Posts Tagged ‘WDMD’

Starting over.


01 Apr

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Posted in Crazyness, Updates | 1 Comment »

So,

This is me starting from scratch, as I clearly lost interest in my old blog(s) and they fell along the way of the phonograph(Small round things that when you used a needle on them, they played music or something? :p )

What is new?

Well.  For starters, a new theme that I’ve been tweaking.  Going to be a work in progress, but you know that’s what life is all about.  I originally started this post a few days ago while I was on vacation, but decided that spending more time with the person I was with was much more important.

Note to self, road trips are fun. :)

Anyways, back on topic.  A little short of a year ago, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin — Stevens Point, with a degree in Web and Digital Media development.  Since i graduated, I’ve been working at the rubber-band-ball place, as a technology supervisor.  While this was great experience for the resume, it was exhausting, and just not something that left me happy at the end of the day.  I had a short stint going tech support for a phone company in there, but that was even worse.  Nothing like having customers calling just to yell at you.

Around February, my brother told me about a web design place that his friend worked at, and that they were looking for a developer.  I applied, and got a very quick interview.  As part of the interview process, they asked me to design a mock-up for them.  Working where I did, I couldn’t finish it in the time allowed.   It was a major bummer, and I felt pretty crummy that my chance slipped thru my fingers.

In early March, I was blessed to spend a week off of work,(getting paid even) with one of my best friends, and now girl friend.  Was very relaxing not having to think about work or anything but having fun.  Around the end of the vacation, I got a call from my brother, saying that he had heard they were still looking for someone.  I quickly gave their HR person an e-mail, and she sent me a test to do.  A few days later, with the test in, I got called in for an interview, and two weeks later I started my job.  That day is today.

My Desk at work with dual monitors and a window!I have a nice desk, even with a dark picture from my phone, two monitors and even get a window to look out of.  I’m not sure how the window will help  or hurt with productivity, but it wasn’t bad the first day.

I’m hoping now that I have more time, that I can actually use this to share more of my rants and raves about life, and some cool stuff about web design and computers.

 

Thanks for reading…

 

– C

 

 

Relaxation


11 Feb

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Posted in Random, Rants, School | 2 Comments »

Tonight I did something I haven’t done in a long time.  The netbook, Macbook, and even the cell phone were turned off.  This is pretty rare for me, and it was amazing to curl up and watch a movie in the dark, with it being quiet, and no worries in the world to deal with.  Sadly it was short-lived, and the real world stresses and requirements come flying back very quickly.

I think I am going to start taking at least a few hours a week to unplug from the matrix.  I am so easily reached and check so many sites and subscriptions all the time,  some time for my self can’t be a bad thing can it?  School has challenges this term and they make the aspect of getting my degree and a job in the industry even more amazing sounding.

It does help knowing that I am not alone in the world going though this mixture.  The past few days I’ve been chatting with some classmates and it’s just a fun experience to look back and look forward and wonder where we will be in a few years.  Who will be apart of the next googles, or Godaddys?  Only time will tell.

Joomla!1.6 Alpha2


10 Feb

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Posted in Random | No Comments »

I spent a few seconds tonight(Ok maybe half an hour) playing with the early Alpha version,

My first impressions are that it’s still an alpha, and thus not a polished product, but it does show some great potential.  The access lists need a bit of work globally.  Drupal has a great example of how to do this correctly.

I’ll try to write a more thoughtful posting and review of it in the near future.

CMS, What is it good for?


06 Jan

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Posted in Rants, Reviews | 2 Comments »

My winter class this year (WDMD 346) is on Content Management Systems (CMS).  What is a CMS you ask?  It is a system for taking the everyday tasks of managing a website and simplifying it into something that is more manageable for more users.   They are able to dynamically (create on the fly) create pages with content that you provide.  The main benefit is that you can have a static template file, and the content changes for every page, but you only have to update the template file once and it is applied globally to all files on the site that use the said template.

A vast range of CMS’s have existed for a long time, but a few have stood the test of time, and have proven to be more useful.   I have used a few CMS’s over time, mostly for blogging.  The CMS’s that I have used are GreyMatter, MovableType, WordPress (This site), Drupal, Joomla and phpnuke.

Because most of the sites that I manage are mostly static content, and a few blogs, the blogging suite of CMS’s have gotten more of my focus.  From my class work, I’ve used Drupal and Joomla.  Both are very powerful, but have more of a learning curve than I have had the time for.  Today in class, we took the time to compare a few CMS systems to another.   The new CMS that my group and I played with was ezPublish, which is known as the “The Content Management Ecosystem”.

Our first thoughts of the sites that were produced with ezPublish were that they looked nice, and had a professional feel to them.  However this is mostly just the templates that were used.  From exploring the administrative options and the backend of the sites, we started to become less and less impressed as time went on.  The Demo sites, including one that we locally installed, were sluggish, and the interface was just clunky.   Our task was to evaluate the CMS on a range of features and compare them to Joomla, Drupal and WordPress.

CMS Matrix

Click for a Larger view

(I’ll try to post an update with all of the CMS’s that the entire class looked it)

While the above picture shows our results, one thing to note, is that ezPublish seems to focus itself on the ecommerce side of things, and not as much of the pure content systems that the others do.  EzPublish works more as a media server, and Enterprise CMS system for intranets.  While the other systems can be used in these environments, this looks to be the area that ezPublish shines.

I still plan on sticking with WordPress for my blogging needs, as its interface and plug-ins associated with it, tend to work the best and the quickest.   For my other sites that aren’t a blog, I think that Drupal or Joomla might end up being a better choice. The scalability of adding more features with Joomla and Drupal seem to really catch my interest, and is something to keep looking into as time goes on.

Corey's Rants

A Web Developer's rants, raves and randomness.