PhotoDude.com

Fri. Aug 08, 2008

Designer's Work Log

As directed during the conversation with my client, I’m keeping a log of my efforts to repair and rebuild this site. Yes, it will be happening live, so if the site looks REALLY WEIRD right now … I’m workin’ on it, give me a break.

And as is typical, while I’d planned to spend the full day on this, I ended up having to spend the first 2.5 hours of the morning on “client communication” (phone calls and emails) and stomping out a few little fires that had developed in my client’s forests overnight (I Am A Web Firefighter). So we’re off to a typically late start…

12:00noon — Step One is to fix what the client broke. Symptoms are very odd: home page and back end admin work fine, but when you click any linked article from the home page, you are shown a raw stylesheet, specifically “2008.css,” which the client was using for testing late one night.

So I log-in to server via Filezilla/SFTP, go to the root directory, and re-sort the files and directories by date, trying to find what the client last changed. Lo and behold, there in the root directory, right next to the index.php file that powers the site, is 2008.css, outside of the /css/ directory where it belongs. So I delete this file, and … the site works! Links take you where you are supposed to go once again.

What was happening? The site uses date based permalinks (/year/month/day/title), so when you click a link from the home page, the first thing Textpattern does is look for a theoretical directory or file in the root directory named “2008” … and it found that style sheet and served it up. Every time.

Now, it’s 12:42pm, and on to Step Two, upgrading Textpattern. Since we’re jumping from version 4.0.4 to an SVN version that is just shy of 4.0.7, there’s sure to be something that breaks. That’s the safe way to approach it, anyway, so first stop is a database backup … back soon, hopefully.

1:14pm — Textpattern upgraded to revision 2961 (just shy of the soon-to-be-released 4.0.7), with no apparent major breakage. Had to update one plugin’s code and disable another due to changes in admin privileges made in 4.0.6, but otherwise smooth! Reward: lunch break. Back soon for site disassembly.

3:15pm — Back from lunch and errand running, time to strip this site naked of its two year old skin. [‘before’ screenshot]

3:55pm — Installed new plug-ins, disabled old ones. Exported a set of the current templates and forms. Reworked the default home page template to use the new stylesheet, which obviously still has a lot of missing details [screenshot]

4:55pm — Visible progress in the past hour may be minimal, but the forms and templates have undergone a major edit, stripping the usage of many plugins, and simplifying code. Still, what a nest of snakes this had become over the course of seven years…

6:03pm — First sidebar with quotes and links re-styled. Still need to do the second sidebar and the footer, but thinking first maybe we need some navigation up top, eh? [screenshot]

6:56pm — And, Houston, we have navigation. Still see so many tweaks that need to be done, but I need to first deal with the gross issues in the second sidebar and the footer. But first, I must take a break. My brains swimmith. [screenshot]

11:41pm — Took a break to watch the first part of the Opening Ceremonies, but during the interminable Parade of Athletes (the only thing worse than watching it on TV is watching it in person, trust me), I managed to dress out the second sidebar and get the footer under manageable control. Lots of detailing still to be done… [screenshot]

1:55am — Spent time polishing the details on the home page, top to bottom (including the addition of “the arrow,” which has been here since the early days), and prepping the code for replication. It’s time to move on to the template for individual articles. [screenshot]

2:57am — OK, the template for the individual articles is maybe 80% there. Functional, at least. Comments and the comment form are still “Olde Skool,” but I will get to that after a good night’s rest. That’s all this client gets for one day.

Saturday, 08/09/08

2:32pm — Spend some time today getting the comments and comment form straightened out. Was planning on rebuilding the comment form, but decided there was no real reason. So I added code to highlight the active field, and left it at that. Now, it’s time to deal with all those other section templates.

3:06pm — Links & Quotes templates both updated, which pretty much takes care of the content generating sections of the site. I’m left with the search section and maybe a half dozen static pages to update.

3:17pm — Added “Comic Sans” as the font for the twitters to appease the client, and used “Marker Felt” as the Mac alternate font, just to get a rise out of Zeldman. I predict neither will last very long.