so i’ve FINALLY updated the gorirra site… it wasn’t just a small cosmetic change neither… it’s a whole upgrade to the wordpress cms.
i’m really happy with the way it turned out — it’s simple and modern <toot toot>
i’m kinda glad i didn’t go with my initial mockup:
wise decision...
on the topic of “figuring things out wrt coding” — i was working on converting a site to wordpress and was trying to figure out how to get a home page movie to appear ONLY on the home page (easily).
so i looked around and found out there was a wordpress function called “is_front_page()”
so, along with a nifty fade in/fade out script, i created this in the header.php file:
<?php
if ( is_front_page() ) {
echo "
<div class=\"hpmovie\">
<div id=\"xlide\">
<img src=\"wp-content/themes/[THEMENAME]/images/5.jpg\"
alt=\"\" />
<img src=\"wp-content/themes/[THEMENAME]/images/11.jpg\"
alt=\"\" />
...
</div>
</div>
";
}
?>
so basically, if it’s the home page, it’ll write stuff to the page… boom
so this won’t make sense to any of you, but i was pretty proud of myself when i made this. i used various xsl elements to basically have the page pull data from an xml document:
xsl
...
<xsl:variable name="readmore">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="@readmore != ''">
<xsl:value-of select="@readmore" />
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
See all <xsl:value-of select="@title" />
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
<div style="font-size:8pt;">
<a href="{@url}"><xsl:value-of select="$readmore" /></a>
</div>
...
this is a sample of the xml that it pulls:
<page id="..." title="Newsletters" url="newsletters.asp" thumbnail="include/media/images/products-newsletters.gif" description="blah blah blah">
so since there isn’t a title attribute to this node, it’ll default to the title. on the page, it’ll say “See all Newsletters”
i made it myself! yay
new site theme is up and running!
i’m sure i forgot something so if you see any errors… lemme know (my qc guy is in town, but i’m excited to roll out with this)
not like you care, but this is hugely different than the previous theme i had (white with the red line at the top)… this one has a bit more color in it and a few more elements that i’ve picked up recently
to start, the main logo is a transparent png with a rollover AND it degrades nicely if you’re using a shitty browser like ie6…
tranny ping (not some gay dood in china)
so it’s one image, and the css switches the image when you roll over it… this method is pretty cool and super easy to pull off. the end result is clean and it loads quick!
then there’s the overall color scheme… i wish i was better at color theory, but i’m not. so i gotta do research on colourlovers for inspiration. i knew i wanted a “web 2.0″ (ugh) color scheme and i think i did it…
another thing that’s cool is the footer — i knew i wanted to do a design with a 3 column footer… i’ve seen kids these days doing it so i wanted to join that crew… i moved the archive list down here, put a short little bio (that’s a first for me), put the social networking sites, and re-added my signature in the copyright
i really like logos… especially when they’re sharp… thanks to the interwebs, i was able to find a set of illustrator vectors of the social networking site logos. so i was able to resize them down without losing quality… i used the rollover styling here as well
tranny gif this time...
and to celebrate, i’ll throw in a song… it’s actually a song i just learned on guitar — it’s SUPER simple even andy could prolly play it
it’s jason mraz’s “anything you want” off his live cd – “beautiful mess: live on earth” (hulu)
so we have this system in place at work called ‘websense’ that basically blocks certain sites… mostly obvious sites like amazon (shopping), espn (sports), etc.
and some not so obvious… like my site… my site was blocked for “entertainment” — i mean, c’mon! my site is definitely NOT entertaining… i think it was categorized when i had a bunch of youtube videos on the home page…
so this basically stopped me from being able to view my own site at work (unless i used quota, which we have 60 minutes of each day — yea… bull)
so i had enough… i remembered that chaunce actually contacted websense a while back and had his site recategorized
and at work, because of my title here, i am able to view sites categorized as “social networking and personal sites” — allowing me to see facebook, twitter, and other blogs
so here’s the email i sent websense:
Hello -
I would like to request that my blog get recategorized to the “Social Networking and Personal Sites” category — currently it is set up under the “Entertainment” category.
At my workplace, I have been granted access to view sites categorized under “Social Networking and Personal Sites” because of my position as Web Developer.
My web site address is http://www.gorirrajoe.com.
Regards,
Joey
–
Joey Hernandez
Gorirra Consulting
Web Developer
www.gorirra.com
that email was sent on 11/15 @11:30p
well the very next day, 11/16 @12:45p i get this email:
Thank you for writing to Websense.
The site you submitted has been reviewed. We have made an update to the following URL in our master database to address this issue:
http://www.gorirrajoe.com/ – Social Networking and Personal Sites
Categorization updates should be available in the next scheduled publication of the database. A new database is published every business day, five days a week, Pacific Standard Time. You should notice any updates referred to in this message within 72 hours.
Thank you for your assistance,
The Websense Database Services Staff
M.P.
w00t!
so here i am now… writing a post from work on 11/18! i had no idea i’d get a response THAT fast
so to websense… your response time to review claims and subsequently update your database rocks! work’s usage of websense still stinks… ha
new wordpress theme for your collective asses…
lemme know what you think — and more importantly, if anything’s broken…
as i write the title of this tutorial, i can tell it might get long and/or complicated… i’ll try my best… here we go
FIRST, you’ll need the tools — download virtual pc (especially if you run windows vista) and then grab an image here — i would suggest getting the IE6 image, since that version of IE is the “worst” of them all
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i feel that i should add a few notes as an addendum to my previous post — call it the “companion pack,” if you will
hot on the heels of my first tutorial, i come back at ya with a new one.
i REALLY like using wordpress as a cms — not only for its ease of customization or its extensive library of useful (mostly) plugins, but for these two huge reasons:
so i guess that answers the “why use wordpress?” question — here’s my method of getting a custom theme setup for wordpress
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so chaunce asked if i could do a small tutorial for a wordpress (wp) question he had… i’m honored that he asked me to do so… actually, i think i might start to write a bunch of tutorials that i’ve learned along the way…
and here… we… go…
this tutorial deals with the user wanting a site with a blog and pages, but the user wants a specific page to be the front page, not the blog (something similar to andy’s site, but not — since he doesn’t want his site to be full-on wordpress)
*note, i suck at technical writing, but i’ll try to fake it… i’m open to suggestions/comments for future tutorials
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i'm a web developer from san diego, ca
visit my freelance business if you want me to make a site for you
jason mraz’s “anything you want”