Shane Life

I’m two-thirds of the way through NaBloPoMo. I haven’t missed a day yet, although it was touch-and-go yesterday…got it in just under the wire.

We’ve covered Obama, Bond, Top Chef, and lots of other fun stuff.

Tonight, I’m going to talk about software.

I’ve been a very diligent Wordpress user for just over two-thirds of the time that I have written in this space. When I first started, I used Blogger, but that was a pretty short experience once I got my own domain.

There are a plethora of services for this thing we call blogging out there and some I’ve even tried. For example, I use Textpattern to run most of my content management sites like my freelance business site and my church site.

If you pay close attention to this site (which I’m not sure if you do), you might notice that I’ve changed the header on my site (shown in the title bar of your broswer) from I, Shane to Shane Life. You might wonder why. Well, a while back, I reserved this domain with the intent of migrating my blog from this space to there. I’ve been piggybacking off of my freelance domain ever since I started hosting my own blog and I thought that the domain I found was good enough to merit the move.

This move, however, is not without effort. First, if I were to stick with Wordpress for shanelife.com, my archived database backup for this site is massive. In fact, it’s larger than Wordpress allows you to import. Now there are ways around it, but thus far, I haven’t been able to make that work. Second, I’ve got advertising on this site (those little text ads in the upper right corner of the home page). It doesn’t pay me much, but it is enough to cover random online impulses and iTunes music. The approval process to get in as a new advertiser…well, I just don’t think I would qualify these days. Since I got in early on, things like “readership” and “page-hits” and “Alexa Score” were less important. With the ubiquitousness of blogs in the current market, I’d probably get rejected flat out if I were to migrate. Like I said, it’s not an amount worth writing home about, but it’s something that I’d love to keep.

Then, there’s the matter of choosing a software to run the blog. I like Wordpress a lot, but with each subsequent release, it gets a little bit slower, a little more bloated. I like the clean, zippy interface of Tumblr and I’m comfortable enough with Textpattern to make it bend to my will, but Wordpress is great for what it does, which is run a blog.

So I’ve come full circle. Perhaps I don’t do anything with shanelife.com, although that would be kinda silly. I really like the domain name a lot…I just wish there wasn’t so much baggage that came with switching a URL. Whatever I do, I’ll keep you updated. If I do switch, you feed readers won’t notice a thing…it’ll be the folks like Alli who like to come directly to the site that will have to get used to it. I’ll be here at least through the end of November…you know, for continuity’s sake. After that…you’ll just have to wait and see.

Didn’t think so.

I feel like I haven’t gotten out there into the blogodome for a while. It’s been a busy week but it wouldn’t seem like it. I’ve got some side projects I’m working right now so those are taking up quite a bit of my spare time. Plus there’s the whole new fall TV schedule that I’m trying to keep up with.

Side Projects

Currently, I’m working on updating my church’s website, which is taking a considerable amount of time to plan and execute. It’s been nice because I’m learning Textpattern in the process, which is quite helpful. I’m also working on a website for a party planning and decorating company that the wife of one of my best friends is starting (actually, she’s started it…I’m behind the game on the site).

Also, Alli is planning a show at the end of October for her artwork. We’re really excited about the show. It should be a great experience.

Fall TV

I’ve already mentioned Chuck, but I have yet to talk about The Big Bang Theory, which, in my opinion, might just be one of the funniest new shows of the season. It stars Johnny Galecki and some other dudes as nuclear physicists that have a hot girl move in next door and they have to learn to cope. It’s pretty funny. Jim Parsons’ characterPlus, it’s on right after How I Met Your Mother, so that’s a good thing.

Work

Work’s been busy lately. We just hired a new production designer, so that’s helping me immensely to get done some of my larger projects that have been lacking lately because I’ve been bogged down by other stuff.

It’s a good time of year. Baseball season is almost over, the NFL is heating up, the weather is cooling down…all is right with the world. Now if I could just figure out a way to win me one of those Pitch Blogger awards…

Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy
by Kevin Potts, Robert Sable, Nathan Smith, Cody Lindley, and Mary Fredborg

OK, so I’ve totally already blogged about this, but it is definitely worth mentioning again, especially considering that now I’ve actually read the book. (Now, maybe Kevin will send me a copy of his new one…)

I imagine that most of my readers know this, but for those of you that don’t - I am a web designer. My actual title at my real job is Marketing Specialist, but I have a pretty heavy interactive background and have been working for the last few years to really improve my XHTML and CSS ninja-ry.

While this blog uses Wordpress, I have previously used Google’s Blogger and done hand-coding for various web projects. Content management was always a concept that was kind of foreign to me. I understood the concept, but I really didn’t have a lot of idea of how it would ever be applicable to the projects I worked on - mostly small sites with less than 10 pages of static content.

As I’ve gotten older and wiser, I am becoming more aware of the need for products like Textpattern, an open-source CMS that is much more flexible and powerful than typical blogging platforms like Wordpress and Moveable Type. In fact, I’ve found the perfect project to test my theory.

For several years, I’ve felt that our church’s website has been lacking in functionality. I’ve wanted to re-do it, but I’m not exactly wanting to take all of the responsibility for content creation. So, to me, it seemed like this would be a perfect time to test out Textpattern. As I’ve read through Textpattern Solutions, I’ve found that it is going to do exactly what I want it to do.

The biggest benefit that Textpattern has over other CMS products in my opinion is the ease with which there is customization. Textpattern’s tag system is built on PHP, but you don’t need to know PHP. In fact, it is more similar to XHTML in structure, which makes it really appealing to someone like me who fears PHP somewhat. (It’s all the questions marks…they just seem scary.

Anyway, so I am planning on setting off on the process of building my church a new website this weekend. Textpattern Solutions has been an invaluable resource in my planning and I will lean on it heavily while I work on the site. It will be a long process, but it’s one that I’m not afraid when I have a tool like this - it’s something that I’m looking forward to accomplishing.

And who knows…maybe eventually I will get around to building my own site using Textpattern. We’ll see.

Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy (Solutions)
by Kevin Potts, Robert Sable, Nathan Smith, Cody Lindley, and Mary Fredborg

I’ve been meaning to announce this book for a while, but never got around to it. (There was that whole thing where I was in France and Italy for a few weeks.)

Anyway, one of my former co-workers (and a great friend), Kevin Potts - purveyor of graphic design genius at graphicPUSH - has published a book on his CMS of choice, Textpattern. Textpattern is “a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system… both free and open source.”

While I haven’t had a chance to read it cover-to-cover yet, you can be assured that it is chock full of useful tips, information and other nuggets for everyone from basic to more advanced users of the internets. As I am considering using a deployment of Textpattern for an upcoming overhaul of my corporate website, I am looking forward to exploring this book in much more detail.

For more information on the book, visit the book’s website.