My portfolio is now online at www.emmabalitski.ca and I am accepting new clients.

I have been recently reading Andy Clarke’s book “Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design” and one suggestion he made that I think I’m going to do is start keeping a scrapbook of things (images, fonts, etc.) that catch my interest. Inspiration for design can come from anywhere so while I keep snippets of items from the ‘net, it would be worthwhile to keep other non-virtual ideas too.

The Bear site is up and running. I’ve managed to significantly decrease the load time (approx. 15s less!) on the site by deleting unused modules, extension, and templates from the site. I’ve also archived a significant portion of old blog posts which were causing some bogging down on the home page / blog section of the site. I’ve also determined that one of our social networking plugins was causing a great deal of drag on the site so I’ve moved to a different option which ultimately I think will be better in the long run anyway as the previous option only worked on one social network, and the newer option gives the option of using up to 60 different networks!

The user manual is looking good. I received a copy for editing/review purposes last night and went through it with some suggestions and revisions for Reiko. The client is already using the site and has made many posts already which is wonderful. We did have a little snag when she initially started testing the site which was easily rectified but it was a good eye opener as to what client’s can do to a site! As a designer/developer, I know how things should work and I know the parameters that are allowed so it’s a good eye-opener (user testing! ha ha!) to turn the client loose! With that in mind, the suggestions and inclusions to the manual definitely have to take into consideration those “little things” that we, as the developers, take for granted.

My client is not very forthcoming with material for my project in DIGI 320 so I have had to make a quick change of plans in order to having something suitable for my final project. So I’m working furiously on creating a portfolio site for myself. I’m stretching my boundaries and trying some different techniques so I guess I’ll see on the finished product if they worked or not!

I’ve also resolved, along with my networking, etc., that I will keep this blog going as part of my continued evolution as a designer/developer and use it to give back, somehow. I’m not sure how I’m going to do this just yet, but something will come up.

My PHP project feels really loose – I’m sure that I will have it to a happier place by it’s due date but at the moment it’s still pretty rough. Some concepts are definitely starting (am I being optimistic here?) to take hold, but there’s still a steep learning curve ahead of me. On that note, I’m going to work on that further and wrap up this blog post!

I didn’t spend as much time on further optimizing the Bears Matter site as I would have liked to. I spent 4 hours working on that and trying to further reduce the load time. I’m still not 100% satisfied on that. I have been working on getting a publishing application that will allow the client to publish with minimal fuss to her other social networking accounts (Facebook Page, Twitter, and LinkedIn). I originally had some automatic publishers that would run in the background of the blog but those had a significant impact on the load time of the pages and they were also a little “buggy”. I have since downloaded a Ping.fm extension for Joomla! and have configured the Ping.fm account to link to the different networks. Now I need to get the Joomla! extension linked into the Ping.fm account to facilitate the distribution of the blog posts. Fingers crossed that this will go fairly smoothly and this week I can finalize the optimization of the site.

The majority of this week has been spent working on the PHP project, and to lesser extent the CSS project. I’m troubled with the PHP project. Fortunately, I have a little bit more time on that one in order to get it done. So I’m not going to panic on that one just yet!

Well short posting this week; my mind is pushing me to do some coding rather than reflecting on my past week. I will endeavor to have a better post next week!

Bears Matter SMS Ad for Anti-Trophy Hunting Campaign

The site was presented to the class on Tuesday and there were some concerns about the load time of the site, in particular, there seems to be a lag navigating from some of the “static” pages in the site to the blog (home) page.  I have spent just over 7 hours this week working on getting the site optimized to increase the speed of the page load.  I have been using Website Optimization and Octagate site timer to analyze the load time of the site.  I have also been using information on a variety of Joomla! user forums to help optimize the site.  Based on what I have found in my research, I have deleted all unused template files, modules and plugins that we are not actively using, I’ve also disabled the automatic Twitter feed, and I have also archived any and all articles that are greater than 1 year old.  Doing all of this has, according to the two site testers, cut down the load time by 11.88 seconds!  I still need to look at compression of the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to further decrease the load time.

This week I also spent 2.5 hours editing some imagery for the client to create a business sized ad for publication in some BC University newspapers, and also for use for flyer handouts.  I also set up a Gmail account for the client to use for the site rather than her personal email account.

I have also been working on my website for 320.  I was actually having issues with getting the navigation drop down menu to work properly.  It’s still a little buggy but getting there. I tried to simplify my CSS but it just was not working, so I have adapted and cleaned up code that I have used before and it is significantly better.  The site is making good progress, I just need a little bit more written content from my client to flesh it out further; I have plenty of images now!

I was thrilled to finally get the code to pull the information I wanted out of my database for the PHP project (thanks Doug!).  It was further refined and now the resulting presentation is really looking a lot better (i.e. cleaner).  I also figured out how to get the status to pull out of the tables and show correctly (i.e. In and not “1″).  So there is definite progress coming on this one too.  I am cautiously optimistic that “I think I get it”!

In our presentation, I took note of suggestions made by classmates and have made changes to the site accordingly.  The letter spacing of the font has been adjusted so things aren’t so squished.  I’ve added padding to the content area to align the text with the slider module.  I have increased the timing on the slider module to make it less distracting, however; I can’t make the module loop.  I finally found the CSS for the slider module to adjust the background colour of the module so it is the same as the wrapper colour (this took a LONG time!).  I’ve also lightened up the header so it is not so dark and heavy.

I’ve worked on getting a better WYSIWYG editor installed to make editing of the articles and uploading images easier for the client. This was put into use for editing the last two dozen blog entries; uploading and adding photographs to those entries as well.  I have also set up the search function on the site and it is working correctly.

This week, I also downloaded the comments modules and got that set up (that I know took about 3 hours to do site visitors can comment on the individual blog entries.  I’ve also been doing some user testing on the site to see if there are any issues that need to be resolved.  The group will be doing further testing once the e-commerce function is a little further along (this should be occurring early next week after our meeting with the client on Monday).

I still need to install and set up the social media sharing functions to distribute the blog entries to the client’s Facebook page and Twitter account.  And finally (well, probably not finally ) there will be the client training and manual to produce!

I’m feeling very optimistic that we are getting this project done on schedule.  Whew!

This past week I have spent nearly 15 hours working on getting the Bears Matter site set up with the template I purchased.  The site does look a bit different from our composite but not really significantly.  The functionality and navigation is the same, just the appearance of some aspects are different.  All of the blog entries from the old site have now been migrated over, 63 of them manually (yay C!) but there is still some editing to be done and images inserted to their corresponding articles.  I have half of the rotating images edited and uploaded for testing purposes and after some fiddling around, I have the slider module working (and appearing) as I wanted.

From here on in, we have to finish editing the existing content and add new content for certain pages.  We need to set up the e-commerce store which is waiting on some financial information, etc.  We also need to set up the social networking feeds to Twitter and Facebook, and also get the blog commenting functional.  I think we are in a good place for the “soft launch” on March 15th.  I’m feeling very confident about how things are coming along with the site.  One thing I need to start doing, is recording my steps and procedures to do things which will make writing the user manual much easier.

I worked through the design and normalization of the database for 405.  I think I have included everything that I’ll need for the project.  I think.  I managed to get the tables all built and created all the relationship links.  Now I just have to figure out how to get data into the table.  I’m actually a little stumped on that at the moment, but hopefully I’ll have it figured out by Tuesday!  Courtney, Liliana, and I got together earlier today and that really helped to talk things through and look at each others’ databases to figure out what we’re doing.  Getting help from colleagues is really useful.

Migrating databases.  Apparently if you can do that, you can “play with the Big Boys” in the industry.  So far, I’ve spent about 10 hours over the past two weeks on this task alone and it will definitely be time well spent.  The old site contains 242 blog entries along with the associated comments so if we can migrate the database into the new one, we’ll save ourselves a lot of time from cutting and pasting.  Granted we may still have to do some but any little help is good.  I did manage to migrate about two thirds of the entries and some of it is garbage (i.e. miss entered fields, etc.) but that’s a decent start.  At this point, the group has decided to just go ahead and cut and paste the rest.  We don’t want to spend any more time fiddling with code but to proceed with getting the site going.

I took the old site offline this past Wednesday and moved the migrated entries from my local server to the live server along with the the template and some other extensions.  The user accounts for the others in the group have been set up and so they can split the remaining blog entries between them to get them entered.  In the meantime, I am going to continue to tweak the template CSS to get it more consistent with the approved design and continue cleaning up the uploaded blog entries.  Our client did give us some content for the home page, so that’s a great start.  If need be, I can get the home page published and then bring the rest of the site online as it’s completed.  I’m very happy with how things are going with this so far.  I feel confident about getting the site done in time.

I’m still trying to figure out my PHP/JS assignment from last week.  I’m just not sure why the messages are spitting out in the PHP rather than the JS alert box.  I guess I’ll just have to continue with commenting out sections of the code until I find it.  And of course, continue designing the database, it’s normalization, and then creating it!  It’s going to be a fun filled spring break!  LOL!

Well I’ve spent another 4h 8 m researching extensions for the Bears Matter website and another 3 hours analyzing on paper WHY each would be suitable (or not) for the site.  In the end, I think we’re going to have to do a little experimenting to see what will work when it’s actually implemented.  It’s a bit difficult to tell how easy or difficult something is going to be to set up and/or use just from the developer’s notes.  Most extensions have demo sites of the front-end and some sites have screen shots of the back-end but so far, in my experience, until you actually try to apply something the experience can be a totally different kettle of fish.

For example, the lab for this week in DIGI 320 looks to be a very simple expanding header.  Should be dead easy…  But for some [insert expletive here] reason, mine is really screwed up.  So I’m currently picking through my code to try to figure out what is sending everything into a big stinky pile!  But I digress…

In my research to find extensions for the site, I ran across an extension to export WordPress articles and comments to a Joomla! site.  Ah ha!  This may solve our quandary as to how to perform that little feat…  I’m going to look into this further because migrating the contents from WP to Joomla! will save us a LOT of work.

Oh, further to this, I should report that I spend 1 hour on the 21st as a technical advisor to Josephine on her Joomla! project.  I must remind myself to keep a record of these things as I tend to do too much out of the goodness of my heart!  Time to look at things more from a business standpoint and rip the welcome mat off my back!

I’ve been avoiding the “My Future” poster project a bit.  It irritates the hell out of me because my life is still (read always) so up in the air.  It is beyond frustrating and bordering on infuriating!  I can’t even set a goal for where I want to be in 6 months time because there are so many obstacles in my way that aren’t in my control.  So if I can’t get past 6 months, how do I project goals for 5 years from now?  My sports psychology books say that in order to set goals to strive for, start with smaller steps that can be reasonably met so you do not derail your efforts early by getting discouraged.  I have lofty aspirations for myself, but I think I need to start a little smaller and closer to home (like getting one of those, would be good).

Well, enough of that wallowing in psycho-babble and negativity!  I have work to do!

I’ve also been madly investigating what plugins we will need in order to give all the functionality and features that our client wants.  We need to figure out how to rotate images in the header without using flash and make it easy to use so she can change the images herself.  We need to find a way to export or feed her blog postings to her Facebook and Twitter accounts.  So this week, I’ve spent about 4 h 20 min looking and reviewing plugins, and searching out different templates.  I think that I won’t be able to make the final decision on which plugins to use until we start applying them within the structure of the site and then seeing what works for us.

I showed another student how Joomla! works and I hope my “tutorial” made sense to her.  I jumped into the deep end to learn it and she’s in a similar place.  I told her to buy the book I did and do the tutorials in it before she gets too crazy.  At least if she gets a working idea of how it works, she can determine if it will serve her client’s needs.  Good luck Jo!

My self-reflection has been kind of a no-go this week.  I just can’t think about where I want to be professionally in 5 years time because I have no idea where I’m going to be personally in 6 months time!  Blah!  Ideally, I would like to have my own web studio established with a good list of clients and more contracts coming my way on a regular basis.  There’s a goal!

I’ve already done my first lab for DIGI 320, so I’m very happy about that.  I’ll start working on the next lab right away and I need to start thinking about what I want to do for the Techniques project and my final project.  Maybe I’ll have a chat with a friend to see if she’s interested in having me do a site for her.  Oh and I found a great little calculator for figuring out font sizes (calculating ems), it’s a little bit more instantaneous if you can’t figure out how to put the numbers into a regular calculator!  :)

In DIGI496, we had a meeting with our client on Tuesday to discuss where we are at with the project and to give her some timelines, which includes some deadlines for her to create (aka revisit) her content.  She was in the process of cleaning up her blogs and organizing them so that will continue next week in order to trim down what we need to transfer to the new site.  One issue I haven’t resolved yet is exactly how we will do this transfer.  I’m not sure if there is an easier way to migrate the content short of cutting and pasting (blech).  But I feel this is going fairly smoothly at this point.  This week, time-wise, I have spend 2 hours in a client meeting, and additional hour with online correspondence with the client, and have spent just under 3 hours researching Joomla! extensions / plug-ins for the web site.  I have found a plug-in to create a rotational header banner that the client can add and delete images easily, and I have also found an image editor (by accident) that would also be quite handy for her.  I still need to do my poster for next week, but I don’t think that will actually be too hard; I know exactly what my weakness is…

I have my WAMP server set up on my laptop so I think I’m good to go for next week.  I know that its functional but I still draw a blank as to where the files are; this is largely due to the fact that I haven’t used it yet, so it’s not sticking in my memory (oh the joys of getting older – lol!).  I still have to do my reading for this coming week.  I tend of forget about reading when I get to do actual coding – coding is a bit more fun for me.  So perhaps I’ll just make this post short and sweet and go and read about PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript.