my blog/personal site- critics welcome
StuartMackenzie - April 19, 2007 - 12:03
hi, I've just about finished (If you can ever really finish!) work on the design of my personal webspace/blog. It's not the most attractive thing in the world but I'm no born themer or coder. I'm just an average Joe at the moment tryin' to learn what I can of drupal and get my web presence up and runnning. I'd appreicate comments on the theme or anything else which would improve the site.
Be as harsh as you like...lol.....at the end of the day it has to be better than signing up on myspace!! =)
Thanks in advance for your time.
It looks pretty good to me!
It looks pretty good to me!
Nice site
I really like the look and feel of this site. It's clean and very easy to find your way around.
Questions:
Can users have a blog as well?
What gallery module are you using?
Any other modules?
Looks good keep up the good work.
Charlie
thank you
thank you for the kind comments, I've actually in the last 5-10 mins altered the theme and added a striped background for those viewing at higher resolutions than 1024x768
Currently the only person able to blog on the site is me (and my wife but thats unlikely!), and for this reason I've removed the links in $links to not add the 'read Stuart Mackenzies blog'
I'd love to open the site up to other bloggers later on but at the moment I struggle to get enough people to read and comment on what I've posted let alone post there own entries.....lol. I guess this will come with time!
Gallery wise I'm using Image with the standard Image Gallery addon and Image Publishing (for mass upload from desktop)
Other modules include views, tax access (for controlling access to private blog entries and galleries to family and trusted members), video, Tagadelic, avatar gallery, wishlist, CCK, node images, flat comments, signature, simleys, bbcode, notify, adbvanced poll and probably more!!
the theme was initially based on Foliage for drupal 5.0 but tailored to my tastes.
My next task is to add more information to user profiles and theme them to look a little more interesting
Stuart Mackenzie
http://rojojam.com
Thanks for the module
Thanks for the module info.
"My next task is to add more information to user profiles and theme them to look a little more interesting"
You might look at the bio module for user profiles. http://drupal.org/project/bio
Charlie
Nice. Real Nice. :)
I'm wondering, which aggregator you are using? Is it Drupal's standard aggregator or something else?
thanks
Just the standard aggregator, nothing special and no adjustments, added a couple of categories and added some feeds to them and off it goes, in fact one other job I have to do is sit down and find some more good sources to add to it.
Stuart Mackenzie
http://rojojam.com
Wow
That's pretty impressive for a personal site from someone who claims to not be a themer or coder. :) My personal site is sitting on Garland blue because no one but my family (and even that's rare) ever goes there anyway. Hehe.
Michelle
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My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
Thanks also
thats very kind - thank you! yes my site is not high traffic either but I live in hope =)
well I'm not completely clueless I suppose, I know my around html and the basics of css. I guess I'd class myself as an enthusiastic amatuer, I know what I like and what look I'm going for, unfortunately my lack of knowledge and free time sometimes just means it takes a while to 'get there', but this site is definately falling into line for me now I have found the 'look' that fits. Now I can concentrate more on the content, some sticky features and encouraging a user base and participation.
Stuart Mackenzie
http://rojojam.com
Fantastic site - you don't need to worry
Your site is really good. Very clear and easy to navigate. I like the way the gallery images changes. I really like the colour scheme. What theme did you use forst to modify. I'm trying but my site loks really wac.
it also doesn't have that obvious CMS look and feel.
once more thanks!
the theme was initially based on Foliage for drupal 5.0 but amended quite a bit until I got to this stage.
My advice is keep at it, this final theme evolved over time and my starting point and several stages in between bares no resemblemce to what i've finished up with but over time one thing and then another fell into place and now I feel I've reached something which for the main I'm happy with and also works cohesively as a 'theme' rather than a midge modge of styles.
Stuart Mackenzie
http://rojojam.com
Nice!
Nice!
module list
I've had some emails and such from my site from various people who have wanted to know what I'm using for what etc. So i've included here a list of modules I have enabled on the site and what I'm using them for. Nothing really exciting included (it's basically just a blog after all) but may help someone somewhere. This doesn't mean you can't email me by the way.....I like people taking an interest and asking questions. Not to mention the good feedback ; )
Audio Audio / Audio getID3 /Audio Import /Audio iTunes - not currently being utilised much yet, but maybe later I will be using this to post some of my musical wibblings on my guitar, do a podcast maybe...not sure! but the module is enabled ready for use...lol.
CCK ->Name /Content/Content Copy/Fieldgroup/Link/Node Reference/Number/Option Widgets/Text/User Reference - Again none of these are currently heavily used but they are all enabled so I can play with them. Currently the only CCK field in constant use on the site is the Mood field added to each blog entry. Later on I hope to make more use of CCK especially after listening to the recent lullabot podcast (deprecated!).
Blog - for the blog (edited module slightly just to stop it displaying link to blog in $links)
Other self explanatory core modules...Aggregator (for news page), Comment (for comments), Contact (for contact forms), Help, Menu, Path, Ping, Search, Statistics, Taxonomy, Tracker, Upload
Image, Image Gallery, ImagePublishing, Flash Gallery - These four modules make up all the galleries on my site.
ImagePublising I use with gallery remote (on my local machine) to upload images on bulk- great module
Flash gallery I altered slightly so that the breadcrumbs led back to the main gallery and not the flash gallery, then I added links to the gallery sections to there corresponding flash sections, so as it acts more as a viewing alternative to the normal gallery sections rather than a replacement for the whole gallery.
Mime Mail - for pretty looking html emails mimicing the site theme slightly
Avatar Selection - self explanatory
BBCode - does what it says on the tin
Birthdays - for birthdays!
Comment Mail - So I can keep track of comments and the approval cue
Read More Tweak - simply great module for moving the read more link to somewhere sensible!
Flat comments - for completely flat comments
LoginToboggan - for logging people in!
Node images - for adding a series of images to a blog entry mostly
Meta tags -very handy a must for search engines I find
Panels - not currently used but something i'm playing with
Pathauto - again great for search engines
Service links - just used for displaying a 'digg this' link to blog entries
Signature - for dynamic signatures on comments and such
Simplenews - for sending out an update, summary every month to registered users
Simplenews Template - for easy theming of above
Taxonomy Access Control - Use this for restricting access to games page to registered users and also private galleries containgin pics of friends and family to people with a role of 'trusted' also used for allowing me to post private blog entries/videos etc again to certain roles....excellent p[owerful module.
Wishlist - for my wishlist
Captcha - helps reduce spam from anon commenters by adding maths question
Smileys & Smileys Import - for smilies =)
Tagadelic - for adding the weighted tag cloud page and block, it's turned out to be a really cool little randomly styled navigation aid. Perfect for this type of blog
External Links - great module cleverly opens all links to external sites in a new window
Video, Video Image, Video Params - Used for posting videos mostly from google and youtube but also some of my own! excellent when used with flowplayer and .flv files!
Views, Views RSS, Views Theme Wizard, Views UI - Not heavily used but useful none the less! used for frontpage and a few other things
Voting API, Advanced Poll - Used for allowing quick and easy polls to be posted on the site, use advanced poll rather than core just because it is more flexible out of the box.
and thats about it!
Stuart Mackenzie
http://rojojam.com