New Layout and camera!
I’ve been wanting to update the layout on the site for a while now. The layout I’ve been using is basically a heavily tweaked and hack layout that I’ve been working on and adding to since I first started using WordPress in 2007. The code was very ugly, and had tons of bugs in it. Also it didn’t have the newer and cleaner code along with functions that have came with the newer versions of wordpress.
So I finally decided to scrap it, and came up with a new theme that I like, I mean its okay, still needs a lot of work, but it’ll be good for now.
The older theme had a lot of custom pages for each category and section, which I’ll need to recreate for this theme. So there might be some bugs and things not appearing in place here and there, but I’ll update those as I get to them.
I’ll be updating it as I go, I want to incorporate some of the things and styles from the older theme, and I still haven’t decided on a background for the site yet. I created this one for now:
Which I think contrasts well with the main content colors, which is mostly black.
I also got a new camera! I got a Canon Rebel T2i, which is a huge improvement over my previous cameras, so I should be posting a lot of new pictures in the next few weeks as I play and learn with it. A lot to learn, but it’ll help me take much better pictures, and its super fun to use!
I bought the age domain OWhatever.com, which I want to start writing about stuff on, but I’m worried it’ll take away from my personal site here, but I don’t know. I think I can write about anything not related to me or this site on there, no idea. ha we’ll see. JoshX.com is mostly dead anymore due to me never writing about anything, and I don’t really care enough about myself to write much about me on here, so I dunno. Maybe JoshX.com will turn into a site just for me to post my work on, and I can write stuff at Owhatever, Or maybe I’ll just eventually sell that domain like I do with all my other ones, ha be we’ll see.
That’s it for now.
blah blah, and some site updates…
I’ve been doing some work on the main site. I noticed a problem where the photo pages didn’t’ display “next page” links 
at the bottom. So whoever was visiting the site were only shown one page.
This has been fixed, and you should now see “next” or “previous” links.
I’ve been taking a crap load of pictures lately of random crap, so its nice to have a way for people to actually view them all! 
I’ve also changed the font on the entire site from the typewriter font looking to a more modern readable font. I need to practice with colors because maybe the main font is hard to read on some monitors.
I also changed the way the title info on each posts look, I hope its an improvement. Differences: 
and some other minor changes to the site.
Non site related…
I haven’t really been up to much. Still lookin for decent work, and blah! Finding work anymore is hell., Especially for a decent job, but I’m becoming so desperate lately I don’t really care what the job is. In my free time I just mess with Minecraft, other games, Take random pictures and call it photography, and blah. Gets very boring.
I could probably make okay money designing stuff for others, but I’m really horrible at making stuff for others, and get very annoyed and frustrated. So I don’t really bother with that. Some have suggested that I should do photography for a living. I’m not even sure how to go about doing that. I don’t even think I’m that good at it. I just see stuff in life that looks cool, and I wanna take a photo of it. Not much different than kids being attracted to shiny objects.
I just heard this song today, and I like it
I plan on posting some of my minecraft creations soon ,ha.
Anyways I’ll write something again later.
Back to gold
I have decided to switch the site back to the “black n gold” theme. which is my favorite, so some things on the site might not work or look right til I get the change completed. WOOT.
The layout is going to be the same as it is now though. I’ll have to manage both styles at the same time though so incase I ever want to switch back to the black and red.
Here is a comparison to help tell the difference:
closing down the gallery! aHH!
Alright, I’m really starting to hate the gallery script that I chose for the site. I talked myself into being okay with how it wont have the same site layout as the main site, and also that the users and posts will be completely separated from the main site, and all that good stuff. But I can’t get over the fact that it only allows people to see small images. I suppose I could make them larger, but they wont fit in the silly layout the gallery has.
I don’t see the point of posting my photography and pictures, and such on there if people aren’t able to see the full high definition quality of some the pictures. Most of the pictures no longer look good when they are resized.
So I think I’m back to posting the pictures on the main site here until I find another gallery script that is decent, and possible can integrate with WordPress.
I think I might just try to create a decent template for a gallery section here on the worldpress. Shouldn’t be too hard to do. So some links in the gallery might be down while I remove it, and start reuploading the images to the main site here.
if anyone has any suggestions on a decent gallery script or plugin for wordpress, or in general please contact me, or leave it here in the comment section. I want it to be flash free, and the visitors need to be able to comment on each individual photo (a feature I cant find on any of the gallery scripts).
Setting up gallery!
I’ve been posting my pictures in the normal blog post format, but I’ve always found it to be ugly and not very navigable. Certain didn’t have the gallery type feel. I am still tryin to find a way to edit the templates so that it looks like a gallery on the picture sections, but that could be a long ways away because I simply don’t know how to do it
I use wordpress as the main CMS on the site, and its been very hard to find any decent gallery plugins for it. Most of them are just embed slideshows, which are silly, and not at all what I’m wanting. I want the gallery to have a gallery like layout, with albums, pictures and the ability to comment on them individually.
I have many separate scripts on the site, such as the guestbook script, (which I have easily and nicely integrated with the site}, so I figured I could go ahead and do this with the gallery.
I have the gallery set up right now at http://www.joshx.com/gallery/ , but it doesn’t have the site’s feel and appearance on it yet. I’ll work on that later. Right now im really just messing with it and seeing how I like it. I’m using the gallery 3 script which can be found at http://gallery.menalto.com/ . I like it a lot so far.
The skinning system looks weird at first, but im sure before too long I’ll have it using the site’s layout, and no one will be the wiser that it’s a separate script.
There is a wordpress plugin for it, but it only lists and displays some pictures in a non attractive way really, mostly looks like cheap embedding. I’d actually prefer to manually post pictures as I have been doing than use the plugin.
The only real big disadvantage that I can think of is now there will be no more alerts when new pictures are added in the update bar thing on top of the site. I think this can be resolved kinda by using the RSS output feeds the gallery creates. So it may be fine.
Anyways, feel free to naviate the gallery, and comment on pictures and all that good stuff 