Dan McCullum DesignDan McCullum Design

Updates to the Site

Monday, March 17, 2008

I just finished making some changes to the front page and about page of Dan McCullum Design. I wanted to add some more colors and imagery, and also to rewrite some of the copy to better reflect the services I am offering.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions are always welcomed.

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Journey into Reading/Thoughts on Coding

Thursday, March 13, 2008

A while back I posted about how I was ditching Dreamweaver and doing future web design by hand coding. Well, I just passed the first real test.

Version one of Journey Into Reading (http://journeyintoreading.org) was actually my second web design job, and although I was relatively happy with the design, when it came time to add some major content to the site a week or two ago, it became clear that a visual refresh would be worthwhile.

So, after a few hours designing the layout, coming up with the styling, and structuring the site (and probably quite a bit more time spent on getting the page to work correctly in Internet Explorer) I ended up with the current design.

So, now that I've done a "real" site entirely by hand (cross-browser and cross-platform this time, unlike the coda test sites I did earlier which I didn't bother spending the time necessary to make IE-compatible), how do I feel about the switch to hand-coding?

Well, it's not a whole lot slower or faster, and it does give a feeling of confidence that your code is going to be valid and streamlined. However, there are a few things that still bug me (though some of these things may be resolved by simply learning how to use CSS a bit more effectively).

Lack of Link Management
This is probably the single most annoying thing about hand-coding. In Dreamweaver, it is very, very easy to change the location/name of files and have Dreamweaver automatically update site-wide links to that file. Coda (and every other coding program that I have found) does not have this feature, making structural changes and such a pain.

Lack of Library items/Templates
The lack of Dreamweaver-like templating is also an issue that bugs me. Adding a page to the main navigation bar, or changing the order of a sidebar link list is no longer a simple matter of editing a special template file and then updating all the pages using it.

However, I recently found an article that talks about getting similar functionality by using php includes.

Despite these issues, I'll be sticking with hand-coding for the foreseeable future, and will probably find ways to adapt to these problems.

Until next time... Au Revoir

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Introducing...Nightly Builds

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Enough said... check out http://dmdzine.net/nightlybuilds.html for more details.

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And in other news...

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

I have also recently completed a total redesign (just the appearance, not much was done to the site structure) of The Friends of Point au Roche website. I felt that it was time for a refresher, and so I redesigned it... Tell me what you think! (Use the new comments feature! Just click on the post title, and scroll to the bottom!)

This new design happens to be the first design I've done that has been totally W3C valid XHTML and CSS!

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Contact Form on dmdzine.net

Friday, October 19, 2007

I've just finished implementing a contact form on Dan McCullum Design (http://dmdzine.net) that should make getting in touch with me through my website even easier than ever. It replaces a ReCaptcha mailto link, and hopefully will be a boon to both the site users and myself.

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Introducing Reviews

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Well folks, there is a new page on Dan McCullum Design called Reviews. It's a beta offering that is basically "Music reviews by a musician and music producer."

I'm a bit excited about this page, and feel that it has a lot of potential, perhaps even more so if I decide to switch my site over to Wordpress (though, because of the time necessary to convert my theme, this is unlikely for at least a while).

Check it out, tell me what you think, and enjoy!

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Now, Comments

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

You can now comment on the Dan McCullum Design Blog... Be polite!

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Setting up a Testing Server

Monday, October 01, 2007

After a recent decision to learn PHP, I found myself in a predicament: It takes far too long to upload each minutely changed file to the web just to test a small change. So, I decided to set up a testing server in my studio.

I used an old Dell XPS (933MHz PIII, 128Mb RAM, 40Gb HD) as the platform, installed Windows 2000 Pro on it, and downloaded the amazing XAMPP Server-in-a-Box (Apache, PHP, MySQL). The installation went smoothly, and I was soon up and running. After installing a wireless USB dongle, I connected the computer to my home network. I then went into the XAMPP install folder and changed the share permissions of the "htdocs" folder to allow network control, which is the internet folder for XAMPP.

Next, came what appeared to be the most difficult part of the operation: connecting the MacBook to the server. My experience with connecting two Windows XP boxes to each other and getting the permissions, firewalls, and access controls to be friendly made me dread the thought of inter-OS sharing. Actually, this part ended up being the easiest part of the entire process. If Macs integrate better on a Windows network than Windows computers do, Microsoft definitely has a big problem to deal with.

After connecting the two computers via wireless router, I proceeded to download and install WordPress in a folder on the testing server. I'm planning to learn how to create WP templates, and this should be a much faster and easier way to do so...

I have not yet connected Dreamweaver to the testing server, but I plan to do that the next chance I get... I'll write more about this once I get a chance to use it a bit more.

Till then...

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Yay!

Saturday, September 29, 2007

The new blog is up at http://dmdzine.net/blog. It is running off of blogger, but is now integrated with my current design much better than before.

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Complete Redesign

Friday, September 28, 2007

Over the past few weeks, I have become rather unhappy with my latest redesign of DMDZINE.NET. Finally, I sat down and did a complete redesign... I really like it now, and I am very willing to hear any thoughts you may have about it. Comments, suggestions, etc. are welcome. I have to put on some final portfolio stuff but otherwise it's pretty complete

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New Feature on dmdzine.net

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

It's here folks... the moment you've all undoubtedly been waiting for. Yes, that's right, the "Stuff" page is alive! There are now two mostly free (read the info on the pages) templates courtesy of Dan McCullum. Go and check them out. http://dmdzine.net/stuff.html

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New Feature

Saturday, September 01, 2007

New Features on the Dan McCullum Design Site: Fanboi, an Apple Fanboy minisite. (Newsletter has been removed. To get news about upcoming events, please subscribe to this blog.)

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Site Changes

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Just finished some changes to my site. I revamped the work page (again) as I was unhappy with the initial redesign. Please feel free to comment on the site and make suggestions...

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