moving and all the follows

Although I made the initial purchase a couple weeks ago, I have officially moved EliHorne.com and most of my properties over to the new Media Temple account. So far the consistency in environments and single-login are vastly better than where I was before (host will not be named).

At the beginning, supporting the little guy felt great and worked out well, but as I grew, I realized that I needed someone who could be there for me 24/7. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a company pretends to be more people than they are. “Our domains department isn’t open until tomorrow.” Yea whatever. Your “domains guy” is home sick with a hangover, right? Just be honest with me, and I’m likely to be understanding. Towards the end of my stay there, I needed technical support because things were malfunctioning, and they just didn’t answer fast enough. No phone technical support (and I’m not talking about outsourced Indian tech support) is a HUGE strike against you in my book. I’m not someone that you find reaching out for support very often, but when I need it, I want it ready, no questions asked. And Media Temple has that. I’ve tried it. Fantastic.

I had mentioned in a previous post that I would be releasing this theme publicly once I had updated it to WP2.3, and that I would do that when I moved hosts. Well, you are seeing it. Native tagging support is finished, and things are looking good. I’m in the process of building a navigation of sorts, and when thats ready, this puppy is getting a scrubdown and a bow on its neck. Here’s to hoping someone will adopt it.

While we are on the topic of the hosting transition, I must comment that the built in .wxr backup thingy that is now standard in WP blows chunks. I’ve tried to use it on multiple occasions with disappointments of different degrees each time. It usually gets all the posts and all the comments, but categories/tags are just too much for it to handle. First pass didn’t grab categories or tags. Second pass converted all tags into categories. I cringe at the thought of someone attempting this who isn’t at least vaguely familiar with phpmyadmin and mysql because thats what I’ve had to resort to every time. Now, this is quite possibly me being a dick. I don’t know the first thing about building an exporter, and it is quite possible that its much harder than I think to build a feature that will work with the various versions of mysql. In my book, it should be considered a fail safe and a last resort.

I’ve set up the dev area on this new server, and locked it down thanks to my new favorite plugin “maintenance mode.” While I’ll unquestionably be doing some work over there, I’m considering ditching the preliminary redesign work I’ve done in favor of a “live redesign.” In the past, the work I do for myself occurs in multiple bizarre stages. A typical EliHorne.com redesign happens like this:

1. Peruse the CSS galleries (daily) for inspiration and trends
2. Open the notebook and sketchout a rough wireframe to see how much content I can fit
3. Refine through various sketches
4. Import sketches to Photoshop and tighten up dimensions/grid
5. Once thats in place, begin coding while photoshopping (don’t ask why)
6. Once all slices exist, ditch photoshop altogether. Any graphical changes at this point will take place via css
7. Change the design in a drastic way. Usually structural
8. Continue changing as the design is live because I incorporate a new feature (like twitter feeds)

While this works (for me), it might be more efficient and certainly more interesting to simply design “by the seat of my pants” if you will. Begin the process without a set framework in mind, and begin installing components. Inevitably, the code will end up being a little “soupy,” but I can break off significant changes as versions, something I’ve never done in the past. I’ve seen this sort of thing done successfully in popular blogs like Dan Cederholm’s, although I don’t pretend to have the experience or foresight that that man is blessed with.

In retrospect, the work that I do for myself hasn’t been of the highest caliber, simply because I know that if it really gets bad, I can fix it. Most of -my- code doesn’t reflect the advanced knowledge and skills that I’ve accrued over the past 2 years. By doing this, I think it will force my blog to always be “cutting edge,” something I’ve been pursuing aggressively in my career.

As pointed out by others, I’ve become quite the twitter addict. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that w/o it, I would probably be posting more. From this point on, I’m going to make an honest attempt to microblog via Tumblr (raw feed will exist on tumbles.elihorne.com). They have an absolutely killer service, and I’d like to support the guys behind it. Who knows, I might even release a tumblr theme or two.

On that note, I’m off to see “There Will Be Blood” with Natty-Ice at the Union Square cinema. I’ve been super excited to see this movie since I first spotted the poster and trailer. It looks so visually rich, and Daniel Day Lewis never dissapoints. Maybe if I get my act together, I’ll actually post about this one (instead of the silence the followed Cloverfield, which I loved). No promises.