It has been long since I wrote here at all, especially about the upcoming fourth version of this website.

Two months ago, a prototype design of the Hypro theme for Powervortex.4 was completed. A preview can be found here. Unfortunately, I had to completely ditch this design for now and return to the proverbial drawing board.

Why? For a couple reasons.

1. My current site layout is too bloated and unnecessarily confusing. I mean, the various parts of the “main site” and having the blog on the side somewhat makes sense…but what the heck is up with the “gallery?” The site layout is too un-streamline.
2. Too much text. Everything on this site is pretty much text-based. This is the past. Looking at various other websites, namely Apple.com, websites today are much more visual. And I call myself a web/graphics designer. =D
3. The HTML/CSS/images currently are too heavyweight. On slower connections, the myriad images, especially in the blog, take forever to fully load. And the header strips on the content boxes are hard to read without the background images loading.
4. Hypro, the working title of the prototype PV.4 theme shown above does not at all fix any of the aforementioned problems with this site. More importantly, and more unfortunately, I one day opened the HTML in Internet Explorer and was shocked at how poorly the layout was rendered in IE (I’ll upload a screenshot someday). It displays fine under both Firefox and Webkit-based browsers like Safari and Konqueror, but it is butchered by IE.

As a result, I give you:

Mayfield is the name for the (second) new theme for the fourth version of Powervortex. It will be more minimal, simpler, and will focus on being more user friendly. It will present less reading, more seeing, with more visuals and less text. In addition, I will scrap the three-tier main site/blog/gallery site layout with one that makes more sense, is more streamlined, and is less confusing. However, I will not be joining the table-less sect of CSS design. I will continue to use tables until I eventually get a hang of making layouts completely with DIV tags and CSS. Mayfield will forcus on greater usability, a more streamlined experience, and compatibility with all of the popular browsers, including IE.

The gallery has been updated to the latest version of ZenPhoto (version 1.1.5). The update went without a hitch and it appears that the update script has been improved. This new version is definitely more stable than past versions though I have not had a chance to mess around with it that much, which I will start doing eventually as I have a huge amount of photography I have released on DeviantART but have not yet uploaded into the Gallery.

On a sidenote, though I have created a prototype of the Powervortex.4 page design, practicality issues that recently arose during development has required me to return to the proverbial drawing board. However, I have settled on planning to create a theme series that serve as a sequel to the Haiku series, refreshing but not too radical.

I have just upgraded the blog to Wordpress 2.5. This new version has a vastly improved WP-Admin. I really like the new interface. It is very pleasing to the eye and more user friendly than that of previous versions. Upgrade went without a hitch and I was able to get pretty much all the plugins re-activated smoothly (except ZenPhotoPress which is not appearing on the editor).

In any event, I really like the new features in the writing post page, especially the box that is created for tags. I have been trying to clean up the tags on this blog and this new tool makes it much easier.

Anyway, now I need to update ZenPhoto and I’ll get around to that eventually. =D

Dessicated world built on
past wrongs and ordeals
await the healing.

Well, I’m back after another long hiatus from blogging due to a myriad of priorities. Now for a few updates.

Powervortex.4 is still in development. A screenshot will be posted very soon. I am still working on the basic HTML components. Again, the new design is virtually devoid of tables and is a purely CSS-based design. The CSS-based design not only increases flexibility but also makes addition of AJAX components, such as K2 for the blog, much easier.

This blog and the gallery are in need of update. The yellow bar at the top of the WP-Admin panel is yelling “please update now” and the WP feed tells me that there are two subsequent releases of WP 2.3 since I last updated. Other than that, ZenPhoto 1.1.4 has been released.

In any event, the last of the Haiku.seasonals for the main site has been released. This is Haiku.renewal, the spring theme.

That’s all for now.

~DC

Well, I have not given anything about the upcoming version of Powervortex except an early logo I threw together in a brief fit of graphic design inspiration. I’ll give a bit more today. Here is the working (and possibly final) color scheme for the main site:

With the tentative design I am working on, there may not be a seasonal series like there was with Haiku that is in use now. More likely, there will be one flavor for the main site, one for the blog, and one for the gallery. With the design, this is doable, even with color variations. I am planning for the main site to have the above dark-green style, the blog to be blue, and the gallery to be (again) red. Otherwise, the new design will be slick, bold, and completely not modest the way the Haiku series is.

Functionality wise, the theme will be more free-form (no more control-freak tables like now…*cough contact form *cough) and there will be a lot more Web 2.0 stuff like AJAX. I am planning to implement K2 for the blog.

Well, thats it for now. I hope to produce a screenshot of the new look next time.

~DC

The gallery has just been upgraded to the recently-released ZenPhoto 1.1.3. This new release of ZenPhoto is much more stable than the previous along with many new features and security upgrades. Fortunately, I got the gallery up and running in no time after the upgrade as there were no major (actually, none at all) changes that needed to be made to the Haiku.Inspired ZP theme. However, much of the configuration were reset during the upgrade so there are still a bit of renaming, retagging, and reordering that I must do. Other than that, the upgrade went very smoothly.

ZenPhoto is a light-weight, easily customizable web gallery script that can be easily bridged with Wordpress and other blog software or can function as an excellent standalone photo album program. For more information and to download, visit ZenPhoto.org.

~DC

I am excited to announce that Powervortex:gallery, which is proudly powered by the gallery application ZenPhoto, has been featured in the ZenPhoto Showcase. The Showcase “is a selection of sites that make exceptional creative use of ZenPhoto either as a pure installation or in combination with others systems like Wordpress.” I am greatly honored that my website has been given such recognition and I would like to thank the ZenPhoto team for inducting my site into their Showcase and for developing such an excellent product.

ZenPhoto is a lightweight, efficient, Web 2.0-grade gallery software that is not only easy to use but also highly flexible to customize. It is a great gallery program for those of you trying to finding something to integrate with your blog that is not bloated like Gallery2. In any event, it is an excellent gallery script that truly “does have everything you need for your online gallery.”

~DC

Coming 2008.

Well, I haven’t really been here for a while. With the amount of commitments I have been in for the past few weeks (and right now) blogging has been put in the back burner.

As an update report, I have revamped some minor organization aspects of the site, including standardizing the top menu (Home, Blog, Gallery) and more polished the themes for the main site, the blog, and gallery. As you can see, I reorganized the sidebar here too adding a tag cloud and a box that tells you how much spam my Askimet has filtered. However, the ZenShow pseudo-widget is still acting arthritic and screwing up the mySQL connections of the rest of the widgets so I’m waiting for the people over at ZenPhoto forums to hammer out this flaw.

Other than that, a much belated Happy Thanksgiving.

~DC

Lets not go off the enlightenment pun too much now.

Well,  so far, the ZenPhoto/Wordpress bridge seems to be working. I just installed ZenWordpress (formerly known as ZenPress before the branding issue) and it seems to be finally working. Initially, I had some issues with the image not showing up and me getting a 500 internal service error but I seem to have fixed that with some tweaking with the .htaccess file. Hopefully, after some more tweaking, I can finally completely do away with Gallery2 and use ZenPhoto to its potential.

Speaking of .htaccess, I am planning to also do away with ugly URL’s with those ?this=that&whatnots with the .htaccess/mod_rewrite stuffs with this blog. That will come soon. I will need to make some adjustments to Haiku.legacy first. Anyway, stay tuned for more.

~DC