Tag Archives: Maintenance

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas everyone :)

Sorry for disappearing for a while like that. I have been doing a few things with my time, and I do mean “few”. They have primarily involved doing schoolwork, and coming up with a content management solution I’m actually happy with for Critical Games. Mambo just wasn’t doing it for me… it felt kind of like a Ferrari that was missing a steering wheel… looked awesome, but was a pain to actually drive.

I did a lot more digging than was probably necessary, and finally found NucleusCMS, which is really flexible in what I put in and don’t put in… documentation isn’t the best, and the forums are slow in response time, but after dealing with some of the other systems out there I managed to figure a lot of it out on my own. I migrated it into production tonight. (Whee!)

Non-geekstuff in the extended entry, I swear:
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Changes Are In Place

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So, in case you haven’t noticed, the changes I alluded to in a previous post have taken place. Criticalgames.com is now up and operational (though not yet fully organized and certainly not populated with content). I’m really excited about it as a project, and look forward to doing stuff with it soon. I am a little concerned that my IRM for nadreck.org doesn’t seem to be functioning as I was expecting, but that might be propagation stuff… I’ll wait a few days before pinging the service folks at FutureQuest (whom all have been MORE than helpful through this process… go buy a package from them, will ya? They deserve your business!).

Until then, I’ve posted a quick greeting message on the Critical Games front page, and will only be lightly futzing with organization until I finish my schoolwork. If I finish it quickly, I may post an actual essay or article before heading to UberCon, otherwise it’ll have to wait til I’m in Vermont (or later).

And no, don’t worry, I don’t plan to stop posting here. This is my blog, and will continue to be my central place for personal and informal writing. DO expect a little maintenance work while I clean up links and such, though.
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BIG Changes Coming

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For those of you who’ve been reading a while, you know that I picked up some domains about a year ago that I haven’t had an opportunity to do anything with mainly through lack of cash to do it right.

No, I didn’t suddenly come into money. However, my web host recently expanded the features included in my webhosting package, meaning that the services came to me, instead of vice versa. Awesome awesome.

So, sometime in the next few weeks, I will be changing my webhosting package into www.criticalgames.com. Criticalgames.org and .net will also work. Nadreck.org will also still work, but only after a fashion: it will redirect you to nadreck.criticalgames.com, which is where I’ll be hosting my blog from then on.

I’m pretty happy about this, though I apologize to folks who will need to update their links list. This arrangement allows for a lot more flexibility for professional growth (game design and writing on gaming, et cetera).

Our nadreck.org addresses will still function (or so they say), so this shouldn’t affect email at all, save perhaps during the actual transition.

Anyway, just wanted to share. I’ll post another update when the site is actually about to go under the knife (so to speak).

Upgraderrific

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I ranted about the high prices and subscription-based model that Movable Type had implemented for MT3 a while back, and said that unless things changed, I wasn’t going to upgrade to it…

Well, they fixed the pricing structure. So I upgraded. I’m just using the free version for now (no money to really spare at the moment, and for the moment at least I don’t need the paid features), and will be working out the kinks over the next few days.

In other news, Eli and I found a really nifty coffee shop in downtown Bellevue with free wifi access. (Oh the joys of http://seattle.wifimug.org.)

Maintain the Site

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Back in late December, I completely gutted the site and redesigned it. Entries have been renumbered and links have been changed, and really the whole structure of the site has changed.

Of course, I never finished certain parts, including ones that I linked on the main page, like my credits page, and my articles section. I had a links page, but it was out-dated and didn’t fit with the site redesign.

I’ve fixed all that.
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New Images

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I’ve added some more images to the gallery, and do plan to start organizing them all into sections… I’m not entirely sure when, though. Hopefully soon.

For those who are too lazy to click twice (once on the gallery link, and once on the “natural order” link in the gallery), here is a direct link.

New Album, New Image

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As I mentioned in a different post, Mickey posted another Geisha image in her gallery. I’d highly recommend checking it out.

I’d also highly recommend checking out the album I put up. You’ve most likely seen at least most (if not all) of those images before; nevertheless, I’d appreciate it. Feel free to check out the slideshow feature, it’s rather nice in my humble opinion.

New Album

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This evening I transferred Mickey’s images and descriptions from the old visual gallery to the new gallery system. Unfortunately, the comments did not survive the transition (feel free to leave new ones, though!).

I’ll begin transferring my own images at some point in the not too distant future. Probably when I get back from California (we start driving down tomorrow night).

New Gallery System

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I finally got fed up with the Movable Type work-around photoblog system that I was using, so I looked into Gallery. Gallery is very technically robust and complex, yet extremely easy to update, so it seemed worthwhile.

I haven’t yet altered the layout to match more closely with the rest of the site. (I wasn’t kidding when I said it was technically complex.) One of the nice things that it adds is the ability to register an account with the system, which enables you to leave comments and vote on your favorite images.

It also means that I can set people up with an individual album once they’ve registered an account. This would/will allow my friends to have a space for uploading images of their own, for a shared community gallery. Pretty cool, huh?
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