Blog theme is done!

Here's the link to my blog theme:

http://ucwebtemplate.blogspot.com/

As I said in an earlier post, I tried to theme it around my wedding videography business. I've been meaning to get a site for it up and running for a while now and this was the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I followed a number of tutorials online to get it the way it is, using peoples various tips and tricks to achieve my visual goals. For example I used CSS to get rid of the blogger toolbar at the top and to hide the title text so that it would show the banner I made for it instead. I used flickr.com to host all the images that I used in the theme, I found it a lot quicker than uploading them to my web server. My flickr page can be found HERE. It'll give you an idea of all the images I used in making the theme. Many of them I created myself, others I modified of existing images from other peoples blogs. The navbar along the top works, but all the buttons are linked back to the main page of the blog, the reason I did this was because it shows that the nav is working without me having to create all those extra pages for it, after all, that is beyond the scope of this project. I have too many other assignments to create the other pages, I'll make them for myself during the holidays, and they wouldn't be part of the blog theme anyway.

That's it, I'm done for the semester! I've really enjoyed this class, I've learned a lot and I will definitely be using the skills from this course in the very near future. See you all next semester.

PS: The link to my blog template again is HERE.

Blog design

Here's a screenshot of what I hope my blog theme will look like. I don't know what else I can add to it so I'm not sure if I'll get a good mark or not. I've been looking at the code of various themes and I'm going to mash them up to create this one. Wish me luck!

Stonefest website

Done and Dusted.
Here is the URL for my completed Stonefest website:

http://www.lolburgerz.com/stonefest

Lets run through the criteria of the Unit Outline and where these things can be found on my site:

• Contains all source material from the stonefest website.

On every page.

• A main menu with links to at least 4 pages.

On every page.

• At least one sub-page.

Links to sub-pages can be found at the bottom of some pages here, here and here.

• At least one link to a page fragment.

Links to page fragments can be found here.

• At least 6 Links to external website.

Links to external websites can be found on the artists page, every artists image is a link to that artists own homepage.

• At least one email link.

Email links can be found in the text of some pages. here, here and here.

• At least one file download link.

My file download link can be found on this page here. It direct link can be found here.

• At least one form input field.

My form input field can be found here.

• At least one image.

Every page contains images.

• At least one Google Map.

A Google map can be found here.

• At least one youtube video.

A youtube video can be found here. It is link to from here.


That's it, everything is there. It's been a long hard road, but I've finally completed it. Now it's on to my blog theme (ugh!). Hopefully with my new-found know-how It won't be as painful. I'll have some examples of my blog theme up in a few days.

Website is online, almost finished

So I've uploaded my site to the web. The domain is www.lolburgerz.com/stonefest and I've pretty much finished everything that's required in the outline:

• I've got a google map
• a youtube video
• links to external sites
• all the content from the original stonefest website
• at least 4 links from the menu
• a page fragment/subpage (I've got one of these, but still not sure which one)
• a download
• a form (which works on my mac, but gives an error when it's uploaded to the web, wierd.)

There are only one or two things I want to change before it's finished.

• On the artists page I want to have each image a link to that artists homepage and have that image displayed larger when a visitor hovers over it.
• Insert a footer with the sponsors of the festival
• Make the edges of the content rounded instead of pointy (I'm working on this, but can't get the tutorials I've found to work, hopefully I can figure it out before it's due)
  

Once that's done then I'm finished! But the end is still nowhere in sight, I still have this blog theme to do.... :'(

Thank god for extensions

The web assignment deadline has been extended!!! You have no idea how glad I am, I already asked Geoff for an extension because I knew I couldn't get it in today, but this is great news! Now we all have time to get everything in the unit outline into our sites. I only have one problem, What's the difference between a sub-page and a page-fragment? I know I've got one of them on my site, but not the other. What makes it difficult I'm not sure which is which so I'll have to ask about it in the tutorials. I should have my site up and running within the next few days, I'll post the link up then.

Quick tip for your website assignment

I've discovered a way to keep your file size to a minimum on the website assignment. Instead of having a huge background, if your image has a gradient, place that gradient on a 1 pixel wide canvas in photoshop, save it as a .jpg, set it as a background on a div and put the repeat-x; command on it and set the background colour to the color at the base of the gradient. What you'll get is a gradient background that goes into a plain colour at the bottom, the gradient will repeat left and right no matter how large the browser window is, and it'll be a tiny file size. Then you can go ahead and place your other images over the top. That's what I'm doing on my site and it's saved me about 400kb in file size. Here's an example of what I mean by a 1 pixel wide gradient. You might not be able to see much of it, but it's what I'm using on my website:

EDIT: Okay it seems blogger is having a whinge at the moment as it's giving me this message:

There were errors during upload.
The following images were not uploaded.

* repeat.jpg : This image could not be uploaded due to an internal error.

I will try uploading the gradient image for you all later.

Back from holidays, my blog theme idea

Its been two weeks off school and I've spent most of my time filming and editing a wedding for a couple that hired me to do it. My friend Adam and I started filming weddings earlier this year and hope to make it a successful business. We've bought a domain: www.whitedovestudios.com.au where we plan to have all of our company info on there as well as examples of the work that we've done. Due to school and work, neither of us have had the time to make the site, or the money to pay someone else to do it. With the blogger theme as part of this courses assessment, I've decided to make a theme for White Dove Studios. I've already got business cards and brochures made up, so I hope to make the blog theme suit what I've already created. I think a blogging platform best suits the style of site that I want. All I need is some pages with a contact form and pricing information while the bulk of the site will be a blog that I can update with the most recent jobs that we've done, to give potential customers viewing the site a chance to see the work that we've done in an easy to see way. Here is a work up of my business card to give you an idea on the overall style I want my blog theme to end up looking like.

Design Draft Final

Okay I've come up with another design draft, I think this one suits the style much better. I like the clouds in the background and the blue gradient in the background helps give the design an 'outside' feel. Now the only problem is turning it into a site!

Design Draft

Here's my 1st design draft. I'm already thinking of a complete re-work, but I spend a bit of time on it so I thought I'd post it up anyway:


I tried to go for a sleek and shiny design for this one, but I don't think it suits the topic. I'm going to make another one, more of a outdoor-type one.

Design Draft :(

I've been quite busy with work and haven't had time to refine a design draft just yet, hopefully I'll have something for next week.

Funny cats, money and all that other stuff

Hi guys, thought you'd like to know some of the sites that I tend to frequent while I'm killing time online:

• I can haz Cheezburger? is a website dedicated to lolcat pictures. It's updated every few hours, and all the content is user generated. I own a cat myself and he's crazy, and as such I enjoy seeing the crazy cat pics that are on this site. I highly recommend it.
• Gizmodo is a technology and gadget blog that is also update every few hours with interesting atricles in the gadget/tech category. I go there every few days when I've got 30 mins to kill at work, some fairly interesting stuff on there.
• Sitepoint is a one-stop place for webdesigners, with forums and articles to help you build your website. The section I go to most often though is the marketplace. Here people buy and sell websites. Prices range from $100 through to $500k+. Some amazing sites are available there, if you have the money to buy them that is! I've been meaning to buy a site for quite some time, but I haven't managed to find one that I like just yet.

Apart from that there's the obvious like facebook, youtube, hotmail/gmail, but I'll spare you the descriptions on those, I'm sure you've all been there before.

Design Reference

Looking over everybody's blog posts I've realised that almost EVERYONE is remaking the Stonefest website. I know how boring it will be for the markers to look at 100 Stonefest websites but well, the Stonefest website is simply the plainest, needs the most work and has the most room for improvement. During my crawl of the web looking for suitable sites to 'borrow' design references from I came to the conclusion that there are a number of things I want my Stonefest redesign to have:

• Use of colour: I find that the current site is very bland and dull, utilising the power of colour in the redesign could make a world of difference.
• Artistic Finesse: The Stone Fest website look like it was made in the 90's, no matter what you think you cannot deny it is boring and unpleasant to look at. Combining imagery and colour will make my redesign far superior to the current stonefest homepage.
• Simplicity: Websites can get overly complicated, espically those flash based ones. I think a festival website needs to be visually pleasing, but also simple enough so that anybody can look at it and be able to navigate it without having to think twice. My redesign will (hopefully) utilise simplicity.

Below are the websites that I've found for my Design Reference:

Artificial Studio:














Klipp og Lim:














Squarespace:














Rob Palmer:














Ten24Media:















These are the seven key design characteristics that group these sites together:

• Colour
• Logo
• Easy to access Navigation menu
• Use of space directly below or above menu to showcase vital imagery
• Simple design
• Fixed width
  
• Vertical scrolling

1. Colour: All of the websites utilise colour to create a visually pleasing experience for the viewer:
















2. Company Logo: Each website utilises a well known web convention: a logo in the top left hand corner of the site. It acts as a home beacon, linking you back to the front page of the site if you click on it:
















3. Navigation: Each website has a crisp, clean menu along the top of the page, allowing users to easily navigate to any page the site has to offer:
















4. Showreels: Each website takes advantage of real estate right near the top of the page to display vital graphic information and key concepts of the page:
















5. Simple Design: Each site is very simple, sleek and elegantly designed. The site's are appealing to the eye without being too complicated.

6. Fixed Width: Another design convention commonly seen around the web today is fixed width pages. This fixes a minimal width that the content will squash down to if the browser window is resized or if the viewer has a small resolution on their monitor. All of my chosen sites are fixed width.

7. Vertical Scrolling: Yet another convention that's as old as the internet is vertical scrolling. It's rare to come across a website that scrolls horizontally, simply because it's jarring to the eye. All of my chosen websites feature vertical scrolling.



All of these seven characteristics that my chosen website's share I will be implementing in the creation of my own redesign of the Stonefest website. The characteristics that define my references put them in the group of clean 'shiny' looking websites. This is the look I will be aiming for with my project.


The first five screens can be clicked on and they will redirect you to the relevant websites, but if you can't be bothered scrolling up, here they are again:

Ten24Media,
Rob Palmer,
Squarespace,
Artificial Studio and
Lipp og Lim.

New look Blog

I've customised my blog a little, I've changed the theme and made a little banner to spice things up a bit. It's a photo of a cat I took on my trip to Vietnam earlier in the year.

First Post

Hi Guys!
Here's my Web Production Blog. It's so lame I have to have a blog for each of my classes this semester, that's 4 blogs to manage! I haven't made up my mind about what site I will be doing for the project, but I'm thinking it will be the stonefest homepage.

I'm off to the ANU Fire Pit, more updates to come when I get back.