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A few months ago I created a new look for my blog, but then I decided this was a chance to implement some of the newer Rails features, so i held off on it’s release.
I hope you like the new design, I was going for something simple in both look an functionality. Gone are all the features nobody used, like the tag clouds and individual RSS for each blog post.
I have a whole raft of new features in the pipeline, mostly on the admin side of things to make my life easier.
The only thing that I don’t like about this new design is that Internet Explorer doesn’t make a very neat job of the bottom border above my text footer. This is something I can live with, but will have to spend a bit of time to get it perfect.
After 3 days of torment attempting to get my new Rails app online, it is now up!
My server is now running Ubuntu Dapper with Lighttpd and FastGGI serving my blog. I ran into two problems getting this to work:
- First up Ferret does not install properly, and the file ferret_ext appears not to be compiled, and thus unavailable to the app. As soon as I started the server it would crash, citing the missing file. For this reason search is disabled, but will hopefully be reinstated as soon as I have solved my problems with this.
- The RMagick Gem wouldn’t work, and was again cited as missing by the server. I uninstalled the RMagick gem, and installed the ruby library available in the Ubuntu packages. I’ll put instructions for this in another Blog post.
Hope you like the new design, I certainly feel it was worth all the effort it took, though I’m slightly disappointed that my search isn’t working for the moment.
Yep, my blog now has a new design! It has been over a year since the last one, and I really wanted to try out a design I’ve had on my sketchpad for ages. I can’t remember where I saw this style of blog (dark, light, dark, stuff at bottom etc), but if it does come to me, or I see it again, I’ll put a nod in the right direction, or change it completely if I find it is too similar (This is why using a random sketch isn’t so great, you forget sources, and it looks like plagarism).
Design
- My navigation is now at the top, but has now been joined by the search box.
- On the bottom I now keep a short bit about me (which will soon link to the about page), some other links to RSS feeds and the like, and a sampler of gallery pictures (also to be implemented)
*Tag clouds now appear at the bottom of most pages when there is no comments or older posts to display.
Site Layout
- The front page of the site now displays the latest blog post, as well as some of the more recent ones.
- The Weblog page is now where the archives reside, and all my old posts can be found there.
- On each post’s dedicated page, there is short summary of the post up top, just so people coming straight into the site know where they are.
- There is a dedicated Tag Cloud page, making it easy to see what subjects I blog most often (bike is currently miles in the lead).
- These is now a comment feed for the whole site, individual comment feeds for each post, and feeds for each of the tags. I’ll link to the last of those soon so you can try them out.
Architecture
- Ruby on Rails! Yep, my new site is the result of about two weeks of work with RoR. No more PHP for this blog!
- Now with tagging. One of my main reasons for changing languages was that I could add new features such as tagging without having to work with old stale code, plus it let me learn something new.
Operating System
Installing mod_fastcgi on Fedora Core 5 was a bit of a nightmare, so I decided to change linux distributions. As I write this I’m currently running Ubuntu Breezy under Parallels desktop on my Macbook. Dapper doesn’t run under parallels for some strange reason, and the Edgy beta is also having problems, so I’ll stick with Breezy for these initial tests. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll also be trying out Solaris 10 and FreeBSD.
Currently the site is served using… Lighttpd under Ubuntu Dapper.
Still to Come
As with all my new releases, it’s a little rough around the edges. The backend is still pretty much a Rails scaffold affair, and I still have features to add such as…
- Gallery, might simply be Flickr, Zoomr, or Smugmug integration, I’m undecided as yet.
- About, Bike, Contact, Design, and Links pages.
Side Effects
Obviously all these changes mean that some URLs have changed.
- All the old blog post addresses will still work, but redirect to their new equivalents.
- The RSS feed for blog posts has also now moved to feed://douglasfshearer.dyndns.org/feeds/blog, so make sure you update your RSS readers.
See anything wrong?
If you see anything wrong, please don’t hesitate to get in touch: dougal.s@gmail.com
Currently I’m developing a new site for Stirling Bike Club.I’ve set up a blog page specifically for it which you can check out here.
Had a massive re-write of my base code today. The most significant change is the reduction in mySQL database queries on the blog page from a maximum possible of 102 to 2! I can’t quite believe my code was this inefficient. WIll be sure to use the power of SQL in future rather than multiple queries with PHP middlework.
Thanks to Ben for his testing of stuff while I made these changes, and also for testing the swear filter (again!).
Yet again I have changed the design of the site. I have also moved my blog to a separate page to allow for some sort of gallery feature on the front page. I might possible use it for a splash page to show off my blog engine features when I eventually release it.
Exams this week, so not going to be doing much work on the site, but if you think of anything that could be useful to me, leave a comment below.
Hope you’re all good.
So after almost a week of work, I have written about 2000 lines of code, and my features list is getting ever bigger! I’t all getting there though, I’m even posting this entry from the admin area of the site, instead of through phpmyadmin.
More to come……
I now have the RSS feed working, and a few other small pieces of the jigsaw finished.
To check out what I have changed, take a look at the Version History Page.
Hopefully there will be slightly more to look at in there as I add details about the admin facilities and gallery features.
Finally I have settled on this design, and have begun integrating my content management system into the site. It is very basic at the moment, and the only fully working part is that which displays my blog here.
I’ll add the possibility for formatting and admin in the next few days.
As usual my site is fully XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS standards compliant. You can verify this fact by clicking on the appropriate icons in the bottom right hand.
Thanks for looking.
