Posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 7:42am by Rob Wilkerson
Remember that call for design help? Well, never mind. Due to an underwhelming response of a massive nature and the hatred I was feeling for my previous look, I just went ahead and pushed the new look live. It may not be good, but it’s almost certain to be better. To be fair, I did get one promise of design feedback in the near future (thanks, Javie), but I just couldn’t wait any longer. Fret not designer-types, the offer is still open. I (like to) think I have a decent feel for layout and composition, but a lot of the details – to my eye, specifically around color and its application – are lost on me. I’m sure there’s still a lot of room for improvement and I’d be happy to learn where I can improve the design and appearance of this space.
I also want to thank Alex Suraci again. I’ve been working with new code from the Chryp repository rather than the downloadable release candidate and, in the move to production, had a few problems. Some of those were fairly serious and impacted the ability to navigate around the site. I started the push last night around 7pm hoping things would go smoothly, but I should have known better. The push uncovered bugs that could’ve been devastating to the availability and accessibility of robwilkerson.org except that I was able to reach Alex in the #Chyrp room on IRC. He managed to fix the bugs (or point out workarounds) and push them up to the master repository from which I could then pull and update my own code. Without his help and quick response, it would have been a late night indeed. Instead, I was relaxing in front of the TV by 9:30pm or so.
That’s not to say everything’s perfect. It’s not. I know of a few bugs that I need to fix or at least track down, but I could use your help, too. Please let me know if you see anything that doesn’t look or feel quite right. No detail is too small.
chyrp, design, user interface
Posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 8:25pm by Rob Wilkerson
This weekend, as well as bits and pieces of the last week or so, was spent working on an updated design for this site. Why did it take so long, you ask? Mostly because, as a designer, I make one hell of a developer. I second guess every choice I make and then change those choices several times before deciding that it’s just barely tolerable. In short, if I waited until I actually liked one of my own designs, this thing would never make it to production. Nonetheless, I’ve really started hating some aspects of the design you’re looking at right now, so I wanted to get this effort jump started.
In addition to the design update, I’m also updating the engine. A new version of Chyrp is in the works and it includes some significant improvements and new features that the current “stable” version doesn’t have. The new version went into release candidacy a few weeks ago, so I decided to move forward with that. With (more than) a little help from Alex Suraci, the developer of Chyrp, I got my code base, pulled from the project’s stable branch on github, including a few key modules, stabilized to a point where I think I can begin moving it up the stack to production.
Currently, my updates are sitting in staging. Because my design skills are so anemic, I’m asking for input from anyone with an eye toward design. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated while I wrap up a few more back-end changes I’d like to make before go-live.
design, chyrp
Posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 1:59pm by Rob Wilkerson
Having grown tired of the wrapping post titles that resulted from the ridiculously constraining, three column layout that I was using, I made a quick and dirty change to my Chyrp theme to allow for more space. The modified layout also allowed me to increase the font size which I hope will assist with readability. This end product (some might argue by-product) of this modification has its own issues and violates more than a few of my own aesthetic preferences, but it addresses the most egregious need and I’ll get to the rest when I update my entire product code base to the latest version.
I tell you this because I care. And for absolutely no other reason.
Update 9/6/2008: I decided to pin this post so that everyone knows why the site looks just a little bit like ass. I’m tired of responding to individual inquiries. A better looking/working version is in the works. Really.
chyrp
Posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 2:29pm by Rob Wilkerson
Or, On the Lack of Changes Made to This Site.
It’s been a long time since I’ve made any changes to this site. The reasons for that are many and most of them are personal: lethargy, (lack of) motivation, interest, etc. One reason, arguably the most compelling reason, though, was that Chryp – my platform of choice – was undergoing a major overhaul to its architecture. I liked what I was hearing about what the new version would offer, so I decided to hold out on investing any significant time on my existing site.
Chyrp 2.0 has been out in beta for a few weeks and today I took the plunge; I upgraded my dev site and I think I’m going to be glad I waited. Everything of any substance in the platform seems to have changed and neither my modules nor my custom theme will work as-is – a decision I applaud, by the way. I’m all for breaking backwards compatibility in the interest of bettering the software.
Read More »
chyrp
Posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 9:24pm by Rob Wilkerson
And thus endeth the latest round of theme updates. This time was working above the comments. The sidebar is gone, with most of its content – at least that which I wanted to keep – having been moved to the header. The header, of course, offers more “stuff” and the logo has been refreshed (hopefully for the better). Additionally post metadata has been moved from the bottom of the post.
As with before, if you see any, um, wonkiness or problems, please let me know by adding a comment to this post.
chyrp, design
