Well, I’ve finished the biggest part of the transition from the old design to the new one. All that’s left now is to improve over the things left from the old design.
- Put some custom bullets on the links on the left
- Put the ForeverGeek Archive in an iframe (so the code will be transitional once again)
- Improve the Comments aspect (I promise it will be light)
- Other meaningless little things that I think I could improve
What did I learn with this redesign? Well, I learned that it’s not that hard to make something look the same on all browsers as long as you realize that each one has different default values for tags.
For example, Internet Explorer besides having a padding on the left of each “ul” it also has a margin, something that Opera and Firefox don’t. It isn’t hard to make code transitional, it isn’t hard at all actually. I don’t really mind the restrictions a lot, I occasionally forget to put an “alt” on an image or two but that’s it really. What is really hard is trying to adapt other person’s code to make it transitional. All you need to remember is to leave all the styling and alignment for the CSS file and that’s 80% of the work done already.
I also learned that I’m definitely not the best designer in the world, but I’m also not the worst. When I finished the index I went to other sites and compared it to theirs. Saw which mistakes their designs had and which ones mine had and after reducing mine to a minimum I have to say I’m very pleased with the result.
During the construction of this site, I asked some friends for opinions and comments and I’d like to take the opportunity now to thank all of them:
Thank you all sincerely. After all the work in improving the design I hope I can also improve the quality of the content to make it worthwhile.
[tags]web design, design, redesign[/tags]
White Hawk
This doesn’t help in anything the usability of this site, but it’s something I was wanting to implement and have finally done. So here’s to my very first Technorati tagged article 
*opens champagne*[tags]technorati[/tags]
White Hawk
I’m implementing the new design now. Expect a lot of bugs…
*update* - The design is usable for now, I will fix more things tomorrow *yawns*
White Hawk
Don’t worry everyone, I didn’t forget about the live redesign. For now only the index is online but I promise that as soon as I have the time to sit down I’ll continue working on the rest of it.
I already noticed a tiny problem with the menu but I’ll fix it before moving onto anything else. I’m really happy to say that the site is rendering 99% equally on all major browsers! Firefox, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer! They’ve all been tested and they all passed with flying marks.
And even though it took me a lot of time the code is all transitional (html) with the exception of a few CSS hacks I had to use. Also, you’ll notice that the smileys have been updated to the phoenity ones! ;( :s 
I promise that the smileys aren’t the only thing that I added to the site *rubs the back of his head*
Expect some changes tomorrow!
White Hawk
I am going to start updating the design. However, the blog part will be the last to get updated, or should I say, it’s going to be updated by bits and pieces. I’m going to get it functional at first and then style it as I find the need to.
So even though it might change, it will still be a work in progress.
I will first update the static pages (in other words, all the pages except for the blog) and then move on to wordpress theeming.
If you have any comments you’d like to add about the redesign feel free to.
White Hawk
The new version of the site is about 80% complete. What’s left to do now is to put the content in and re-write some of it and create classes for the blog content.
And as an added bonus, this blog will now feature a live list of my latest articles from ForeverGeek, so if you want to you’ll be able to keep up with them if you wish. I’m more active in blogging than you might think
So look forward to that, more news as they come.
White Hawk
With the exception of the time I had my blog powered by Blogger (in which all blogs get spam, no matter how little) today was the first time I got a spam comment on this blog.
I didn’t know if I should be sad or happy about it. A web crawler just probably found me by following one of my comments on forevergeek or on other blogs. But still, I guess it must mean that I’m more connected to other sites and blogs, whether by Technoratti or other blog portals, or just comments on blogs I read.
So I guess that makes me feel a bit happy. I quickly installed the Akismet in a few seconds (I already knew about it but I just didn’t need it yet) and I guess I won’t have many more problems anytime soon.
I just wish the rest of my day was going this well.
White Hawk
I struggled, I really did, I tried to maintain Sitemeter for this website. But it just isn’t possible.
I want this site to be transitional, and with it’s code it’s impossible, unless I used a lame technique such as iframes which could eventually mess up the statistics.
So, farewell Sitemeter. And farewell public statistics for this site.
White Hawk
Fellow readers and friends,
I regret to inform that I will for the next uncertain number days be unable to post on this blog. Reason being, that it needs to be redone. There are too many things not looking the same on all browsers, and frankly the best way I see to fix it is to start over and remove some CSS declarations that were unnecessary.
Also, college is starting Monday, and I need to get ready, I will spend the next few days working that project I’ve told you about and doing some exercises from high-school, since for the first days of college I’ll be reviewing them.
I’m sorry about this but writing for ForeverGeek, keeping track of the comments and building the site that I’m doing take up too much of my time.
As soon as I get some free time I’ll be back and hopefully better. I’ll also take note of any hacks or exploits I use to get things to display properly on this site.
Post Script: I noticed I just went over 500 unique visitors and I’m quickly approaching the 1k clicks number. The traffic for the blog has slowly, but steadily been rising with one or two boost of traffic in between and I thank everyone for visiting and taking their time to read my rants and thoughts. I’ll see you in a few days hopefully and once again, thank you.
White Hawk
During the past days when I was implementing some changes on the site I always had the feeling that something was missing and today I realized what it was; this blog didn’t have a feed yet!
So, without second thought I went to see what the feed’s address for the blog was and registered it on Feed Burner in order to get some stats out of them. So, if you want to add this blog to your feeds the address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWhiteHawksBlog
I hope I see the number on the Feed’s button grow as time goes by
If you don’t know what a feed is I’ll give you a short explanation. Feeds are an easy way to aggregate information from various sites such as blogs or news sites without you having to visit all of them separately. Some browsers already support feeds, like Firefox and Opera for example. However, I prefer to use a separate program to view them. From the ones available I recommend FeedReader (free) and FeedDemon (payed).
White Hawk
