Category: Geek Love

Tonight has not been my night. First, my laptop screen melted, for the second time this week. Ok, ok, it didn’t really melt – but it does this cool effect like it is melting. Both times, it has done this bizarre fade to gray thing – I actually took a photo of it. But my laptop is dead for now, so I can’t get the picture off of my camera, so you’ll just have to use your imagination to envision what it looks like. Or ask Mike about it – he’ll tell you just how freaky it is.

Both times this has happened, I’ve been in the midst of editing photos for Pixelog. This time, I at least got one done, so I’ll p0st it in a few minutes. Hopefully.

Because after all that happened and I spent a few hours beating my head on the laptop, I decided to move in to the study and use the “main computer”. The computer that holds all of my backups. *whew!* So, moving on … I try to log in here. But I can’t remember my password to get in to WordPress. Ok, no problem, I’ll send myself an e-mail to get a new password. Quick and easy, right?

No. Not so easy. I managed to lock myself out of my site for an hour or two. We could see that my password was not resetting in the database, or at least not resetting to what was e-mailed to me each time. I was completely locked out.

Talk about wanting to break down in tears.

I was very close to sending a plea for help to Matt, when I decided to check the WP support forums. It seems that my problem is actually a known and documented problem – I was getting e-mails that didn’t include a login name, just a password – and the password didn’t work. I found several posts outlining the problem and pieces of the solution – but I won’t bore you with those. Instead, I’ll send you off to read this thread, because it’s the one that saved my ass.

As you can see, I got back in. For the record, this was the first time I’ve ever gone in to PHPMyAdmin and edited data within fields of the data table. I was very nervous – but not only did I survive, but I discovered it was easy. Now I’m on an adreniline buzz, so thankful to be back on the inside.

Ah, BigPinkCookie … I just want to kiss you right now.

Tomorrow, it’s off to tackle getting myself set up in here. At least until the poor Latitude can get an attitude adjustment. Poor thing is over 3 years old and has been very well loved. (I wore the letters off the keys within the first year, if that is any sign.) I hope they can fix whatever is causing the problem. The perk of the extended 4 year warranty – it should be free to fix!

I just learned that Bloghosts will be closing their doors. This is a sad thing to see, as I believe they started hosting clients right around the same time as Blogomania. I’m sure it was a hard decision to make.

With over 370 clients and growing, Blogomania isn’t going anywhere. We know that moving a site is a royal pain, and to help ease the pain for those people affected by this transition, we are offering a free month of hosting to all new Blogomania clients that come from Bloghosts. Just note in the “where did you hear about us?” field of the registration form that you are coming from Bloghosts, and we’ll hook you up.

By the way, I know people have been looking for WordPress friendly hosts – we have the servers configured with everything that you need, and we even offer Fantastico, which allows you to install WordPress in a matter of minutes. Very, very smooth.

(I’ll post this on Blogomania shortly, but am still waiting on details from Bloghosts regarding assisting clients with their moves.)

Know what drives me nuts? When I’m reading sites – using Firefox, and wonderful browser with tabs that I often use – and I click a link on a blog and it opens in a whole new window.

Thanks, but I actually wanted to open that in the same window where your site was opened. If I wanted it in a new window, I would have right-clicked and selected either “open in new window” or “open in new tab”. Really, it’s not nice to make that decision for me.

And don’t even get me started on people that disable the ability to right-click on their sites. That is pretty much the worst thing ever, and it really doesn’t protect your images. I promise, I could still get them if I wanted them.

Why can’t people just let us surf in peace?

I have said for a long time that I wanted to update Pixelog, make some changes from where it was at originally. The biggest thing on my wishlist was to have larger images on the site. I babbled about it here for days, curious about other people’s feedback. I knew what I wanted, but just didn’t know if it was really possible.

It was. Thanks to Jennifer, the ALL NEW Pixelog is now up and running!

Jenn has documented some of the technical challenges on ScriptyGoddess, but I wanted to sum them up here also. She really gets all of the credit for taking my dreams and making them a reality.

– Changed directory structure on the server (Pixelog used to be within another directory.)

– Migrated to WordPress. Matt had done the initial steps when he migrated this site.

– Modified the existing design to work with images 600 pixels wide instead of 450 pixels wide.

– Based on an idea I had, Jenn coded the page to adjust itself for smaller browser windows. Go ahead and try it – make the window skinny and watch the page shift! (You have to click off of the window after you resize the window.) This makes the design work for the 20% of people that use an 800×600 or smaller screen resolution.

– Added another “skin” option to the site. Now there is the option to make it black, gray or white.

– The site is XHTML valid. Whoo hoo!

– Lots of other little changes here and there, Jenn was patient with my debates about what would work best, and guided me to making the right choices when important.

The biggest thing was the design issue. I loved the layout just as it was, and I didn’t want a site that looked like every other site. I felt that Pixelog was still unique, just needed some improvements (larger images). But I kept going in circles about the 800×600 issue and accommodating people with smaller screen resolutions. Then it came to me one day – literally while in the shower. CSS magic, java voodoo, and some Scripty fairy dust could make it happen. Just shift the page around. BAM! And there you have it. The NEW and IMPROVED Pixelog.

So, what do you think?

Now introducing the NEW and IMPROVED Pixelog!!!

Mad props to Jennifer for many hours of hard work – she has truly made my dream a reality. I’ll share more of what went on behind the scenes with the site tomorrow, but for now I just had to share the beauty of the new and improved site.

Oh, and be sure to resize your monitor window to something skinny to see the impressive changes that take place to accommodate the users with 800×600 settings or smaller. You will be impressed! I love it!

I’ll be posting new photos by the morning, and more throughout the day tomorrow. Be sure to check them out! New and improved Pixelog – how can you resist?