Web Projects – Disentraintment

Staying in Touch

I have not written in forever so it is time to make a post. How are you all doing? I am fine, just busy. I recently attended a Drupal programming class and this has helped me understand Drupal so much better. I can’t believe how powerful a CMS can be, or how cool Drupal is with all its great tools.

So now I am dreaming even more about building bigger and better Drupal sites. The only hesitation I have at the moment is in waiting for Drupal 7. It should be out soon, but not soon enough. Even with saying that I have to admit that I will never have the time to devote all the time I would like to my Drupal projects. One can dream though!

Another nice thing that is up and coming is a project that I am now starting that will involve getting volunteers to write content for a site that I think should be pretty darn nice. It will be a local nature site, including species accounts, habitat treatments and lots of pictures. This will be my second such site and I am pretty excited to see what is possible. The first site I did like this was not set up to handle volunteers. It was a static HTML based site so allowing others to participate, and assign them specific roles, was just not possible. This site will be created outside of a web publishing framework, so not exactly Drupal at the moment, although I may port the data into a newly built Drupal site. I will just have to see how it goes. All of these things are just ever expanding experiments anyway. My hope is doing all this is to continue to learn, to build my skills, and to provide as much useful information to others as I can.

Color and Web Design

I have run into a buzz saw today. Web colors and not using standard colors on a site I am trying to put together. This is the first time I have run into a problem like this personally although I was well aware that this can be an issue. The big pain is I thought I was getting past the design phase. Building content was gearing up and now I have to spend my morning changing colors.

I am shooting for a pastel arrangement. Soft, soothing and fairly unobtrusive. The following is a bit of a concern but is not the end all as to what I have to do: “The Navajo Nation considers four colors to be important: Turquoise, white, yellow, and black. These colors represent four sacred mountains.

The rest of this post is a form of a note to self….how and what to change on this site.

First are the bad colors.

body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
background: #E2C738;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
color: #000000;
}

That background is a supposed to be a sandstone type color and it is way to yellow on some browsers. Instead I have to switch to something a lot lighter.

F0E68C ?

This is a color called Khaki. I will keep my internal colors for the content of: CCCC98 (right sidebar) and ffffff (content area). The changes I need to make are to my repeating background behind the main content area. Unfortunately it has “wings” or small edges that leak out in the main background. They were originally there to have a blending between the side of the content area and the background color. So a little bit of psd photoshopping and I can straighten it all out.

I am also consider this color DAA520, which is Goldenrod. This will be mixed with Khaki F0E68C for the background.

In trying all of these changes, it is sort of back to the drawing board. I have a few background colors and they all, of course, need to work together.

I have finally settled on a few options using Goldenrod, Khaki and a grayish green that I had been using in my sidebar. All of these are being mixed and matched to various parts (site background, menu background and the sidebar). I have posted a few test looks and will ask the folks that need to check things out how they like (or dislike) the different versions.

Domain Name Registration

I have a domain name and hosting account on a remote server. What the heck is that? This first part will cover the domain name part. Let’s begin.

You buy a domain name from an domain reseller. I used Moniker for buying my domain name for this website.

The domain is a com. Com and other ending domain names are what are called the Top Level Domain or TLD. So my website address or URL is my chosen domain name plus the TLD:

floodhammermedia.com

On your browser (once the site is up and running) you will see it as http://www.learnlocalhistory.com/

Don’t worry about the http://www part. You can type in floodhammermedia.com to your web browser and it will find this website, so the rest of the address, while important, is a side story for now.

I have used Moniker for purchasing my domain name because they are a good company that does not try to sell you a bunch of extra junk that you do not need. Moniker also has very good registration prices.

If you buy a domain at someplace like GoDaddy they try to get you to add on a bunch of products that have no purpose and will not help you. They will also try to sell you hosting.

I don’t recommend people buy hosting services from their registrar. Registrars and domain hosting services should stick to one or the other of these tasks. There are good registrars and good web hosting services. Most people will tell you, me included, that there are few companies that do both of these well. Another reason for separating these services is if you become unhappy with the way you are being treated by a company. You can move your registration to another registrar. You can also move your website to another hosting company. Moving your registration and hosting from a single company, well lets say that most companies that bundle these services are reluctant to lose your business and may not make it easy for you to smoothly transition away from them.

You can register a domain name (a string of letters and numbers with an ending TLD) that is not in use for a small annual fee. Once you have your domain name no one else can use it, provided you keep your registration current, in other words you pay your annual fee. This makes your registration fee seem like a rental payment. It is sort of like that. The domain register is maintains a record of the domain name, who owns it, and where to direct someone that requests each name in their database. This is what you are paying for when you pay your domain registration fee.

You can pay for a year or many years of domain ownership when you first register your domain. It does not matter how long you sign up for just that you make sure you renew it before your registration period runs out. The company I use, Moniker, sends me an email telling you when this time is approaching. It is not anything I need to track or write on my calendar.

It can be tricky to find a name you like. Many good names – short, descriptive words, or two or three names strung together- are already owned. You should strive to get a name that is easy to tell someone, is relevant to your website’s topic, and is easy to remember. You can go to Moniker and check out some possibilities. Just fill in a name in the search box there that says Find Your Domains. It will do a quick search and tell you if a name is already owned or if it is unregistered.

Disclaimer: This is clearly a simplistic explanation about how domain registration works. You can probably find more technically correct and elegant explanations somewhere else. My aim is to explain this to someone like my Dad who has no idea about how the internet works.

Any Questions?

Online Communities

I have been talking to a friend lately about creating online communities. They are interested in exploring the possibility of a walled garden. A central feature of this type of website, which may or may not be set up as a business model, is to have an interactive community communication system. What this usually comes down to is a forum.

Today I was looking at some information about website forums and the issue of moderation. Moderation in the respect of policing the forum so that the conversation remains civil, helpful and supportive. I know from a few projects that I was involved with in the past that any form of internet attention is quick to draw trolls. Trolls are folks that are negative, destructive and can be downright nasty. Kind of like talk radio today. Rush, Hannity, Bortz and Beck types that spew hatred, negativity and lower the discourse to a nasty base level. On a lot of levels that approach and style is so disturbing but I do freely exercise my right to not listen. There is nothing constructive being offered so I keep it away from me. This is the same thing that is done in moderating a forum, if one chooses to do so.

I can only wonder what busy websites that allow comments to be added have to deal with. I have seen the tiniest tip of the iceberg when it comes to this stuff. I would never allow such stuff to be a part of any online project I have a hand in running. If I was to expand and try such a thing where I was to build a site that was at least paid attention to by more than a few folks, so was to have another site besides this one where there was more interaction, I would definitely keep the discourse civil and police what people contribute.

Other thoughts:

here