![[screenshot]](https://theparkerfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/screenshot.jpg)
Well, if you are one of our three loyal readers, you will notice we have changed things up a bit. The big impetus is that we have to get “save the date” notes out to our adoring masses, and being a good marketer I want to (a) have everything looking pretty when people are looking, and (b) want to have continuity between what you get on the web and what you get in the mail.
Of course, the funny thing here isn’t that I am a slave to online engagement best-practices, but that we have *so* much done … but haven’t done the guest list, which is usually a pre-requisit to both save-the-date cards and, well, wedding planning. We have a church, a reception, a hotel, a dress, attendants, bridesmaids dresses, a band, a photographer, as well as solid leads on a florist, a cake, an after-party, a honeymoon and the rehearsal dinner … but don’t know who is going to see any of it.
In other news, over the weekend we did our very first cake testing. We went up to Custom Cake Designs (in Gaithersburg, Maryland) who did the cake for our foodie-friends Sue and Jeremy’s wedding. It was about what you would expect — histrionic brides as far as the eye could see — but it was interesting to talk about cake decoration as if it were an art form up there with “ballet” and “lying to White House reporters.”
The front page is now a fully functioning part of the blog, which is good because it provides about 80% of the updated content on the site. Also, all pages on the [Random Musings] blog now pull their wrapper images dynamically from my “favorites” photo set on Flickr, which means I can stop rotating them by hand.
Finally, the [Photography] section now has — GASP! — photographs, including a run down of my most recent photoblog posts, my most recent Flickr sets, and a few more images pulled from my “favorites” photo set on Flickr.
Oh, and I did a bunch of design work on the blog too. New headers, new formatting. Everything (should) look much cleaner now.
FWIW, I highly recommend the Flickr API, though integrating it into your site is probably not for the weak of heart. I did most of the work through phpFlickr, but even that needed a lot of customization to get it to do what I wanted.
this weekend it hit me that, for a site centered around a photoblog, my web site was pretty devoid of pictures. after three nights of little sleep, vioa-la! each page has 3-5 photographs by your’s truely, and a much more dignified color palatte.
done, aaand done.
I had no idea that my hosting provider (lunarpages, not as evil as most hosts) actually provides its clients with as many instances of WordPress as we can handle. Now, I’m not a blog snob but I do like having the ability to categorize posts. How has blogger lasted so long without categories?
Anyway, it was a weekend’s worth of work, but 99.8% of that was formatting the display template. The default was “pretty,” but I wanted the look and feel to merged seamlessly with my main site.
Spent the entire weekend moving everything over, but most moved pretty easily (mySQL databases, files, etc). The only real problem is that I decided to recode the entire site from ASP (8 years experience) to PHP (6 months experience) because it appears that ASP is a dying language (not the reason) and that PHP is $1/mo. cheaper (the reason).
I was responsible for online presences for a number of political offices including House Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Whip Steny Hoyer, Rep. Dick Gephardt, Rep. John Lewis, and Rep. Nick Lampson.
i launched over 75 efforts for progressive non-profit causes, including campaigns for the Planned Parenthood, Campaign For America’s Future, True Majority, US Soccer Foundation, National Parks and Conservation Association, Common Sense about Kids and Guns, and the Communication Workers of America.
but, one of the great perks of the job was being allowed to host my personal web servers on a company IP address.
God, I love hippies.
Now that I am leaving (to join a progressive non-profit cause no less) however, I am screwed.
Way back, when I used to have a house and a reliable internet connection (versus living in a 500 sq ft basement apartment) I served up pages from a server in my house.
Now, I have to sign contracts with scary hosting companies whose websites make them seem like fronts for the Russian mob.
So, I chose blindly. I think mt stab in the dark was called Exabytes. They have servers in Texas … and Banglore (India, not Maine) so I am guessing I won’t get a lick of support that isn’t in Hindi.
wonder if they have conservationists in India.