Matthew Knott

It's been hard to find time to get much done this week outside of work, what with rugby and spending time with Michael and Lisa, but the ideas and output are still trickling through.

Digita Solutions

Every time I look at the v3 design for Digita Solutions, I come up against the same brick wall, what do we want to offer. I keep bouncing off the web design question, do we? don't we?

It's very frustrating not having the confidence in yourself to commit to an area of the business, my initial fears were over making it pay, but I think if the quality is there then you make it pay through competitive charging for the product, but not selling yourself short.

I really do believe that once we've finished the products we have in development then we'll have the capital to start looking at different services like web design.

This site

I'm planning something revolving around a photo gallery Silverlight application, and also setting this blog software up to post to multiple blogs simultaneously. With dual posting I can post items of consequence to other sites I maintain such as the digita solutions site. Would be great to do it form a single admin suite.

Life

After I was deeply disappointed with the shortages of Wii's when they first came out, a few years on we've finally bought one. Lisa want's a Wii fit, which frustratingly are in as short supply as the Wii's were. Very frustrating that Nintendo seem to want to create demand for the product even greater by not supplying in sufficient quantities, and then we end up with a situation like this, where hoarders buy up a large volume of the item and sell for £120 plus on eBay. Rediculous profiteering.

I've got dentist Friday, argh, no fillings please.

Work

It's been a slow week, but looks like things will really pick up tomorrow, may be a late night on the cards, I stayed on a little tonight, but the flexi will be useful for a long lunch in town next week I'm sure.

Tags: Rugby Work Blog Site Digita Solutions Lisa Webparts Wii Nintendo Business Plans Dentist Slow Moodle

With the summer spluttering into action slowly, I felt like redesigning the site slightly.

I say slightly, the redesign was the first job, I'm also going to be adding a few new features:

• Twitter / facebook status style feed. 
• Featured articles
• Expanded article lists

 

Status Feed

I want to add a personal status to my site. But more than just listing things I'm doing or have done, I want to break it down by location (Home, Work, In-Laws, Mums etc.) and I want to create a timeline view for the week, month etc.

 

Featured Articles

I will also be adding a featured article flag to my posts to make it easier to find recent how-to's etc.

 

Expanded Article Lists

Just a small addition to let me add some greater detail to article lists such as most read posts etc.

 

All in all not really any ground breaking changes happening, but I want to keep the site evolving at some pace. Now I'm off to overheat in the garden.

Tags: Blog Site Redesign Update Add-on

Bit of a quick update tonight. Continued refining the site, changing the font again.

Also added the first non-blog page, about me. I couldn't resist the urge to write it in the third person.

Another small addition is a poorly implemented digg option. I wanted to get it live before going to bed and will improve on it tomorrow. The styling is the problem, and the fact that I only added it to the static articles at this stage.

Tags: Blog Site Changes Style Digg Me

I've just started thinking about making changes to the site, specifically about an "about me" page with a different style to the rest of the site, and the processes I'd have to go through to do that. Change navigational includes, modify templates and style sheets.

An idea I've had for a while is a site-admin tool that creates an XML backbone that controls navigation, page information, and style details.

When adding a new page to the backbone you select from 3 possible options:

• Physical file
• Javascript function
• Build page

Creating a link from a physical file is just a case of uploading a page and giving it a title.

Creating a link from a javascript function is simply a grey that calls the specified function.

Creating a link from the page builder allows stylistic and content changes to be applied to a core template to generate a new physical file.

 

Once I've worked out the specifics I'll write them up into a downloadable white paper.

Tags: Site Backend XML White_paper Administration

As the site expands, it becomes increasingly more restricted in what it can do.

I need to think about what I want to do with the site.

The blog will remain at the core, but I want to bring in additional pages around it. The blog serves more as a service for me than a window to the world. Aside from the odd rant, it helps me keep track of code discoveries and other interesting things.

I want to add:

 

• Links repository
• Gallery (Not that I take many photos)
• CV (I'm looking if you're offering)
• About the site
• About me
• Work gallery (Site designs etc.)

 

In addition to this, there are a number of features left to implement on the blog:

 

• Search
• Archive listing
• Comments
• Link / Email / Digg article

It's a long term project at any rate and has gifted some learning opportunities.

 

Tags: Blog Site Plan Features