Categories
internets web design

moved site again, updated some things

So i spent a year on Nixihost. They were cheap, but their technical support was hell. I kept getting the same guy and he was kind of an unhelpful dick. Plus they don’t support Cloudflare for some dumbass reason? Wtf? Thankfully, Cloudflare themselves have made things a bit easier anyway, so when i moved to Namecrane it went a lot smoother. They’re dirt cheap. I need dirt cheap. Things are tight. For reasons.

Anyway, i also decided to update the home page, since my list of self-links was growing as i adopt less toxic social media channels like Mastodon and Bluesky and i wanted to include all the places where i currently have a presence to any degree. So now the links appear in columns: 1 for pocket-sized screens, 2 for bigger small screens, and 3 for everything larger than that. I used the quick-and-dirty approach of using column-count: 2 rather than using flexbox, which limits directionality, but is quicker and easier and doesn’t require any real thinking to speak of.

I also changed the way links are styled. This was because i was experimenting with NeoCities and liked the way the links turned out.

a {
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 2px solid;
}
a:link, a:visited {
border-image:
linear-gradient(
to right,
#d60270,
#9b4f96,
#0038a8
) 1;
}
a:hover, a:focus, a:active {
border-image:
linear-gradient(
to right,
#5bcffb,
#f5abb9,
#fff,
#f5abb9,
#5bcffb
) 1;
}

This way, links by default (currently) have a gradient like the bisexual pride flag colors, while in a hover state it changes to a transgender flag color scheme. I also used :not to de-target other types of links like the site logo, etc.

Lastly, i updated the microblog feed to use both Mastodon and Bluesky, since that other site went to absolute shit. (Fuck billionaires and their fascist, bigoted ideologies.)

Categories
internets uncategorized web design

IE6 users

I am aware of a problem with viewing this site through the narrow and unrefined lens of IE6. I have a fix for it in mind and will implement it as soon as we are done moving and settled in.

For now, why not get the juicy taste of the Twenty First Century in your mouth with a shiny new web browser? They’re Box Modelicious!

Firefox | Opera | IE7 | Safari

Categories
creative internets uncategorized web design

Big Urgent Tweak Test

Look out for my B.U.T.T.! I’ve just finished uploading some tweaks to make the Big Urgent Wish theme a little nicer. Please, as always, wear your helmets, and let me know if anything falls on your head. I could always use a good laugh.

I hope to have a sanitized version available soon.

Categories
creative internets uncategorized web design

Big Urgent Garbage Hunt

The B.U.G. hunt is on! See if you can find all the problems with my new layoutI’ve already identified the ugly 3rd-tier dropdown menu thing on the navbar at the top, but I haven’t had much time yet to test everything out. fixed Later tonight I’ll tweak it and try to get it to behave itself a little better. Please post your comments here (be sure to include your OS/browser). And thanks!

(Things are bound to be a little on the messy side for a few days while I convert this thing over to the new theme.)

EDIT: Yikes! Single posts & pages are also totally unstyled! fixed

Categories
creative internets memories web design work

rebuilding legacy sites for a portfolio

I’m working on getting my legacy sites ready for an online portfolio to be presented here on this site.

The unfortunate thing about being a relatively-inexperienced web designer/developer is that most of your clients will be fairly small outfits and that much of your work will be necessarily pro-bono, or close to it. This means that many of them won’t be around for a very long time. In my case, none of them are. I think the Tecumseh Local Music Boosters may still maintain a site somewhere, though probably one with tildes in the URI that i’ll never be bothered to really track down, because it’s probably no longer my work being displayed there.

On to the point: this means that i have to re-build all of those old sites from the archives. Which, in turn, means trying to get code written a pretty long time ago (by www standards) to work. That’s not much of a problem, in most cases, because i at least had the foresight to include some useful future-compatible functions, the most underrated of which is the doctype declaration.

Regrettably, i don’t remember how some of the functions worked, and i don’t have much time to figure it all out.

The worst part, though, is that the one of the coolest sites, for a sadly defunct print magazine, won’t work locally, and i think it’s because i no longer have any idea what kind of a server environment it was written for.

So take this to heart, fellow amateurs: always, always, always include copious comments in your PHP, and archive a copy of the phpinfo() that you generated at the time (when you were literally losing sleep trying to iron out that one nagging bug). Mirror the damn thing live if you have to. This will save you in the long run, when the site goes belly up, and you have to prove to potential employers or clients that it existed outside of the sick, narcissistic fantasy world inside of your head. You won’t look like a blowhard when you can at least produce a working copy. Right now, i’d settle for just some screenshots of that magazine site.

Speaking of which, i can at least produce a static HTML version, using archive.org for the markup and my backup image files for the graphics. So all is not completely, irretrievably lost.

But i’d rather get those bugs ironed out. I just need a lot more time than i can actually come up with lately.

Categories
web design

back in a few…

Upgrading to WordPress 2.0.2. I have a lot of hacks and plugins, so this might take a little tiny bit. If you see code errors, they will be fixed shortly.