Posts Tagged ‘Wordpress’

This is just killin’ me…

Thursday, September 5th, 2013

I unfortunately needed to put the Little Boy back outside. While he is generally a really good cat, he’s also an animal that’s spent the last two years on the street and wouldn’t adjust very well to permanent indoor life.  A certain time of night he would be itching to go outside, and then he wound up lashing out by attacking Bella and Meow-Meow.  Typically I wouldn’t care about the playful aspect of his personality, but when it goes from playing to claws, and his eyes completely change. We all decided it would be best to keep him as an outdoor animal to ensure that he’s getting the frisky side of him taken care of in his usual environment, and then also making sure he has a proper place to relax.

So the bench outside has a nice warm blanket on it, and he’s got a little feeding station.  He doesn’t stray far from the house, and it’s kind of funny to watch him follow Bella and I whenever I take her out for a walk.  Usually he’ll get to a certain point where he stops following, but this morning he completely went around two blocks with me and her, and even used the bathroom when he needed to.  Not many people can say that they can walk their cat and dog at the same time, so it’s nice to be unique once in a while lol.

Work has been hectic, I’m working on 6 different sites at once and of course they’re all due at the same freaking time.  There are projects that I’ve had to leave pending because I just don’t have the time to transfer over to them and no matter how many times I post something on Twitter/Facebook/Freelancer I can’t freaking find anyone who knows what they’re doing in order to help me out.

I need someone who understands proper HTML5/CSS3 compliance, who also has some type of a jQuery backend. Even if they don’t write it themselves, they need to know how to work with existing scripts (which I can actually provide to them anyway).  From there, that same person would need to know how to code for WordPress.  Anyone can turn any theme into a WordPress theme, but I need someone who understands that you need to have EVERYTHING inside of WordPress as clients are not to touch the actual .php files themselves.  So the use of Widgets and Advanced Custom Fields (primarily the repeater fields) are required as well.

Now, while that may not seem like very much – you’d be surprised at how hard it is for me to find someone capable of handling the load.  It’s driving me absolutely crazy.  I don’t understand how there seems to be NO ONE around who can do it.

Help? 🙁

Took ya long enough!

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally got a new theme up on k.nu. The previous one was nice and all but I needed a change. I was waiting on inspiration, and oddly enough I got it from a damn game on my Tablet.  There’s a game called “Fashion Story” that I’m absolutely sick of playing but the color scheme for the game itself inspired me. When I showed it to Adam he said “OOH SUPER CUTE” and I told him to build something for me. He sent me a PSD with a base template, I added to it and went crazy with little tweaks and mods here and there and BOOM = New Template!

I mirrors templates that I’d done in the past. Everyone now, sticking with HTML5/CSS is going for the centered layouts with muted, but bold, colors. I wanted something completely different. There was a theme I created when I was on dork.com (over 10 years ago) that really reminded me of the theme that Adam started for me. Back then my coding skills were no where near what they are now, I think I tried to figure out what DIV tags were for that template because I’d previously used Tables and multiple frames to get everything to load. God, do you remember coding with FRAMES, that had to be the absolute WORST way to build a damn website – but no one knew any better, they just wanted to get as much information as possible onto a single page and that was the only way to do it.

I’m actually very happy that I was able to get this up and running. I know it’s not an extravagant WOW type of template, but I’m happy with it and that’s what matters.  I’ve been so busy working on numerous other things that having the downtime to get it done is really what mattered to me.  I started putzing around with it about a month ago, and was able to put the final touches on it for the last few days. I’d finished up a site that I was working on with Adam (for Kimberly J. Brown – remember her from Halloweentown?).  The site itself is ready to go in a Development folder we’re just waiting on the GreenLight to go live with it. It’s a fantastic change from the design she was previously using. It’s more hip, modern, and not located on blogger. This chick has been fully upgraded to WordPress and I’m hoping she’s super happy with the site.

My issue now is I’m at a ‘low point’ with work. So this means I’ll be working on random odd-and-end jobs to help Sean out, but I don’t have anything to personally handle on my own.  I know I’m helping him out with a site tomorrow, but then I’m jumping onto the total revamp of AGn Designs, it’s in desperate need of a facelift and I have quite a few sites to add to the portfolio.  It really sucks that I have so many NDA’s with clients, there were numerous sites that I’ve worked on that I’ve been so proud of but don’t have the ability to list them in my portfolio. One day I’ll get those kinds of sites for my own doing so I can joyfully display them, but for now I’ll just keep chugging away.

I do know that my usual boss has about 6 sites to send to me, but he’s been so damn busy with everything going on that they’re delayed at the moment.  I just hope that all of the sites he claims are coming to me aren’t going to show up mid-month in August. Our friend Colin is coming down to visit for 5 days and I really don’t want to be working the whole time he’s here. It wouldn’t be fair to him, and I already have a lot of stuff planned for us. Working would completely cut into that.

The upside to today, other than completing this, is I was able to get outside for a little while and do some much needed lawn maintenance. It’s been so long since I weed-wacked that I couldn’t even see where the bushes began and the grass ended. The grass grew straight up and over all of the trim/separators we have outside. I wacked that down straight to the dirt so I know I’ll have a few more weeks before I need to get out there again. Grass grows so damn quickly this time of year, I hate it. I wish I had a gravel yard … less maintenance.

The second upside – I found a site that makes all kinds of custom stuff for your business. It’s not vista-print – I effin’ hate them. It’s a newer site called BuildASign.com. I ordered a custom license plate, because Delaware is one of those states where you only need to have one plate on the car, so I’m utilizing the real estate that my car actually has (meaning lack of outside decoration) and I got myself a plate with AGn Designs logo printed on it. I did have to partially cancel my order with them because I chose the wrong size window decals – they were way too small for the amount of information that I actually put onto it. That was completely my fault, I know I was paying attention when I was setting everything up but I honestly didn’t even think about it being too small until my Mom had mentioned “Really, 3×5?”.  So now I’m working on getting everything larger so it’s easier to read.  The license plate should be here by the 15th. Hopefully today I’ll be ordering the larger sized decals and have them around the 15th/16th as well.

Anyone interested in a free AGn Designs window decal? I can offer free advertising to anyone interested in pasting it onto their car to aid me in a little free advertising as well.  Shoot me an email through the Contact page if you’re interested.

In any event, it’s knocking on 6am and I have an inbox to clear out so I can get some shut-eye.

Busy…busy bee…

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

Life hasn’t stopped in the past few weeks, I’m honestly surprised I have an ounce of downtime to even sit here and blog but I’m doing it, and the only way to get through it will be numbers…

#1 – A new pet…
While outside for my usual 4am smoke break I couldn’t help but hear excessive meowing coming from the lawn across the street. I believed it to be either a cat in heat, or one about to give birth. So, of course, you could imagine my surprise when there was all of a sudden a little face coming out from under my car begging for attention. Me, being an animal lover by default (one of my weaknesses), I figured she’s super tiny, more than likely a kitten and very thin so she’s got to be hungry. So I threw some of Bella’s food at her – she scoffed it and kind of went away but was lingering because she was clearly feeling us out (Sean and I were both outside at this point).  She lingered so much to the point that she wound up walking around on the deck while we were sitting there.  For an animal this social there was no way in hell she was a ferral cat because if they aren’t socialized within the first 2 months of birth they typically will never like people. Obviously someone was caring for this little thing in the past but lord knows where that owner is now (it’s been 3 weeks, and to date there’s been no one looking for her).  After she hopped up in my lap I instantly knew that this had to be someones cat, even if they were only feeding her outside, she absolutely had to be someones cat.  So all of us (Karen, Sean and myself) continued to check on her during the course of the next few days. She was easy to find, she never left the porch.  Karen and I brought her to the vet where she was treated with frontline and given a distemper. The vet confirmed my thought of her being between 6 and 12 months old, she’s way too tiny to not be a kitten – no matter how malnourished she potentially was.  We kept her, regardless of the fact that Sean’s allergic to her and she was scared shitless of Bella (bull in china shop that dog is, I swear).  We got her all setup in Karen’s room, she’s been overloaded with toys and the luxury of sleeping in a super fluffy King bed with Karen (who has a feather topper on it so it’s extra damn fluffy, like sleeping on a cloud).  There’s no way in hell this cat’s going anywhere, she’s too comfortable… even though none of us are…

Why?

#2 – FUCKING FLEAS
This cats infested with fleas, well – was.  Her time spent on the deck was enough for a few of them to jump off of her and go under the house and then I’ve been playing exterminator for the past three weeks.  My legs are bitten to crap from mosquitos because I was out on the deck every single day scrubbing it down with borax, bleach, dawn (which supposedly kills them) and ammonia.  Thank goodness I was outside considering I was technically making mustard gas just to get rid of the damn bugs.  Nothing I was doing was working and we couldn’t get the exterminator to the house thanks to the absolutely dreadful weather we’ve been having.  Thankfully I did start to get things under control, and damn do we have the cleanest deck in the complex.  Mother Nature, instead of working against us (in numerous different ways) decided to work in our favor this past week and on Friday the exterminator came in and sprayed down the whole exterior of the house. For two days I didn’t see a single damn bug, and they had plenty of opportunity to pop back up. THANK GOD FOR EXTERMINATORS!  The inside of the house was treated a week and a half prior to them treating the outside. The first guy showed up on a day when it was pouring and there was a moat around the house, but he got through it and got us started on killing everything off inside of the house.  It didn’t 100% do the trick because there was still the massive infestation outside. So thankfully with the second coat on the carpet, and the coat put on the exterior of the house and the whole perimeter of the property – we’re good to go… just a bit itchy from all of the bites but at least I know they’re gone!

#3 – WORK SUCKS
I’ve been non-fucking-stop with the tight deadlines. My eyes are burning from staring at the screen all day and each deadline is getting tighter than the last. The thing that kills me, and never ceases to amaze me… Clients will take 3-4 days to get back to you and then decide they want something done in 24-hours or they won’t pay for it. Listen up dickwads… your lack of ability to read your email instead of sexting with your wife/girlfriend would probably make ME less bitchy when you do ask for something… just saying.

#4 – Travel, Travel, Travel
I feel like for the past year I’ve spent more time in my car than I have anywhere else.  While this might not seem odd, for someone who works from-home… it kind of us. Either I’m up in Baltimore, or just over the MD border on Delmarva or up on Long Island… I feel like it just doesn’t stop and I should always be prepared for a long ass car ride. The most recent one was yesterday, Sean and I are up in NY for my father and sister’s birthdays this week.  We’re rushing back on the 30th so I can get Bella to the groomer on the 2nd, and hopefully have enough time to completely clean up the house for the 4th when our friend Colin is coming down to stay with us until the 9th. And yes, there are days in between but this isn’t like driving an hour out east to visit family like we used to do. It’s a 4.5 hour car ride and when you’re dealing with traffic that number has the ability to be doubled at any given time.  Case and point – driving up here yesterday took us over 6 hours. Why? We had a nice storm following us up and major construction on the NJ Turnpike so of course getting to Long Island in a timely manor was completely thrown out the window. To make matters worse, the poor dog is in desperate need of a grooming and it was a super muggy day so it took forever for the car to properly cool off so she could be comfortable.  I felt so bad for the poor thing, she must have had a full 20 oz. bottle of water just for the ride up – she never drinks that much but could not stop panting, and even though we’re in a relatively cool house now (being maintained at 68*) she’s still panting.  I can’t wait to get her shaved.

#5 – Heat Wave…
The official first major heat-wave of the NY season (to my knowledge) is starting tomorrow. Of course I’m extremely grateful that Colin helped me to recharge the AC in the car tonight because the amount of time it takes for the damn car to cool off was pissing me off to no end.  It should not take an hour before I’m comfortable in the car when the AC is running at full blast.  It does eventually get cold, 6 hours in the car yesterday my toes were turning purple because we were absolutely frozen trying to get the dog to cool off. So you could imagine my surprise when I went into the car just after he finished with the booster and it was already cold. THANK GOD FOR COLIN!  I could not have managed getting around while I was up here without that AC being taken care of.  NO WAY IN HELL.

#6 – The week ahead..
I know off the bat that there’s two major deadlines to complete, and to top that off I’ve tacked 3 deadlines onto it that are a little more on the tricky side but at least I’ve got help.  The two major ones are under NDA with the usual boss so I can’t discuss those, but the 3 smaller ones are two personal deadlines and one kind of big deal for me.  The personal ones are knu and agndesigns. I know I talk about that all the time but I’ve finally been getting off of my ass and doing something about it.  Adam, my bestie from the Westie, has created a base theme for me utilizing a few colors that I threw at him and I finally got around to coding it so that should be up on k.nu within the next week or so.  He also created a theme for AGnDesigns for me as well based off of a few themes I fell in love with but couldn’t quite figure out how to place the sections on the page without it looking completely off balance. He took care of both of them for me and I can’t help but thank him for it.

He’s part of my “Help”, we’ve partnered up and he handles the Photoshop stuff and I code everything.  Case and point would be his domain, rockchild.net, he came up with the concept – I made it work. jQuery is in every nook and cranny of that site but it made it flashy and that’s what he was going for.  He throws a few projects my way whenever they require coding – I would love to throw him design based stuff because he can get it done so much faster but when you’re under contract it’s hard to pass things off to someone else when you know you’re the one who’s supposed to be logging the hours and need to have the ability to answer every single question on the fly at any point of the day.

The other help, which is connected to the last project, is actually my Mom.  I’ll be building the Fire Dept. website over the next few days and she’s comfortable enough playing around with just about anything you throw at her so she’s in the process of getting her bearings on WordPress as she’ll be responsible for all of the content that goes up on the site.  I’ve been able to come up with a fairly awesome template for them, jQuery up the ass, all kinds of galleries, custom post types, advanced custom fields, and fancy templates for the mailing lists that will be built into the site.  A lot of people don’t realize how advanced you can get with WordPress. It’s not just a blog, or standard CMS anymore – the possibilities really are endless.  Case and point would more than likely be Dover Downs, that site is 100% powered by WordPress.  Not many people believe me when I say it… but take a look at the source code – you’d be surprised.

In any event, it’s knocking on 1am which (oddly enough) is about two hours past my bedtime. My schedule has completely switched by 12 hours. Usually I was going to bed at 10am but now I’m ready to pass out by 10pm. I’m up by 8am (at the latest) and working all day. The plus side is I’ll be able to get myself to the beach more often this summer, I only live 2 freaking miles from it after all… and my pale ass is in desperate need of a tan.  My arms are nice and dark, but my legs (no matter what I do) are still pale as hell.  I always say that my legs are Irish and my arms are Italian, I’m typically burnt on the bottom and as dark as one of those Jersey Shore fuckers (without the Orange tint, obviously).

It’s too early for this crap…

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

It’s the middle of November and I’m freezing my fricken ass off.  It’s not even like I’m in a state where this type of weather is expected (ie: Maine / Minnesota), I’m in Delaware!! It’s supposed to be boardwalk friendly weather until December 21st!

The “Noreaster” rolled through yesterday, it was pretty much a windy day with a drizzle.  New York got hit pretty hard, I know my mom had about 8-inches or so of Snow, which for November is completely uncommon.  And while the power did stay on in numerous areas, there are people from the last storm who don’t even have power yet. To make matters worse, those who just got there power back within the last 48 hours or so, are already out.  I wonder if LIPA has been holding all of their machinery together with duct tape and gum? How the hell do you fix a transformer to only have it stop working two days later? No wonder Gvnr. Cuomo is as pissed off as he is – you people suck.

There are crews in from all over the United States and Canada to aid in relief efforts, but then you see arial views of all of the LIPA trucks just sitting around doing nothing while all of the out-of-staters are pretty much handling everything.  The North Shore of Long Island has been taken over by Kentucky and Tennessee power companies and there isn’t a single LIPA truck to be found.  It blows my damn mind.  These states are coming in to be kind enough to help you out and you’re just going to sit back and do jack shit in it’s place? I’m sure there’s some kind of a union bullshit thing involved here. From what I’ve heard LIPA is still pissed about a remaining bill of like $75,000 from Irene so they’re taking their sweet time.  Meanwhile, just based on billing periods, they can make that in two hours since there a damn monopoly anyway.  No one wants Con Edison to be involved with Long Island, the rates are absurd and the quality of service is just as bad, if not worse.

I think they should just take the innovative approach and put all of the damn power lines under ground to help keep things moving.  It would not only put A LOT of people to work, but you wouldn’t be dealing with the bull shit of “Oh no, it’s a windy day – I think I’ll be dealing with ANOTHER blackout”.  That’s the one thing we’ve never had to worry about down here.  Even with all of the damage that’s been done by storms in the past there’s never been a major blackout due to a storm.

But, going back to my main point.  I’M FUCKING COLD!!  I have no idea where any of my jackets are, mainly cause I’m too lazy to look for them.  I’m amused at how the dog is sitting next to me panting away like it’s the middle of the summer and I’ve got a chill going up and down my spine that just won’t go away.  All I want to do is lay down in bed and go to sleep but I know I need to put in at least 8 hours tonight (starting now) to complete a site for a client.   There’s still about 8 pages to convert from HTML to WordPress, and of course there’s the issue of needing custom fields all over every single template file so needless to say that puts a damper on things.

I also need to figure out a conditional tag, I don’t think is_blog() would actually work the way I need it to.  The site has two backgrounds, the initial one for the home page, and a more compressed one for the content pages.  Now using is_front_page() and is_home() are working to display the correct background on the index page, and the content pages, but when you think it’s going to carry over to the blog you’re sadly mistaken and all it does is display the background located on the index page.  I’m going to have to spend quite a bit of time figuring that one out tonight.  Not to mention I’m also going to be dealing with the issue of the fact that the site was so poorly coded it’s not even looking the way its supposed to in any browser lower than IE9.  Whoever the client paid (originally) to code this thing was a total waste in money, and now it’s a rush job to get it done by tomorrow morning (Friday AM).  We told them 24 hours initially because we thought it was just going to be loading the template into WordPress and creating a few custom fields here and there. I didn’t realize it was going to require a complete and total recode because the moron who coded it for WordPress took the Twenty-Ten (not even Twenty-Twelve) and copied and pasted the WRONG areas into the WRONG template files.  STUNAD!! 

Getting there…

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

I’m doing everything I can to work myself back into a proper routine.  In the past few days I’ve finished up a couple of sites, and based on my inbox there’s at least 4 projects that need to be completed no later than Monday morning.  With that I’m setting myself into “Get it done and get it done NOW” mode.  It’s a little difficult being that I’ll admit I’m a little rusty, but it’s also helping my ego to know that a man whom Sean’s been working for, for about a year now, loves my work and wants to take me under his wing as well.  This instantly has me stepping up my game, there’s absolutely nothing that I don’t want to learn to secure my spot on that team.  Right now everything has been heavy graphics work, AND a lot of WordPress jobs.  I’ve already knocked out about 4 of them, two more to go at this moment in time.

On top of all of this I’ve been drawing up a few template ideas to merge acidgloss.net and krissys-portfolio.net, there really is no need to have to separate domains, however – I do still wish to utilize acidgloss.net as a business/technology blog.  I’ve been going back and forth with a few people in reference to product reviews, so this will help to bring more content to the site itself.  I’m sure you’ve also noticed a few sponsored entries popping up here and there on this site as well, it will be a regular occurrence, however I will be back to properly blogging on a regular basis so you shouldn’t see any major flow of articles that are 100% sponsored… I actually take the time to work them into a real life experience.

My only NEED right now is a proper chair.  I’m sitting on a wooden chair with an absolutely horrible cushion, no matter how many cushions there are – there’s a major lack of support which means that half way through the day my back is absolutely killing me.  For the time being I’m going to deal with it, it’s my goal within the next couple of weeks to pick up a proper desk chair, I’m not looking to spend any more than $100, I don’t need bells and whistles, I just need something with some padding.  I’ve already added cushions, even tried pillows – nothing works. I need a decent amount of foam for comfort, there’s no way of getting around it.

I’m going to have to head over to Staples to pick something up, there are also a few ‘office’ supplies that I could use but thanks to my wiping out my desk at my previous job, I do have enough to get by for the time being.  OH! That reminds me of other crap that I need to take care of.  I’ll be utilizing my post-its more than I thought. LOL

Slow down!!

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

I don’t think I’ve stopped in the last week.  I’m doing really well with bringing in some new clients, and in return I’ve created a few sites that I’m very, very pleased with.  Of course it also helps that the people I’ve been working for are sweet as pie and detail oriented.  I couldn’t ask for anything better!

I’m taking ten minutes to throw an update on here just to show that I’m still alive and as active as possible.  I haven’t yet been able to balance blogging and clients but I think that has a lot to do with my environment.  Unfortunately I don’t have a proper work space at this moment in time.  I’m working on a “Table Mate” in the corner of the living room until I can get a desk.  Sean has kind of taken mine over with the Mac and the other PC we have (my old Windows desktop).   As usual I’ve already designed an office in my head, everything from the desk to the color scheme (which closely resembles the current pink/grey/black/white template here heh.  For now I’ve found that throwing on headphones to cut down on the background noise is helpful.

My sleep schedule is all kinds of fucked up.  Now that I’m completely working from home I’m going to bed around 4am and waking up around noon.  For me its like I’ve wasted the day considering I got so used to waking up early and finishing my workday at 6pm at the office.  I’m working to get myself back on track but with everything required of me during the day its hard to get myself on track.

Right now I’m balancing three clients, I feel really bad because I haven’t been able to give everyone the full attention they deserve.  I really don’t like not being able to start one job and finish it, now I’m doing two different accounts a day so its screwing with me big time.  Either way I’ll work on getting things on track and should be able to then schedule the day accordingly.  I know what needs to get done, and how it needs to get done.  Its the matter of implementing it, and the sleep schedule plays a HUGE role in that.

In any event, time to get cracking in Photoshop.

Weee

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

So, Optimum/Cablevision was having an offer where if you sign up for some triple play package you’re given an iPod touch as a ‘thank you’.  So of course we added a new phone service to the house which will actually cost us less being as the phone is an additional $20 a month and the land-line we previously had in the house was about $85 a month.  Anyway – it arrived a few days ago and I’ve been messing around with it ever since.  I’ve got more than enough apps loaded to it and considering I can add all kinds of VOICE based apps it could essentially be like having an iPhone being as bluetooth and voice are enabled on the new iPod touch’s.  

So since I plan on using it for all of my random internet BS, especially at work considering we’re restricted from doing just about everything I’ve overloaded it with just about every free app under the sun.  I’m keeping my 80GB iPod classic specifically for music, and I’ll keep the touch for pictures and apps.  Then I’ll just stick with my Voyager until its time for an upgrade.  I may wind up “upgrading” to the LG En-V Touch because I really do like having the flip/touch combination.  I would ultimately enjoy having a DROID but I don’t know how much money that would cost me considering I’d have to tack on a data plan.  For now I’m content with my massive amount of text/pix/flix hah.

So a huge band of weather blew through here over the course of the past few days and I was at my aunts house while my aunt and father were down in Atlantic City for a couple of days.  I didn’t check the basement until around midnight last night and saw that it was pretty much a complete flood zone.  I wish I didn’t spend all day on Saturday in and out of conciousness or I would have been down there sucking everything up before it got to be too bad.  However, I did spend over an hour attempting to clear it out and the water was just pouring in so there was no point in even attempting it.  A LOT of rain fell over the course of the past few days.  I know that Bayville is a complete flood zone and they lost power.  I also know that Locust Valley and Glen Cove lost power in a few spots and Long Island ( and the tri-state area) as a whole are just water logged right now.  Thank god it wasn’t snow, that’s really all I can say.  I absolutely freaking hate snow and knowing that it was just a lot of water, which is already starting to go away, it just makes me happy.  I can deal with a puddle, I hate going through 3 feet of snow every morning when I’m trying to get to my car.

I had a job offer this past week, unfortunately with my schedule at work there was no way of my going to the interview so I’m pretty sure I can say that my current job is now screwing me out of OTHER positions.  If they would allow us to freaking hire someone as a replacement to ANY of the 15 people we’ve lost since January 1st I probably would have been able to go so I can get myself into a better position but I’ll just have to wait until the next opportunity pops up.  It’s upsetting, everyone else can seem to just get up and go but I manage to be stuck there somehow – I just don’t get it.

In any event, it’s a little after 3:30 and I should probably get some grocery shopping done.  Or at least ANYTHING showing that I have some kind of a productive streak in me.

OH! I setup the mobile blog plugin so that I can actually view my site on the numerous internet ready toys that I have.  It looks really good and I highly recommend the plugin to just about everyone with a wordpress blog.  With the rise in internet ready phones/gadgets it’d just be a smart idea to set it up. It’s called the WordPress Mobile Edition. Highly recommended to EVERYONE.

Pain in the ass…

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

So I’ve moved my personal accounts over to a new host.  I’m very unhappy with my current hosting situation and as of right now would just prefer to mark it down as a loss.  I had to fight to get my database released to me because for some strange reason it magically was deleted off of the server, even though I hadn’t touched it in days.   I was charged $15 to restore the back up and given an attitude about it the whole way.  So I went to Sean and basically said “move over, I’m coming to dreamhost”.  Now, I personally hate this host, but there isn’t any reports of them deleting databases and charging you to restore them.

So after extracting just my comments/posts/categories – I installed a clean wp installation under a dreamhost account and now I’m back to where I need to be.  All old plugins are gone, the only thing left is the barebones of just the important stuff.  I could care less about stats or anything else considering I’m never getting my PR4 back and that’s something I’ve learned to except.

WTF?

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

I have to say …. I’m pretty annoyed with WordPress right now. For some reason my database is corrupt and this only came up after the move to the new host. I did manage to fix it for this domain but that required overwriting a lot of files and generating a back-up of my database so I could make the attempt to start fresh. The screen I’m getting is telling me that I’m at my initial “Welcome to WordPress” installation screen. Considering there’s 4 years of archives I’m a little annoyed by that. I want to have the archives active so that when I get around to reactivating the domain there aren’t so many damn problems with it and I can go back to doing what I was going to do without any interruptions.

So if anyone else has come up with this error OUT OF NO WHERE please let me know what I can do to fix it (if you figured it out) and hopefully it doesn’t require completely reinstalling the entire program.

I’ve never once had an issue with WordPress before, and now it’s nothing but issues that are just pissing me the hell off!

Stupid CSS Attributes

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

I’m still not done with the template I started a few days ago.  It’s not that I’m slacking off or anything , it’s just that I haven’t been able to get some key CSS aspects working.  There’s something with “the loop” in WordPress that’s stopping me from getting everything to properly load on the main page.  The post-image has been easily worked in, I just have everything setup with certain sizes and you really have to play around with it in order to get the spacing just right.  There’s a height issue with the outer divs, an overlapping issue with the inner divs.  It’s all just one big annoying mess that I hope to be able to figure out sometime soon.  It’s my goal to get all of my post-work done within the next half hour and then I can hopefully return to the bedroom so I can sit in silence and get everything else to work properly for me with this template so I can finish it as soon as possible.

: crosses fingers :

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Hrm, not bad.

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

So I’m working on a template for a client and I have to say, I like it way too much.¬† So much so that I think I’m going to change a few key aspects of the design and then use it as the new template on acidgloss.net.¬† It looks more like a CNN kind of template, and there is one available for like $90 but when you know how to code with heavy CSS and then work it into WordPress, why pay $90?¬† I’m getting like $150-$200 for the job but that’s only because there are a lot of function changes and I’m also going to integrate a forum into it.

During the process I took a while of poking around the net to figure out a way to get each entry to have it’s own individual post icon, something like what you can do with LiveJournal.¬† There’s no official “plugin” for it, it’s really dependent upon a template file and “Custom Fields” I haven’t used that option in so long it’s unreal.¬† Either way I have figured it out.¬†¬† I did shoot the idea over to Sean though.¬† I know exactly what I’d like the plugin to do – there just isn’t one available.

To give a quick break down, if you use LiveJournal you should be able to understand where I’m coming from.¬† When you’re posting an entry there should be some kind of a drop-down menu or browse button for images you’ve uploaded¬†onto your server via WordPress.¬† Now typically this is a “Browse” option but that’s for pasting the icon directly into the entry, I want it to be part of the index.php template file itself.

When you’ve chosen your image and published your entry it will appear wherever you pasted the include file.¬† Now you can do this with the custom field, but the option it doesn’t have is the ability to automatically set a default image to the entries that don’t have a related images, and I don’t want to have to go back through 2 years worth of archives to paste the image into the article – you know?.¬† I’m sure there’s a way to just rewrite the default WP custom_meta code but who knows.¬† I have asked Sean to consider creating the plugin so that he can add it to his list, and I’ll certainly pimp the hell out of it because I think it’s a decent idea.

Note: I just had him come in and write up a quick if-statement and the rest is cake.¬† Now I’m just going to have to come up with a default image.¬† I’ll have to play around in photoshop for a little while for that one.

So I’ve been busy with that and right now I’m hoping to get a few things completed so I can take a shower and get out of here.¬† I have some errands to run, Bella’s out of food and I want to stop into a few stores to check in on my applications.¬† I’m also hoping to apply at the beauty supply shop down here but that’s because of my experience with it while I was at my grandmothers store.¬† This place is kind of like¬†a Sally’s but they don’t have a lot of Sally’s specific supplies that I use on a regular basis.¬† Either way they’re over loaded with hair products so it wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway.

So I guess I should get my ass in gear.