I am hoping to force myself to start blogging regularly, in order to spare this one the fate that the last one had. In this I talk about how I am setting up my site, what I am doing now, and what I want to do in the future with it.
So, today was a nice day. I went out to see Beauty and the Beast in theaters because it came out just before I was old enough to start going to and remembering movies, and I wanted to see it in a theater setting at least once in my life. I do regret not seeing the Lion King in theaters, but that couldn't be helped since that was a busy quarter. I had group projects in ALL of my classes, and one person I didn't work well with just happened to be in all of them. So, I didn't have time for it, but Beauty and the Beast was nice since I went at a time of day when there was only about 10 people in the theater so it all worked out.
Anyway, I didn't write this to talk about my day, I wrote this to talk about my site. Right now, its very much a work in progress, and for good reason. I'm taking my time on it because I want it to show my skills in web development, and because it makes me feel more prowd about the end result. I have had other attempts, with my most recent able to be found here. The main reason that one was put on hold was because 1) I realized the design wasn't as clean as I wanted it to be, and being the only developer I didn't have anyone to help discuss this with, and 2) I didn't want to design a whole CMS from scratch. The work was almost done though, and I love the concept overall even if it didn't work out. I'll put my design up sometime, I have it nicely formatted in a google doc so moving that here will be easy.
I chose MODX as my CMF because it followed my own principles of good, modular design with an ease of development for the developer. Now, this isn't to say its easy to develop for it, since I'm having to stumble through trying to learn how to make plugins and especially CRCs (for my portfolio, see below) with good, but not great, documentation. I plan on contributing back to them and help fill in some holes that the documentation misses, but until then I will have to learn on my own, which is fine by me. It's fun, and so far MODX is proving to be very well designed on its own.
First on my list to get done is my portfolio page (and subpages for each project) up because it is important for me as a demonstration of how to make a plugin. However, as of this moment, its just a normal page (like the homepage) with more pages beneath it for each option. I do plan on making it into a CRC but I'm finding its better just to make it and THEN translate it when all is said and done. This is because I can figure out exactly what is needed in my plugin before creating it, which helps with its overall design. However, because it is static I will not be adding links for every tag, that will be the role of the plugin.
Next up will be making this blog (and my site in general) look prettier. I know it's not well integrated into the site right now, but that will change since I also want my site to look good. I know my theme is very buggy on setups that aren't my own, but along with improving the style, I'll also be trying to make it more cross browser. Right now, though, I don't bother because I am not a designer (I am a developer) and it gets in the way of actually adding features to my site. I do know the value of a good theme, though, and so I will be fixing it soon.
With that in mind, if anyone ever sees this, please critique my efforts! I enjoy constructive criticism.
Over and out.
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