CE v3

It's finally done! A little while after I finished version 2 of my site I kept thinking to myself "man, it'd be nice to have that, or this, or that", and so on. So I've been taking notes of things that liked, or new features that I wanted to implement. During those couple of years I was applying band-aids to my all Flash site so that I could post different kinds of content. For example, my old site was all Flash (programmed in Actionscript 2), but as of the last year I've been primarily using AS3. Now AS2 and AS3 come from the same family but they don't wanna live in the same house. That, along with the fact that posting new content had become a chore, some comments from others, and it was just plain time for a change.. brings me to this, CE v3.

Over the past year I had taught myself OOP in Flash, and that new information bled over into doing the same with PHP. Then I learned database management with MYSQL, phpMyAdmin, & WAMP. With all this new tech in my head, it was time to start building the new castle for my work to call home. So I came up with a list of what I wanted and what I'd have to do to make it.

• I knew I had to create a multi-purpose form that'd allow me to upload any content I could think of. And considering I make anything from images, to video, to Flash applications, I knew I was going to be needing it.
• I wanted to create a custom blog; didn't want to have it hosted on some other blogging site, and wanted control over how it functioned.
• I didn't want my content to be constrained by specific proportions, but wanted them to open in my site. I'll have to create some kind of javascript pop-up.
• And finally, I want RSS feeds. No more informing anyone of updates, they can just subscribe and check it out for themselves.

Also, I wanted to integrate a site I had already built, into CE. Basically I wanted CE to be my work site where I display my more business oriented stuff. Then my blog would be mostly personal. And myMends would be a site where I could spread a little of my nerd around and give recommendations or reviews on things that I like. I just wanted this site to be me, through and through. Now, on to the finished result.

You've no doubt already seen the new CE since you're viewing this page. So here are the other two sites I mentioned.

With the blog, I wanted a more scrapped together look and feel. For that I, I tore up a box, laid some masking tape down, and taped a torn post-it note to the bottom. After I photographed it, I took it into Photoshop and broke it up appropriately. Alright, so the post body was done, now I needed to create a panel that'd act as an easily accessible archive for all my past posts. Thanks to some CSS and Javascript, check one more thing off the list.

I already had a lot of myMends built, but with the integration into my site and some new features I wanted to add, there was still some work to be done. I edited some of CSS, and added two new functions to my Mends.class.php file. Those items were for music and books.

Now back to CE. With all this new content I was going to need a way to organize it all without creating a mess of folders on my server. So I opted for using a tag system along with generalizing content to IMG, SWF, & VID. Basically the main content would be an image, a swf, or a video; and it's sub-category would be what tags you added. I really like the new system and so far it's been a breeze poppin' around all over the site. Also, I came up with a PageBar class that's utilized on all three sites. Below is an example of the page bar and the tag cloud.

I'm really stoked about having RSS feeds now as well. I can't take credit for the code for that though. That class came from Kai Blankenhorn.

I almost forgot to mention, but I had to build a new contact form as well. And with all the spammers, and people that are just plain dicks I had to decide what security protocols to implement. So there's one that does the best it can to verify that the email the user entered is a valid one, and there's also a security image to fend off bots.

And finally, we've come to the back-end. Where all the magic happens.. there's a joke in there somewhere. Once I've logged in to my site I have access to a couple features. One is a posts list, which allows me to easily comb through all my posts and view, edit, or delete them.

And the second, is my pride and joy, the form that allows me to post anything I want.