I've just dropped the sidebar to the bottom of the HTML.

I've made great progress, some minor issues but nothing huge. Trying to find a way to tie it all together. I'm not a huge fan of how everything is setup at the moment.

Opinions (link below) are greatly appreciated. Despite my fondness of the current colors, I'm open to suggestions. I will be playing with another colour for the sidebar, I think it'll make five colors much easier than it was before (and I am currently using three).

So, for the ToDo List:

• Color
  
• Cement the Layout
  
• Commission a Logo & Watermark (I'm thinking 99 Designs for this

I hope to have the below URL switched to the default index.php and stuff by the middle of next week.

http://comicidiot.com/index_new.php?portfolio=event&sub=event&file=event-02.jpg

Looking good to me. The arrow and "previous" text wrap onto two lines here (in IE, Opera and Firefox at least) so I'd recommend adding white-space: nowrap to your CSS for the previous/next buttons.

Do you know if you have mod_rewrite installed? If so you can "prettify" your URLs; this uses regular expressions to rewrite incoming URLs. For example, adding the following to your .htaccess file:


Code:


...would let you use /portfolios/event/event/event-03.jpg as the URL and it would automatically expand that to the full one from your example. The L flag means that mod_rewrite stops working after that rule is matched and the QSA (Query String Append) flag appends the query string so /portfolios/event/event/event-03.jpg?foo=bar would pass additional parameters to your script.

A minor nitpick, but I'd love it if the whole Next/Prev buttons were clickable, rather than just the text inside said buttons. Other than that, looking good.

I agree. I made the Portfolios on the left as such and it really didn't cross my mind to do the same with the previous & next links.



Thanks Ben! Yeah, there's some minor flaws that I need to work out, I'll take the nowrap into account there. I've also got to get them both the same width throughout and centered. But, I should be able to manage that by now I hope.

I really like the mod_rewrite. I've been wondering how that works for a while (i.e. WordPress). I look forward to incorporating that into the site. I wouldn't need to change anything to drastically? I can still do a $_GET['portfolio'] right?

mod_rewrite rewrites the URLs before PHP has a chance to use them, so to PHP it looks like you've visited the full URL, not the "prettified" version. You wouldn't need to change anything, though you will probably want to change the way you generate the URLs before echoing them to the page to use the new format (the old, full URLs will work as before, however).

Ah, very neat. I went ahead and added the mod_rewrite to the only .htaccess I could find, but I may need to make another elsewhere. I can't get it to work - without the question mark I get a 403 error.

Perhaps I don't have the ability to enable mod_rewrite, but I'll conclude that after making some .htaccess in more directories (I only found one in the parent folder of my web hosting space, one level up from /public_html/)

.htaccess can go in any folder, and affects that folder and all of its children (so you can have one in the root with global settings, then another in a subfolder to tweak the setting specifically for that folder).

What have you put in the .htaccess file? Note that the ? at the start of the rule is part of a regular expression and makes the character before it optional - ^/?portfolios means "match an URL that starts "/portfolios" or "portfolios" (without quotes).

Not to mention it's super easy to test if mod_rewrite is active and working properly.

Got some forward progress today. Changed the color scheme and unified the layout. Some other tweaks here and there. Take a look, tell me what you think. The Contact page is still nonexistent so I can show off the error message.

Thinking about extending the end of February update of my website. Despite considerable forward progress, it just doesn't look good on screens smaller than 720p, or rather browser windows smaller than that.

Been playing around with my graphic arts program and ended up making a nice little theme. I'll see where I take it from here and start pursuing the web end afterwards. Sadly, I don't have a source image for the pattern as it was generated from a few in-program creations and filters. But extracting the pattern will be one of the first things I do when I start the web transition.

Looks like I'll be able to make my end of February deadline after all!

It's fully functional, accept for the contact page. I made that link trigger an error, just to show it off for feedback.

http://dev.alexglanville.com/

While I have time waiting for feedback, I've been trying to get mod_rewrite to work. I've checked phpinfo() and it's present under my loaded apache modules. I found a pretty simple tutorial with an equally great explanation online, but I'm still having issues.

I tried the "second mod_rewrite example" towards the end, but still have no luck. Even with a direct copy paste of his HTML and .htaccess. I can get http://dev.alexglanville.com/help/?page=hey to work but not http://dev.alexglanville.com/help/page/hey . His/My .htaccess is as follows:


Code:


I also adjusted bens mod_rewrite to match similarly (before & after):


Code:


There's also a shortcoming in the RewriteRule for my portfolio script that I need to try and work around. I'd like to attempt it when I get mod_rewrite working, I'd like to post it though so any one interested can help me later on if need-be.

Not all my portfolios have sub-portfolios. And those that don't, lack the &sub= variable. If I use a RewriteRule, and have portfolio/portrait/IMG_0000.jpg, the .JPG will be read as a sub-portfolio. I realize an easy way out is portfolio/portrait//IMG_0000.jpg but I don't like how that looks. So perhaps I include a check of the sub-portfolio name to that of the sub-portfolio array, if nothing matches null $sub and write it to $file.

That's my proposed fix and once I get mod_rewrite working, I'll see how that works! Sadly, I know it works because my installation of Drupal appears to use the RewriteRule successfully. So, I have no idea what's up.

Comments por toi, if you don't mind!

:: Your name at upper left is way too close to the background color; it's very hard to read. Either change to a contrasting color (color wheels and color theory!), add a background box, or something. Don't add drop-shadow or flare, though; those are too cliche at this point.

:: Same goes for the buttons at the top right. They need to pop more.

:: It looks like you have some sort of shadow around your thumbnails, but I feel like they need to pop more.

:: Same color comment once more with the title and Back to Portfolios text on the individual category pages. You have 16 million colors to work with; use them!

I do not. But I don't think I've implemented color very well.

I used this website and used #DCC98F has the primary color, and selected "Triad." Not sure I'm working it in all the right places.

I dunno, I quite like the Light Preview for that primary color:

http://colorschemedesigner.com/#1c32KbdrBVVAK

Oh, I didn't even realize one could link to unique color sets.

I've changed it back to all yellow but with a darker & lighter yellow to go with the "normal" yellow.

v3 is Live. New features include:

• Automated & Dynamic Portfolio Script
• Common error pages have been styled.
• The ability to e-mail me directly from the website.
• Start booking a Portrait Session directly from the site, with the client opting in for a copy of the email.

In the future, v3 will gain:

• More complex portfolio script
• All the error pages will be styled
• An interactive contact page, with more options and fields than present.
• Ability took book more than portraits, also a dynamic booking page.
• Prices reflected as options are selected and deselected, or at the very least displayed on the "Thank You" page.
• Client Login and integration. Tied with the updated portfolio script.
• CalDAV integration, so when choosing a date online can reflect on my computer and dates can appear blacked out when unavailable.

Some of the more advanced updates, such as the calendar (preferably CalDAV) will take a lot more learning on my end. But I managed the Form E-mail thing by looking at a light example and expanding from there. That's also significantly easier than CalDAV integration I assume.

It also doesn't show right on FireFox 9 & 10, I've noticed. Can't speak for other/lower versions, or for OSes other than OS X.