The link to the first part of this Errol Morris article is in my previous post. Here is part two
March 31, 2009
March 30, 2009
Many Options and Limited Time
All the design options are daunting. Photoshop, in particular, has such a range of effects and multiple avenues to achieve those effects that I find it difficult to maintain a direct A to B approach learning any specific function. Typically, I fail to follow the instructions and end up doing something that I had no intention of doing. Sometimes these neophyte diversions lead to profitable discoveries and sometimes not. Ultimately, time seems to be the real issue. With enough time, I’m sure a preferred method can be found for a desired effect. That is why I have a preference for the tutorials by Moll and Petrik. Simply, I like having my hand held. I like having a clear idea of what I’m attempting to accomplish and the steps needed to pull it off before I begin. I also like being able to refer back to the tutorial after I make a mistake or miss a step. Petrik’s tutorial was particularly helpful to me because I have photoshop elements. The more I tried to implement Eismann’s restoration techniques on scanned images of my grandparents old photos, the more I realized that photoshop elements and photoshop are substantially different. So in the end, I just wish I had more time. In that regard, this post can be considered a vote in favor of tutorials.
And speaking of the use of historical images, the NY Times ran this article by Errol Morris about a photo found on the battlefied at Gettysburg. Pretty interesting.
March 23, 2009
Sitemap and Wireframe
I previously posted a hand drawn sitemap that reflected a hierarchical order of information that was constructed under the premise of using stand alone pages. After installing wordpress, however, my website kinda lost its hierarchy. The template or theme provided by wordpress provided global navigation that essentially flattened the information structure of my site. Consequently, I found that the sitemap and wireframe revolved around me trying to represent how wordpress is depicting my content. Here is my sitemap and here is my wireframe.
WordPress Modifications
Besides being a week late, I’m still an unable to effect certain font changes and customize a color scheme. But since my sitemap and wireframes will be meaningless without this information, I figured I needed to post this….as is. The particular wordpress theme I selected did come with a few color options. Consequently, I was able to choose the least offensive color scheme available. The colors look better on my laptop than on my desktop. I did add a plugin from wordpress’ list of one-click activations. However, I have no idea if this plug will help me in any way. I was hoping to find a plug in that might provide some added value displaying digital images on designated pages. Just playing around with installing pictures I figured out that I could add pictures either as individual blog posts or as a gallery on a stand alone page. Each method has pros and cons so I was curious if a plugin might offer me some other alternative relative to displaying images. If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. But plugins aside, I think this wordpress theme will be conducive to presenting my content. If I stay with wordpress, I may yet add an additional page so that I can separate early childhood photos from the images of the Hay County Herald. I think the thumbnails offered in a gallery presentation are better for the newspaper images while blog posts can allow people to comment on various family photos. The lone bright spot for me is the comfort level I have developed with wordpress. I have no doubt that I can expand or change most any aspect of this website to suit future needs. Thus, I think wordpress maybe more sustainable for a computer-goon like me.
March 2, 2009
Photoshop & CMS
My youngest daughter is a photoshop wizard. This weekend I was having her show me some of the things she does with the program. Previously, I had been using photoshop elements 7 on my computer. My daughter, however, has the full blown photoshop program. After playing around with her version of photoshop, I figured out that you could save images as html pages. After having this epiphany, I tried to use the dreamhost ftp to see if I could upload my saved photoshop pages. I have no idea what I accomplished because I can’t navigate dreamhost well enough to confirm if I have live site now or not. This is the part where you get happy when you learn something then come quickly back to Earth after you realize that you still don’t know enough to put what you learned to use. Anyway, despite my dreamhost complications, my photoshop discovery has led me to question the value of employing a CMS for my project. If I can design pages through photoshop, and since my site will be no more than 10 pages maximum, then perhaps I don’t need no stinking wordpress. I dunno, maybe this is cheating? But for a handful of pages, perhaps I’m better off keeping my goals simple and my architecture static?
