Josh Gomez

Last week was very exciting at work. I made lots of progress on the new AMBER Alert website in such a short amount of time. I kind of started over last Monday with the layout and HTML structure, just because I wasn’t feeling my first shot at it. That’s how it usually goes. This week has started out slow, but I hope to pick it up here in the middle.

Most of the work to be done is part of the Child ID Kit section. I plan on overhauling the existing page template I have for this section and developing a new foundation so it has a custom look. I am trying to get more space for pretty photos of the software interface and the actual USB device. I will also be adding a secondary horizontal navigation bar for the Child ID Kit section.

By the end of the week, I am hoping to have a soft launch of the website.

Working on the new AMBER Alert site has drained my motivation to complete this blog. However, this weekend will give me the time I need.

I’ve been keeping a steady pace with the maintenance of this here blog. However, when I move forward with content and design, I end up slacking in the code department. I need to tighten up my page templates and get the most out of my sidebar. Most importantly I need to get a list of plugins together and get them running smoothly.

Page Templates

Besides the default Wordpress templates I need to configure, I also need to create custom templates for each of the sections of my website. I have some ideas for my About section involving a personal timeline and maybe some integration with the handful of social networking groups I belong to.

The two other templates I have been working on (sketching out) since the beginning are my Projects  and Topics sections. I would like to have a nice section for each project I worked on with sketches, drafts and finished product screenshots. That would be nice to have, just for my personal archive. Topics should be fairly easy to create, once I get on the ball and start blogging about shit worth reading. Right?

Sidebar

What’s the sidebar all about? I don’t know, but everyone keeps raving about how cool sidebars are, so I decided to just do it. So far, well, you see what I got. Maybe a photo of a fake office fern?

Plugins

Finding plugins that are worth a damn is always fun. After going on so many hunts, I’ve created a nice library of surefire killers. Now I finally have a reason to organize it, dip it into subversion and share it with you. Later.

I spent a few more hours on this theme tonight, and I am happy with it. I like where it’s going. However, I still have a few little things to finish up before I can step away from it.

Page Templates

I will be designing a few page templates for certain sections. I am working with a bare-bones theme arrangement right now, so most of the content is being served to you through the default template - index.php

First on my list will be a single post template. My design for the posts template will focus on two key goals: readability and comments. This is what posts are all about, right?

Next I will get together a generic list design to create the archives, topics, tag, and search results templates. These designs will display lists of posts depending on how you want to browse: month by month, by topic area, through tags, or using the search box.

Finally I will have some fun created the templates for my projects, topics and contact pages.

The projects page will showcase my work on past and present projects. I might also include a section on ideas for future projects.

Topics will be displayed with their corresponding subtopics and a brief description. My inspiration comes directly from A List Apart’s topics section. I think I will go with something split into columns, with graphics and shorter descriptions.

Contact forms are fun. I want to spicy this page up with something, but I don’t have any sauce, yet. We’ll see what happens on that day…

As you can see, I got part of the new theme working here. I should finish up with most of the page templates tonight, and move on to more important things, like more content.

The first thing I would like to tackle are the topic areas for my blog. This always seems like a huge task, but I am feeling it today. I’m in that mood, where I really don’t care and I can just shoot through them. After topics, I will go into sprucing up my about section, with a brief bio and a new photo. I know you can’t wait, but you must.

I have failed miserably at created a custom Wordpress theme. Twice. I am now convinced that I got it down. I’m going pretty minimal (maybe minimal pretty), just enough to chew on and hopefully swallow.

Still feeling sick, I decided to stay home and work on the AMBER Alert project. I have been preparing for this project since the first week I started at Global Alerts. Plenty of sketches and rough drafts of the interface have been drawn up, along with simple compositions of the layout for the website and active alerts.

Working from home is always a challenge for me because I’m easily distracted. Today was a different story. I was focused and ready to get my ideas onto the screen. I jumped right in and started cutting the page templates down to the bone, adding some reset styles to the sheet, and cracking open Fireworks to get the graphics flowing.

After a few hours I had the general template structured and working in the major browsers. Next came the main navigation, which is a simple unordered list styled as an offset horizontal bar. A couple of Internet Explorer height issues put some bumps in the road, but nothing deep. It was only eleven o’clock and I already completed more than expected. Lunch.

It was a bit slower after lunch, but I’m blaming it on the pasta for weighing me down. I tinkered with the alignment and padding for the main content areas, which was a waste of time. By the end of the day I found myself bored, playing with content for the sidebar. Tomorrow should be exciting since I can return to work with something to bounce around the rest of the team.

I made it halfway through the workday, then I came home. Now I’m here with a box of Puffs Ultra, strategically scheduling my NyQuil dosages. I would like to give a shout out to those people who decided to come to work sick last week - “Thanks for helping me out, and giving me a reason to work from home, I might actually get some things done. I owe you big-time”.

This week, I was going to begin working on designing a new look for our AMBER Alert website. We’ve decided to develop it on Wordpress. We’ll use the multiuser (MU) platform since state specific subdomains (az.amberalert.com) are part of our plan. The new theme will focus on promoting our alerting platform, explaining the history of AMBER Alert, and spotlighting our award-winning Child ID Kit software.

Tomorrow, Wordpress 2.3 will be released. You’ll need to sit down for this exciting list of things that happened here while getting ready for the release:

1. Lost my database without creating a backup.
2. Deleted my theme, thinking I had an up-to-date local copy.
3. Tried to configure my blog at blog.joshgomez.com, only to give up after wasting my entire Saturday because of my stubbornness to have a specific set of rules for my URLs and only knowing enough about mod_rewrite to feel like it was possible if I just kept searching for that regular expression and figure out the new way Wordpress handles canonical addresses.

I am glad all of these things happened, because I would have nothing else to do this weekend since my paycheck never showed up in my account and we recently cut our cable television. My keyboard is so dirty after all of this, I think I’ll soak it in the bath tonight.