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Feb092014

EddieSoft Photography Website Released

It’s kind of a big day around here and not just because we can see the sun and it isn’t snowing for a change.  Why are the corks popping about the house and the party favors distributed?  This is the answer!

The new EddieSoft Photography site (link here) is now finished and released to the world.  For the last 6 months at least, SmugMug (our chosen photography website provider)  has been urging us to switch to their new framework.  It took me awhile to get the first version up and running so going through that again didn’t really excite me.  Kudos to their marketing team who managed to get a banner on my management portal nagging every day to get converted.  This is the same banner that overrode my exit button whenever I looked at an image forcing me to use the back button on the browser – uber annoying but at least there was a workaround.  The plan was to take on this project during the Christmas holidays but Project Chekov consumed all my free time instead.  I put web work right up there with plumbing – only start when you have plenty of time and during Menards business hours.  No matter how much you prepare, not matter how much you test and validate, Murphy is going to happen!  Unlike plumbing, SmugMug did something quite awesome by allowing us to work on the new site without impacting the legacy site so our customers were not impacted in the least.  Kudos for that feature but this did have an interesting side effect.  If you wanted to have the legacy users see new content before the modified website was released, you had to be sure and use the legacy tools.  This bit us when we created a new folder for a Dog Show Linda shot and it took us awhile to figure out why our customers couldn’t see it.  Beyond that, the dual sites worked out quite well.  For those not familiar with our legacy site, here is a screen cap of that.

That version also took awhile to get right but Linda wanted a more professional look to our business presence now that is getting orders on a regular basis.  The main issue is that our legacy site was multi-purpose providing the engine behind this blog and any of our personal and family shots we wanted to share.  We certainly didn’t want customers stumbling on these – ESPECIALLY the shots that enrich my non-photography blog entries since those can get a little edgy.  Because of the heavy use of the site to host most of the 6+ years of blogging the biggest concern was breaking the links when we reorganized our galleries.  Hat tip to SmugMug again for implementing a master identifier for the images.  Even though the initial folder location is built into the external link, the image identifier is key into their database so as long as we used the proper link (which I did), any movement was transparent to the published link or in this case to anything referenced in the blog.

With that concern out of the way, it was on to figuring out the look and feel of the new site.  Credit goes to Linda on this one.  She scoured the internet and would send me samples of things she liked from the various templates she found.  I just needed to figure out a way to implement that in the new SmugMug customization tools.  Having done web programming in a former life, I can appreciate the difficulty in providing a flexible set of tools and templates that meets the needs of all their customers.  Because of that experience, I am pretty accommodating of glitches and nuances encountered when trying to realize Linda’s concepts.  For the most part everything went pretty easy.  The master template was created with the preferred coloring and fonts and then started building all the individual links and required pages.  The Home page was a piece of cake as well as the About, Pricing pages once the create pages feature was figured out – had to go into the organize area to make those new custom pages.  The folder areas like the Browse, Portfolio, Dog Events, Portrait sessions etc. were slightly more difficult since I wanted a different look and feel beyond the standard template as well as hiding some of the folders.  Once I broke them into separate customized folders instead of trying to use the master folder layout it went a lot better.  Main problem was getting the thumbnails to look right and the order.  After a bit of work those were all manipulated into a very close approximation of the original vision.   All that was left was to figure out how to do the Blogging capabilities.  Having used WordPress for a looong time I have expectations on how a blog toolset should work (LifeIntrigued is a breeze to manage thanks to that software).   This is the area that SmugMug needs the most work.  They really do not have a blog solution but rather a toolset to create pages that you can cobble into a blog.  You literally have to create each blog entry from scratch – and an image section, add a text section, and this block and that block and eventually you have a page put together you can write your blog on.  Hopefully they will improve this functionality in the future but with that said, let’s all welcome Linda to the wonderful world of blogging (link here).

I guess the biggest disappointment was the pre-built Contact page.  Way too much time was spent trying to get that page to look right.  Their pre-built page can be quickly added to your homepage link but it refused to inherit the overall site design master template.  This prompted an online chat with the SmugMug Heroes who quickly informed me that page wasn’t customizable and recommended I build my own custom page – they confirmed my response that I was unable to make a page with the standard submit buttons and pre-filling of the user’s email address – why in the hell would they not allow you to do that!?!  Who would want a contact page that didn’t match the rest of the site?  Needless to say I left them with an enhancement request.  The new contact page was created but forced to just give them the addresses to reach us rather than the customary email page.

Linda released the new website this morning!  Take a look and let us know what you think.  Best news of all is the LifeIntrigued blog had zero impact.  Another project in the books.

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Aug062010

Hollow Words and Gutless Actions

Look into the eyes of another political victim.

I’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog that we have a true treasure near our house.  That treasure is the The Wildlife Prairie Park which is located in Edwards, IL.  Linda and I have been to many parks and zoos around the country and when it comes to the smaller budget outfits WPP stands heads and shoulders above the others.  Their environment is well maintained, their animals are placed in natural habitats and when it comes to wolves in particular, there is not a more lively and accessible pack.  They have plenty of area filled with trees and prairie and tend to stay visible most of the time, always providing great opportunities to snap a few pictures for your pleasure or portfolio.

It is actually very enjoyable to sit and watch the pack interaction from an overlook built off the side of their habitat.  Give it enough time and you will be able to distinguish the alpha from the subordinates and although it is difficult at first to tell all the wolves apart, you can actually start ordering them by their rank in the pack by who bothers who, who has first dibs at the food and which ones are willing to intrude on another’s kill.  Eventually Linda will drag me away from their area to go check out the other occupants of the park, but I always try and stop by before I leave to say goodbye.  Up to now, that has been acknowledgment of a temporary parting with an expectation that I’ll be back soon to check on their progress and take some pictures for the walls.

But now things have changed thanks to our wonderful Illinois politics which has managed to not only become a disgrace compared to the rest of the states but put us on the brink of financial ruin.  I will not go into the history of illegal activity by our past governors and you have probably seen stories on the recent one that was impeached and now awaiting a jury decision on ethics violations.  Instead, I would like to highlight the recent actions of the individual who took over for the impeached governor with promises to right the titanic.  Before the impeached governor decided to make a public mockery of himself on wiretaps, he cut funding to a large number of parks which included our very own Wildlife Prairie Park as well as Jubilee Park that I do most of my training runs in.  It was downstate so what the hell did he care and besides his wife thought all the roads to the hick cities were ugly and wanted wildflowers planted to keep her eyes from having to look at the filth (note to politicians and their spouses, I never forget).  However, when our temporary governor was sworn in, he promised to restore the funding gaining the trust and appreciation for all of downstate hicks.  Finally, a governor with more in the skull than a hair mop.  As of this week , this promise has become as hollow as the rest of the governors’ statements.

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Aug012010

I'm Feeling a Little Smug Today!

I can’t believe it is August already.  Things have been a little hectic around here lately with July being consumed with the Bix7 race and probably more disrupting is I accepted a new job opportunity within my company.  So now I have the stress of getting up to speed on my new job while spending every available minute organizing and documenting for a hand off of my previous duties.  But with all that going on, I did find some time to look into something that has been circling around the noggin for awhile.  Let’s start with a quick experiment.  Take a look at this picture from the previous post on bobcats at Wildlife Prairie Park.

Okay, now take a gander at this image:

So, what were the main differences that you noticed?  If you said the first one was larger then you are both correct and possess a passion for the obvious.  If you also noticed the crop was slightly different then again correct and your analysis skills are starting to rev up.  Lastly, if you noticed the second one has a slightly different black tone and the vibrancy was reduced slightly then you have started developing your keen photography eye… oh, and correct again.  However, none of these things were part of the experiment.  The answer is actually much more “smug” than that and can be found after the jump.

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