by Matt | Aug 7, 2008 | Web, Work
Over the past few days I’ve installed and tested numerous CMS systems for a potential project down the road at work. Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla, Mambo, SiteFrame, Typo3 and Xoops. They all fall pathetically short of WordPress. It’s not a very complicated project. A simple site that I need to make weekly updates to. Probably about 10 static pages total. There’s also the potential of a second, far more in-depth and advanced site later on. That’s why I was searching for a CMS system. It’s really pathetic that WordPress is so great in the areas of content managment, theme creation and ease of use that I’m willing to mess with more advanced plugins for that system rather than try to use one of the other systems that are designed for more “enterprise” type sites.
My problem of course is convincing hardened developers that WordPress is a viable CMS and not just a “little blog toy” as one of them tried to point out. It’ll all come back to what the client actually needs in a website in the end, but I’d much rather push for a free WordPress install with some heavy-duty plugins than a $20,000 piece of enterprise grade CMS software that no one can work with. I don’t have a staff of 100 web guys to work on something like that. I need to be able to develope a site, roll it out and make updates to it without pounding my head against a wall every time I try and publish a page.
What I really need to do is find BIG sites that run just fine off of WordPress. Something really complicated, with interactive stuff, shopping carts, photo galleries, all that stuff. If I can find a couple examples like that, then maybe I can push for WordPress when the time comes.
I should probably dig deeper into creating a theme as well, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.
by Matt | Jul 31, 2008 | Personal, Tech, Work
It’s the middle of the summer and somehow in my tiny little air conditioned office, it’s friggin Christmas! I just got my order of photo equipment from B&H that I added into my departments budget on my arival. Two new lenses, the extender/battery grip for the camera, a portable flash unti, a bunch of smaller things like cables and batteries and adapters. I’m excited! And this is just the first batch. The rest, including an entire studio setup (lights, stands, etc) will be here in about a week. Huzah!
by Matt | Jul 31, 2008 | Personal
I write this at 12:15pm (1:15 eastern) on Thursday, just under 3 hours to go under the MLB trade deadline. I’m writing this because I’m deeply confused as to the media attention of a potential Manny Ramirez trade from the RedSox. Quite simply, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Updates after the jump
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by Matt | Jul 28, 2008 | Personal
First an update of sorts. We are moving into the house. I’m very excited about it. I think it’ll really be awesome for us. There’s a long road of repairs and cleaning to do before we move in (at the end of Sept) but I think we can get it all done in time.
So, to that end, this weekend was mostly moving and cleaning. We moved the grandparents to a nice “cottage” style place a couple weekends back and now all of their furniture from their apartment had to come back to the house. So, we moved all morning on Saturday and filled the one room that we’re not redoing top to bottom with furniture. Then Sunday we spent most of the day cleaning the kitchen and utility room which was a huge undertaking. So, now we have 1 room out of 9 clean and habitable again. The house had sat vacant for nearly 6 months, one of those months with the power turned off, so you can only imagine what the un-emptied freezer and refrigerator looked like. Needless to say we’ll be replacing those two appliances pretty quickly.
Next we’ll be pulling up the carpet throughout the house (hence the piling of furniture in a single room) and putting down new carpet and new tile. Then we’ll start the cleaning/packing process for the next month or so. Everything has a history and is important to the family, so everything needs the utmost care and attention, but we also need to make room for all our things as well as our furniture. So, family members will take what they want and we’ll probably end up storing the rest in the attic or putting it out for a yard sale at some point. Then everything that’s left will get a good coat of paint, a scrub down or both. Then we move in! Huzzah!
There’s already an office/study that Lauren and I can share for our computers and work area, and two guest bedrooms on top of that, so I can have the ever popular “man space” complete with comfy leather chair, TV, xbox and mini-fridge. I’m looking forward to that. I’m also, rather surprisingly (to myself) looking forward to having a garage. I’ve never had one before. None of the houses my parents owned had one, I haven’t rented one at any of the apartments down here, and now all of a sudden I get this huge garage which is nearly a 3-car size, for both cars plus a whole “work bench” area full of tools and whatnot. The manly “I need to fix things” instinct has taken over.
So, that’s whats going on with us. We’re in full on, 100% cleaning house mode. We’ve got a long road ahead but I think the pay off will be huge. I’ll post some pictures when I have a second to take them.
Matt out.
by Matt | Jul 17, 2008 | Aggravation, Web
I have this terrible problem in that I can’t actually make decisions about the design of my own website. Every single wordpress theme I look at has potential but there’s something major about it that just rubs me the wrong way. Or, it has a lot of potential but there are so many little things that need to be changed that it’s not worth the effort. Then there are the themes I start designing myself, which always fail to match up with the picture in my head. I’ve done 6 PSD layouts in the past week. I’ve yet to finish one. I did a new/tech/sleek looking one but it was too “corporate” feeling. Then I did a grunge one but I don’t know if I actually like that style. Then I started a “space” one but nixed that because it was too trendy. So, I can’t find what I want, I can’t customize something to be what I want and I can’t make what I want from scratch. I don’t know if it’s “artists block” or what but it’s driving me up a wall.
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