WWW posts page 43

Potential Freelance Group

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I am very excited about this.  Last week I asked Nadia, a girl from my Web II class who is good with design, if she would like to form a freelance-like group with me.  She had mentioned earlier in the semester that she didn’t like the idea of going fully freelance, being totally alone.  She liked to have people to critique ideas and collaborate with, as well as to share expertise.  I had thought when she mentioned that to ask her about forming a group, but my shyness and unsurity made me wait.  I finally did it, and she said yes, and was excited about it as well.

We talked a bit (via email) and she wondered who else we could include in this group, so I mentioned Jason, another good designer from our class.  We asked him the next day of class, and he said yes.  He, of course, was also excited by the prospects.  And he has had experience with freelance design.

They are both very good at design, which I am not.  They can do flash and drawings and what not.  I am fairly good working with scripting and data, and have, and have some experience turning designs into HTML/CSS.  So we should complement each other well.  We seem to work together in class well as well, which will hopefully make things work smoothly.

So we’ve been talking a bit via email and class.  We have to figure out things such as what sort of business entity to become, how we will handle money (don’t want any disputes with this), what sort of contract we will use, etc.   We will probably want to become an entity like a partnership, with a separate name from our own, so that we have a brand and people can pay that single entity.  This will also make sense for tax purposes.

Part of the idea of this is to be like freelancing, but with the support and image of the other members of the group, so we don’t want it to start off as something complicated and expensive.  It is also going to be set up as something that can be done on the side of a full time job.  We want it to be easy for people to come and go if need be, and maybe even have only part of the team work on some projects.  Our entity and other choices will have to reflect this.

We’ve discussed where to find clients, and we may start with some free sites, such as for non-profits, to figure out how things will work and get a group portfolio going.  Those shouldn’t be too hard to find.

We will continue talking, get things going, and hopefully it’ll work out.

WordPress.com blog

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I have created another blog, separate from this one, on wordpress.com.  I did so as a requirement for the Web Design II class I am taking at Tri-C.  It mainly stores information about the project we are working on for the class.  Since it is my first project of this sort, full from start to finish for a client, it contains my first workings and views on parts of the process.

I am not sure how to handle this blog though when I am done with class.  It obviously will no longer be needed for that, and maintaining two completely separate blogs has its problems, what with increased maintenance time, separated data that all may be related, separate presences, etc.  It may work though if they have two distinct purposes.  I’m not sure that I really need it separate though.

WordPress.com has a number of features, such as integrated stats and greater connection to other blogs, but it has limited features and some important features such as style need to be payed for.  So I may not want to keep the account.

So I could potentially just merge it onto here.  I have also been thinking about maintaining two blogs or one blog that has a fully separated category of posts from the front end with completely different appearance and no access to the other categories.  I would do this on my planned portfolio site for my “professional” posts while I maintain the other blog for my personal posts.  So I could potentially place the wordpress.com content on the professional blog and move some of my older web and server related posts there as well, maybe after a bit of cleanup.

I am also considering breaking away from wordpress by building my own blog ware.  This would give me more control over the data, the blog functionality, and integration into the rest of the site.  But this would take some time, and I have a lot of other projects that would have priority over that.  Getting it anywhere near the capabilities that I like from wordpress especially would take a while (don’t even know how to handle pingbacks/trackbacks).

wORDprESS Capitalization

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Hmm, an interesting discovery I just made:

wOrDpress seems to change the capitalization of all instances of its own name, ie “woRdpreSS”, within the title and content of posts. Since URLs can be case sensitive, this caused a problem for one of the links I had on a previous post. It was changing the lowercase “p” to uppercase “P”. To solute the problem, I used the HTML escape sequence “p” in place of that “p”, and the link works just fine. I’ll have to watch for that next time.

[Update] Interestingly, the capitalization wasn’t changed on this post at all, but it was on the other. I’m not sure why.[/update]

Stearns: Thematic Wireframes

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After making our layout wireframes, we brainstormed some various thematic ideas.  We mostly thought of items that’d be on a farm.  Some of the ideas that were popular were: wood grain, hanging signs, the historical sign, barn, sun, etchings, grass, farm animals, silo, straw hat, pitch fork, seasonal changes, red, brown, and trees.  It was a brainstorm, so there were many other ideas, although some were less applicable.

In class, we each drew up one or a few quick thematic wireframes.  We didn’t have much time, so many weren’t fleshed out.  I drew three:

Stearns thematic wireframe 1

These two were based mainly on the historic mark sign that the farm has. The first had many little signs for top buttons and logo, two big signs for a sidebar and main content area, and then a grassy ground below that serves as a footer. The page background would be a blue sky. I felt this might be a little overboard with the signs, but liked the grassy footer and blue sky a lot, using them in most of my designs. The next drawing kept the footer and had one sign as a sidebar with the logo and accordion navigation. I included the wagon wheel that is at the base of the Stearn’s sign. I felt a light red barn side or white slatted house side would work for the main content area.

Stearns thematic wireframe 5

My other drawing used faded wood signs for everything. I wanted an etching on the top banner for the logo and a burn in look for the banner text. The main content and side bar would be place on parchment nailed to a giant sign. All of the signs are hanging and hang from each other.

We were then given a couple days to create some more.

Stearns thematic wireframe 2

This one would have barn red as the body background with an open barn door holding the main content. I wasn’t sure how to handle the content, so I figured a fairly normal div box set would work if I couldn’t think of anything else. The top banner would be a wood sign over the door with an etching of the farm, burn in title, and silhouettes of animals with white lettering for the main navigation. I continued with the grass footer.

Stearns thematic wireframe 3](https://www.tobymackenzie.com/_/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/scan0002_2.jpg)

Next up I made the back of a red barn. The roof would hold the title (probably no room for a logo) and the main navigation in white paint-like lettering. The sub navigation would be in a side bar with the same lettering. The main content would be on a big off white type cloth nailed to the barn. The footer would again be the grass. A sun was featured over the roof to add a little brightness.

Stearns thematic wireframe 4

Finally, I came up with a variant of the barn door idea with something inside. A farmer would be standing with a pitch fork forking a large, squarish pile of hay. The hay would hold the main content and the farmer would have the accordion side navigation on his back/side. This version of the door had a cloth banner nailed across the inside top of the door with just the logo and title. This one seemed very kiddy to me though, would probably only appeal to kids.

Stearns: Site wireframes

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We made some wireframes for the planned layout of the Stearn’s site.  We were supposed to consider theme in these as well, but we all worked mostly on layout.

Stearns layout wireframe 1 I started with a few ideas in boxes that would later be moved to printed, properly proportioned boxes.  I liked the layout we had been working with in the wireframes we had done in that Oversite program, with the buttons along the top and sub navigation in the side bar, so I started with that.  In trying to make another type of  layout, I went with an accordion menu in a sidebar.

Stearns layout wireframe 2
I then began moving the layouts to the properly sized boxes as “final” versions. This is the one with the button bar at the top, with a home page version and another page version that has the side sub navigation

Stearns layout wireframe 3
This is a slight change to the button bar layout with a shorter width top bar and the footer as part of the side bar. I only did one, as it was otherwise to be similar to the other button bar example.

Stearns layout wireframe 4
This is the accordion side bar layout. The four column home page is very busy, but I was trying to keep everything above the fold. It will probably drop a column and have some stuff drop below the fold in the future.

WordPress as CMS

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I’ve been researching WordPress as a CMS for potential use on my own sites, but some of the information could certainly apply to the Stearn’s Farm project.

WordPress as CMS links:

I will update this post as I find more information and possibly pull out info from the links.

So far it is looking like WordPress will not work for my personal plans.  The main reason I was interested was the nice text editing features that I certainly would not be able to recreate myself, and of course the fact that I potentially wouldn’t need to write that much to have a continuously update CMS.  But it seems like it would be a lot of work to get it to do what I want it to.

[update] The text editor used in WordPress is called TinyMCE which seems to be a seperate project that can be integratable into any site.  I may build out my own sites but include TinyMCE as an editing option.[/update]

Stearn’s Personas

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We developed three personas for the Stearn’s Farm website.  They are generic people representing the most likely visitors to the site, and will be used to make decisions in site creation.  The appearance of the site should target these personas.  Content prevalent to these personas should be emphasized, and content decisions should be made with them in mind.  In general, the site should target these personas, though it should still be usable by others.

Our three personas are:  Teachers, Parents, and History buffs.

Teachers

Local and area teachers from preschool to maybe 4th grade might be interested in the farm for field trips.  Education of children is probably the farm’s biggest draw.

Needs

  • cost
  • hours
  • map and directions
  • attractions/things to do
  • tour visit info, including:
    • materials available
    • if tour is guided
    • picnic tables
    • bus info
    • bathroom info
    • safety info

Parents

Local and area parents and grandparents searching for something to do with their kids or grandkids might be interested in the farm.  Parents from Parma will be the most interested.  Parents interested in green things or from the inner city might also be especially interested.  Females are probably the most likely to be visiting the site.

Needs

  • cost
  • hours, especially the best times to visit
  • map and directions
  • nearby attractions
  • parking information
  • attractions/things to do

History buffs

History buffs from Parma or those interested in farms might be interested in the farm and site.

Needs

  • history of the farm
  • historic sites in the area
  • other Parma history

Stearn’s Research: Food for historians

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We identified history buffs as one of the probable main visitors to the Stearn’s site.  We want to list local attractions on the site, so I am researching eateries that history buffs might be interested in.

Here is a list of Parma eateries.  I’m not sure if there are any historical places in that list, but I’m sure most of them would be places that a history buff would be happy to eat at.

Possible Restaurants

Unfortunately, it is very hard to find historic restaurants in Parma with a search engine, so that is the best I can do.

    Stearns Farm Meeting 1

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    We had our first meeting with our client contact for our Stearns Farm project.  She (Debbie) was very nice and the meeting went quite well.  We got a much better concept of what we will be doing with the site.  We also found that the site will be made completely new on whatever hosting we care to put it on:  It is not tied to being served from the Parma site as the old “site” was.  So the project looks like it will be interesting and fun, and we’ll be able to do a lot with it.  I think it will be a huge improvement for the farm’s web presence as well, and we should hopefully be able to increase both visits and donations to the farm.

    We determined for sure that it is a 501(c)3 non-profit.  I’ve worked on a number of non-profit websites (including Red-Cross of Greater Cleveland, Humane Society of Greater Akron, and OROC) well an intern at RPM International.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to use some of my experience from there to help this project.

    Full WordPress Blog

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    We set up the full version of WordPress (from wordpress.org) for learning how to work with it. Mine can be found here.  I’ve already had experience working with the full version of wordpress (I’ve used it for years on my own site), but I haven’t gotten too far working with the themes.  I’ve taken this opportunity to make a theme nearly from scratch.  I’ve used the Sandbox theme, deleting all CSS but leaving the html/php templates.  I’ve considered modifying those as well, as I don’t like everything about them and I may need to to get the site to work as desired.

    Anyway, I’ve created a semi-fluid centered layout there using absolute positioning within a div.  I’ve been wanting to do something like this to allow the navigation and other non-main content to be placed at the bottom of the page structurally but still where I want it for appearance.

    It works fairly nicely, though it still has some problems.  For instance, padding on any of the absolutely positioned boxes expands them and messes up the layout.  Any padding must be done on sub-elements.  Borders on any of the main blocks don’t work either, and can cause layout problems.  And since the side columns are absolutely positioned and take up no height, I need a min-height to ensure all of their content doesn’t float out of their box.  I hope to continue working on the theme to correct these problems, and may use something similar for my own website.

    I recently (re)read about elastic layouts.  I find the idea to be good for usability:  The whole site scales when the text size changes.  So I’ve considered changing the theme to work completely based on em’s for sizing, except I’d have to use a workaround for the full image header.  Strangely though it seems most newer browsers can scale any site almost as if they were already elastic:  With the aforementioned theme, IE 7, Firefox 3.5, and Safari 4 scale the whole page, including the header image and pixel width sidebars, down or up just fine and even maintain line lengths through part of the scaling.  Currently the page is 100% width unless the browser goes wider than its max-width, so I’d try to keep that if going to em’s.

    The theme hasn’t been tested in IE 6 yet, since I don’t think I have a copy:  I may have to use a virtual version or another computer.  I imagine it will fail miserably there.  I haven’t yet delved into the conditional stylesheets, but I may add one just for IE 6 if the site doesn’t work well with it.

    I can’t figure out how to apply this theme to this wordpress.com blog.  It seems like it may cost money to do.  I’ll have to investigate further.  I may end up moving this blog for the class over there, maybe converting this into a personal blog.