Maniacal Rage. Whiteout and Tape.

Whiteout and Tape

posted on june 26, 2003, tag: site

As you can see, I've finally finished the new version of this website. The design is minimal, but took the longest. I couldn't seem to decide on what I wanted (this was concept 14 of 17, most of which were similar but ultimately unlikable).

I've also made significant changes to the site on a whole. This version was created from the ground up, completely rewritten in PHP. I've circumvented the MT template system, and used Template Modules to output all information to PHP, where I have a much smarter, faster system going (I'm also utilizing Smarty this time around). Everything on this site is now dynamic, rather than being "built" by Movable Type. You should see large improvements in speed.

I have also changed the archiving and commenting systems. Instead of keeping all archives on monthly pages only, you can now view an entry on its own page. Comments have been changed from a pop-up window to inline, and appear beneath entries on their individual pages. Monthly and category-based archives are still the same. This system has broken all links to entries from off-site. I am fixing this now using .htaccess and will hopefully have redirects going as soon as possible.

Speaking of comments... you might notice I added a neat little feature to the preview function. Basically, if your browser supports posting a form to a pop-up window (should be everything but Safari and Mac IE right now), you can preview your comments in a pop-up window with a simple spell-check. It's not perfect (by far), but it's neat none the less.

In an effort to keep a running log of what I change on this site, I will again list some significant differences in this version of ManiacalRage.

Layout/Design:

Switched to 100% CSS layout. And yes, it validates.
Removed graphical dates.
Added breadcrumb navigation.
Entirely new entry layout with large left margin and large dates. This style is also used for all other sections of the site.
Removed a few sidebar items, including the forums link, search box (see next item) and anti-Verizon button (I'm number one on Google for Verizon Sucks already, I don't need the button).
Removed the search function. There were a total of 24 searches in 5 months, and only 3 were not expletives.
Corrected sidebar items that weren't all lowercase.

Archives:

Added individual archives, changed the way you link to/view each entry.
Added next/previous links to individual entries (right below title).

Comments:

Changed to inline, no longer appear in pop-up windows. Now they appear underneath entries on individual archive pages.
Removed comment error page by circumvention of MT. Implemented my own JavaScript based error checking.
Removed comment preview page and implemented my own preview page which has a simple spell-check (does not currently work in Safari or Mac IE) in a pop-up window.
Added notes to the bottom of the comments form concerning comment content and 'rules for posting.'

General:

Updated the plugin page for easier reading.
Rewrote the "External Links" JavaScript hi-lighting function—it should now behave quite well on every page (and takes email links into account).
Added information about the website and FAQs to the about section (this used to be just about me).
The whole site should have ridiculously clean source code, especially in Mozilla when viewed without word-wrap on.
Moved RSS link to sidebar (underneath contact link), and switched it to RSS 1.0 by default (those of you using the old 0.91 feed will still get updated content).
Switched RSS feeds to include full entries rather than 30 words.

As always, please feel free to post suggestions, questions, comments or anything else to this entry. I'm interested to see what you think. In the meantime, I'm going to keep tweaking here and there to make sure everything is right.

Updates: I have used mod_rewrite to fix old broken links, but they unfortunately cannot be entirely direct. Since there's no way to get the name link out of a requested URL (ie: #000217), I can only send old links to the monthly archive they belong in. That will have to do.

I also found out Mac IE doesn't like my comment spell-check pop-up either, so that feature has been disabled for that browser as well. Doesn't really matter, as it's a dead browser now and there are many better alternatives (thanks Shawn).

Comments

There are 15 comments, comments are closed

Ryan Powers on 06/26/2003:

Excellent. I know this joke is stale now, but the length of your "minute" is unreasonably long. Especially for a New Yorker.

Excellent, the spell checker found the misspellings and typos, neat.

Thomas Stromberg on 06/26/2003:

I'm curious as to what your MT & PHP templates look like now. I really do dig the new layout. Very clean.

I'm due for my redesign, and I have many similar ideas.

Shawn on 06/26/2003:

Lookin' good, lookin' good. While the site & page layout is very Rage-esque, the logo is a departure and I like it. Everything seems speedy and elegant. I miss the "Back to top" arrow on the bottom even though I never used it.

Bravo on including full entries in your rss feed. Even though I also don't use a news reader.

I understand your reasoning on removing the search feature but I really urge you to bring it back, even though, heh, I never used it. It just feels right. On my site the majority of my searches are for finding entries when people were brought to the main page via Google. But that's me. Maybe your site organization is just good enough.

One last thing. I think that the "Previous:" link on individual archive pages should be above the date.

One last last thing. Spell check? Fantastic. Release it as code and everyone will use it. You'll be famous.

Slick job.

(some very odd stuff happened when I hit preivew... It reloaded the comment page without css. After which every time I clicked the textarea it executed the preview pop-up but wouldn't work. Using IE 5 for Mac—at work. Dunno)

Donna on 06/26/2003:

Lovely; I'm completely bowled over by the fine balance between good design and the nerdy back-end stuff. I too vote for the return of the search feature, simply because I never bookmarked the graphical date entry, and I might get around to that someday.

Garrett on 06/26/2003:

Thanks everyone. Specifics:

Thomas: If you want to see it, let me know, I'll show you.

Shawn: Back to top will return, forgot about it. Regarding previous link being about title—I tried this in development, it didn't look right. I've also fixed the spell-check in Mac IE (well, not fixed, disabled). I'm glad you like it.

Donna/Shawn: Search will return then. In a few days.

Ellie on 06/26/2003:

I too think the Previous entry link is in an odd place. Especially when there is a Next and Previous on older entries. It's kind of distracting. I don't know if above the title is better either. I feel like it should be at the end of the entry, before comments.

This is a fantastic design Garrett. I'll stop searching for expletives, I promise.

Courtney on 06/26/2003:

If you're not adverse to keeping an extra file around (or tossing a couple extra lines of code into your templates), you could take care of the redirect with a .htaccess redirect and then parse the attached query string. Then again, this is pretty standard stuff, so you probably have some reason you didn't want to do it this way.

Otherwise, looking good. The only thing I really don't like is the rollover on the title image. So very unnecessary, but it's the little things...

Daniel on 06/27/2003:

There is a small bug with the website when viewed in Opera 7.10 (don't know about the rest).

The main title's box has been pushed a little off the edge of the page, and the text is a little bit too close to the edge.

Linus on 06/27/2003:

I also like the design a lot, especially the link colours. <:D Ahahahaha.

I kind of like the rollover on the masthead, but it should really be preloaded, and you should split up the masthead image so only the part of the image with the "!" needs to be changed.

Garrett on 06/27/2003:

Courtney: I cannot seem to get anything (PHP or .htaccess) to see the name link in the URL (ie: .php#000217). Query string does not include this. If you can think of a way, please let me know.

Daniel: I didn't know people were still using Opera, but okay. I'll download it on Monday and try to fix that bug.

Linus: It actually should be preloading, but maybe that isn't working. Also, you're right, it should only change the ! part. I was lazy. It's now on my list of things to do.

Courtney on 06/27/2003:

Yes, you're looking in the wrong place. I manage the links on my journal by looking at $HTTPSERVERVARS['REQUEST_URI'] and parsing out the parts that I need. You should be able to do something similar.

John Barker on 06/28/2003:

Looks great Garrett! I like this design much better than the previous. I guess simplicity is my thing.

Garrett on 06/28/2003:

Thanks John. Oh, and in case anyone is curious, Courtney and I talked further on the mod_rewrite thing last night and confirmed indeed that I cannot do what I want.

The problem remains that Apache parses out name links (#000217) before sending forward URIs. So you just can't get them no matter how hard you try.

In other news, I have a large list of things to do/tweak/finish around here, and I will be doing a lot of them tonight. Expect to see more then.

Garrett on 06/30/2003:

Okay, most of these comments/suggestions have been handled and can be seen in today's entry, except for the placement of the previous/next entry links because I've decided I like where they are.

Jean on 08/25/2003:

Nice site! I'm also trying to get rid of the pop ups in MT... I did get a "no id found" error the first time I tried to post here.