, didn’t I, Juan? 

Icons for the GUI Championships

Aside from all that, I’ve been working on an icon package which I will submit to compete in the 2008 GUI Championships.

The bi-annual event, “is an inter-website contest in which top graphic designers from around the world compete for $15,000 in cash and prizes.”

So I’ve been hard at work coming up with nice looking-concepts for each icon and getting them drawn and endlessly tweaking them in order to bring them to life so you can enjoy them on your desktops with a little help from IconPackager.

So here’s a small taste of what’s in store.  Bear in mind that these are only small previews of individual icons.

Site Update

After all the drama with the posts, I also finally managed to get the site updated to the latest version of WordPress.  The process was a bit involved and time-consuming but it all seems to have gone off without a hitch and as a bonus I have a complete backup of my site just in case something awful should happen. 

So that’s about all for now.  Keep an eye out for part 1 of the logo tutorial mentioned earlier coming out sometime tomorrow (finally!  I know, i know… )

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The site design is pretty much complete.  There’s still a couple of things I’m toying with (post ratings being the most visible of these right now), but everything else is pretty much set and carved in stone.  Some things may be adjusted or “perfected” as the whim strikes me.  Oh and also, my similarly graphically-inclined younger brother, Juan, has something in the works to contribute to this site, but more on that at a later date.

Anyways, to celebrate and properly inaugurate the site, I thought I would begin work on some kind of tutorial to put up here hopefully by the end of this weekend.  As such, I’m tending to lean towards something simple and quick, but very useful.
Coincidentally, this is where post ratings will really come in handy.  Posts like this one are more for informational purposes and ratings are kind of useless but with instructional posts, ratings will determine the true impact and effectiveness of the content.  So if you like the content, please by all means rate!

As I was saying… I haven’t yet settled on what kind of tutorial it will be but I’m leaning towards showing something quick and simple -yet flashy looking- in Adobe Fireworks, which is one of my favourite and most-used applications.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for future tutorials with any of the software that i use (click here for a list) let me know in the comments.  I’m certainly open to sharing my (dare I say) expertise.

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I suppose I should begin with a somewhat brief description of how this site came about.

Creating Digital*Impulse

Design

Arriving at the look and feel for this site has been a somewhat arduous project but I think it’s really turned out ok.  Finding a suitable layout that I actually liked and could use on a regular basis was a task in itself, what with the thousands of available themes and designs available freely.  I must’ve actually settled on a theme at least 4 or 5 times (many of which Steph hated )!

I should mention from the outset that this entire site’s design and not an inconsiderable amount of its construction were inspired and aided by the many talents and technical expertise of one Stephanie (a.k.a. BebiBulma).  Her help and support during this entire process (which coincidentally is still current and ongoing ) have been instrumental.  From getting me onto WordPress in the first place, then suggesting and setting up plugins, to positioning elements on the page for the notoriously design-unfriendly Internet Explorer and endlessly tweaking bits here and there, Steph’s help has been crucial to the successful functioning of this site.
Thank you, Steph, really. 

Anyways, I always knew I wanted a site that was styled as uniquely as I could manage on this strange new framework compared to other sites.  Being a design freak meant having something that stood out and caught the eye of visitors was a must, so I (with Steph’s help) trawled the intarwebs for hours looking for the right theme.  It was at this stage that she suggested I style it based on an upcoming WindowBlinds theme I have in the works.

MIИIM for WIndowBlinds

Going by the name of MIИIM, this WindowBlinds theme is an attempt at creating something both simple and minimalistic while remaining highly eye-catching, attractive and usable at the same time.

The theme is composed largely of a high-contrast monochrome palette with a splash of colour, in this case Cyan, though additional colours are planned for the WindowBlinds theme with the added bonus of color-awareness for full color control.

So back to the site…

The idea of using MIИIM as a base for the design of this site was ideal, since it’s purpose was largely to be a usable yet striking interface.
So once I found a theme I liked, I set about re-skinning it.  This required a lot of tweaking and modifying of the original theme but once the major hurdles were overcome, the going was fairly steady, if not easy after that.

The most challenging (and dare I say, infuriating ) hurdles I’ve faced so far with this designing in this framework are the comments skinning -which I’ve pretty much finished- and IE compatibility -that in itself is possibly the single most irritating aspect of web design these days.  Microsoft’s continuing refusal to do things differently just makes a web designer’s work that much more difficult.

So the result of all that hard work is what you see in front of you, and while I personally wouldn’t call it complete, I would say it’s definitely usable at this stage.  The rest is tweaking and improving.

What do you think?

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