Hostgator Sucks

I have moved my hosting off Hostgator because frankly, they suck.     My site was suffering repeated down times, crashes, database disconnects, SSH daemon crashes/hangups, ..etc..

The big pisser for me though was the SSH restricted access that they had given me, combined with the more recent downtime..

For whatever reason I’d try to SSH into my account and it would fail acting as if there was no SSH daemon running..  I’d have to contact them via their live chat system, wait in queue forever for some support monkey to help me, only to have them either tell me that;  A) nothings wrong.  B) I don’t have an account with them or best of all C) “Oh yeah we changed the SSH port to ### now.. use that.. ”

Seriously?  You just up and changed the SSH port?  Why?!  It’s been 22 for ever.. Now suddenly its 2222? … WHY?!

Apparently their support team is filled with more assholes than a donkey in an iron maiden..

Okay that probably wasn’t fair, but it was funny =)..  But I mean seriously, If I can’t SSH/SCP into my box then there is a serious issue here..  They also have it setup apparently so that you can’t have more than 2 SSH connections at a time, and each time you SCP a file to/from the box it creates a new connection, thus that’s the reason for the failure of the third connection attempt and the reason you have to wait for 3 minutes for those connections to time out.  (Or so their tech support drone said.. )  What a crock of shit..

And when I did finally manage to SSH in they had me stuck in a jail shell so I can’t do dick anyway.. I just wanted to use screen people.. that’s all!!

It wasn’t so bad 2 years ago when I first got the account, but it’s been getting worse and recently my site was down for nearly 48 hours.. Done.. Stick a fork in me..

I’m kicking them to the curb..  Their shit stinks and if they continue they are going to be hurting for business..

EDIT:  Okay so I did talk to them at length over the phone about the service I was getting and they didn’t make a lot of excuses or try to be shady about it, but rather owned up to the issues and apologized.    While I am unhappy with their service, I am impressed at how they handled the whole thing..  They were very professional and courteous..   So with that I’m still moving on, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they are still a good company, if maybe just not the right ones for me.

The Arjuna theme is outstanding..  I especially like that it works in the exact same way as EOS and so theme switching is 100% seamless!  Thank you guys a bunch.. This is awesome..

I highly recommend this theme, or the EOS theme.

Social Bookmark Icons

So I have added several links to social networking bookmarking sites to each of the pages within the theme..  I really wasn’t sure which ones most folks used so I went with the 4 that I knew the most.. I’m sure I’d be better served by adding twitter, google and others.. but really I’m not sure which ones most folks use.

I had thought of using an addthis.com bookmark button but I don’t know that I want their button on my site.. it’s kind of ugly plus I don’t know that I want to link to them.  I think they do popup ads and I’m not really keen on that..

If more networks are required I’ll likely create my own button system to house them all..

SRS Solutions EOS

So while I am still working on my Windows 7 WordPress theme, I wanted to go ahead and update off Microblue.

I scoured the internet looking for a theme that I thought looked good and went well with my style.. as well as being well written and designed such that it would be easy to upgrade and edit.

I settled on SRS Solutions EOS.  A very well written theme that has everything I wanted.   Firstly its not a CSS or design nightmare that many themes tend to be.  The colors are well planned out and everything fits together quite nicely.

I have already started to make modifications and I hope to one day get the PSD file for the LayoutBgs.jpg so that I can make minor graphical tweaks..  In a day or two I hope to send them an email asking for the PSD file so I can proceed with my ideas but I’m pretty sure they wont just give it to me.. its their business after all.. 

I just hope they understand they aren’t losing money by giving me to it, as I have no intention of paying for their help (I can do it myself) and that if I have to recreated the PSD file myself I will..   If anything it would only serve to endear me to them even more by giving it to me..   We shall see..

Either way, the folks over at SRS did a good job and I’m more than happy to give them credit where credit is due.

As I make changes I’ll update this page with a download of the whole thing… I have a few changes planned that I don’t want to go into yet but since it isn’t originally my theme I have no intention of claiming ownership..

For now you can download the official theme here:  SRS Download Site

WPOS7 Screenshot

So I have been plugging away at creating my OS7 theme.. I previously stated that IE8 sucked completely and I have to take that back.   It doesn’t suck completely.. infact, it sucks a lot less than I realized..

I found that I was using IE8 in “quirks mode” and of course it behaved quirky.  My main question is;  What the hell is the point of quirks mode?!  “Here have our browser in a mode that is completely broken.” I just don’t get it.. I guess quirks mode is basically IE6 as they seem to render similarly.. (I have IE6 on my laptop still for testing purposes..) If that’s the case it couldn’t be better named..

Apparently since I had a misspelling (or something) in my doctype it defaulted to quirksmode.. Once I found that I was in the wrong mode, found out why and fixed it, I started to test my new UI in IE7 and IE8.. It actually works!!  Ever so minor bug in IE7, but its hardly worth mentioning..   IE8 works fine, but a little slow. er.. in fact, a lot slow.. IE8 ain’t zippy at all..

I think that if Microsoft would focus on speeding up IE8 A LOT and quash the remaining bugs, they’d have a viable browser. I fear they have been slack in development because they knew they had the majority of the market share. Since supposedly soon they will be uncoupling the OS and the browser that market share will wax..

With some of the advances that other browsers are pulling, IE is gonna hurt bad!

As to my theme.. It’s still not technically a theme.. At this point I am creating the basic window manager windows object and making all the standard stuff work..  So far so good..

What REALLY amuses me is if you use my theme, with F11 poked (fullscreen).. it looks like you’re in windows 7.  heh At a glance you can’t tell the difference.. *glee*  I want to further that illusion if at all possible..

On the back end, I need to make WordPress ajaxable in order to pull information.. Supposedly there are already some pretty good wordpress plugins for doing this, but I don’t know that I want to rely on others work..   I’ll likely test a few before making a decision but more than likely I’ll write my own ajax solution which means poking around in the guts of WordPress.. Fun!

Wordpress OS7 Theme

So I have been using Windows 7 for a while now and I really do like it.  It’s no Snow Lepoard but it’s what I have.. heh  Honestly, its not bad at all..  I also have been using wordpress for a goodly while with the same theme “Microblue” a theme I created a year ago.

I’m getting bored with Microblue so its time for a change and I thought it would be fun to combine Windows 7′s look and feel into a wordpress theme.    This lead me down the road that I had started with my jQuery Windows post and posed an important question;

Do I implement a windows manager within a webpage?    God what a pain in the ass..

I could easily just create a static theme that looks sorta like windows 7..  Or.. I could create a much bigger and deeper product which would in essence be an entire windows manager..  In a  web browser..  I’m still pondering the route I want to go..

I’m not sure wordpress can handle some of the stuff I have in mind.. It would require some back end ajax work in order to take advantage of everything I want to do and I’m not sure I want to write that part of this..

The other issue here is that I’m going to be using a LOT of PNG files in order to take advantage of the alpha channel.  So older browsers will have to be waved off..  No matter which way I go this will be true..

I would like to try some effects that I don’t think you can do yet with PNG’s.. I want a PNG to be able to blur the image below it.. but I don’t think you can do that yet..  That will require some research..

I’m going to be working on this project for a bit outside of wordpress to get the basic look working then work on adding it to wordpress.

—

Saturday, Jun 20th 2009 – So I have been working on my initial run at the WPOS7 theme.   I find it painfully ironic that IE8 can’t display it.  It works perfectly in Firefox and Safari but epic fail in IE.

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Sunday, Jun 21st 2009 — Well I spent the majority of the weekend working on my OS7 theme.  I have gone the windows manager route and am using this experience to learn more about jQuery.. What’s interesting is since I’m going this route, I’ll be able to apply my knowledge to Build Forge and the new UI that we are going to be creating..

It’s coming along nicely and works perfectly in Safari and Firefox… And to be honest, its working better than I would have thought..  IE8 is still an epic fail.. I mean dear god.. what a piece of crap..   I’m going to have to write some special jQuery stuff just to get IE8 working..  Assuming that doesn’t fail completely too..

I’m also going the route of writing it such that it will activate those windows that are created by the HTML as well as instancing new ones..   My reasoning behind this is for my work.. I am considering the creation of a new UI that would sit on the existing code base..

We’ll see.. I want to make this sucker as functional as possible..

So its been several more days and I have spent quite a bit of my spare time working on this theme conversion.. I can almost say its complete, but not quite yet.

http://info.rsow.com/projects/fffredesign/

My colorChooser system is about 90% done in Firefox and Safari, and about 70% done in Opera and IE. I’m not at all surprised that it’s not working correctly in IE, but the fact that Opera has the same error was a little shocking. Usually Safari and Opera work in parallel when it comes to javascript. Meaning if it works in one, it works in the other and vice versa.. I’ve managed to break that paradigm with this bit of code.. hehe.. It will be interesting to see what the issue is..

At this point choosing a preset or overlay works and colors the page correctly, and choosing an input to edit works. But you can only actually change the colors in Firefox and Safari using the cursors. There is something about doing that in IE and Opera that isn’t working. I’ll get that fixed here shortly I’m sure.

Also whatever change you make isn’t saved yet.. That’s just a matter of storing cookies and what not, I just haven’t done that yet. Also I haven’t made it realize you typed in a color.. I’ll get to it =)

It’s close!! I promise! Once I get the theme working correctly I’ll begin implementing it in WPMU.. Once that’s done I’ll start implementing it in IPB, which I dread.

I have tried to make my colorChooser system versatile enough that you can apply it to any webpage. That was my intent anyway. I hope to eventually apply it to my current rsow.com theme MicroBlue. Doing so will prove that it can be done and then I’ll release it to the wild.

Once I get the colorChooser working though, I will next add to it a way to change not just colors and overlays but also the whole theme. This will take a lot of work and is a ways down the road, but it should be pretty neat once I get there. I have a lot more stuff to do in the mean time though so I’m not holding my breath on that one.

I do need to redo my FFF graphic.. the one that is on the page now is a temporary that was created quickly to give me an idea of what I was trying for.. I like it, but it needs a lot of polish.. the film cannister looks horrible and the https on the urls make them too long.. etc.. I’ll do my best to make it better, I just wished my artistic abilities were anything above the nothing that they are now.. *sigh*

I will also add alpha shadows around the colorChooser box once it’s expanded. I haven’t done that yet either.. It’s interesting, as much work as I have done — and it’s been a lot — I am still not done yet. hehe

Speaking of not done; Another feature I was kicking around was a way for users to create a color set using the colorChooser then submitting them with a name or something to me so that I can easily make them public.. I mean if you create something that looks nice others might like it too.. Not sure how I’ll do that, or if I can. But maybe.. =)

You can see my progress here:

http://info.rsow.com/projects/fffredesign/

I’ve run into some interesting javascript foibles that I have had to deal with and have also taken this opportunity to start on my own javascript toolbox.

Every artist has his favorite paintbrush or pens, every carpenter his favorite hammer, and every plumber his favorite ass crack pants.. I’m using this project to develop my own javascript toolkits. For now they are largely unfinished and designed to be used for .. well this project.. but it is a start..

With regards to the theme, I’m working specifically on getting the colorchooser to work. Right now it doesn’t choose colors, and I only got the slider/picker cursors to work today. But only on clicks, you can’t drag them yet.

I’m hoping to have it work better than the Chromatophore stuff, and so far the one thing that works better (in my opinion) is the way the chooser slides out. Firstly from a purely javascript profiling stand point I win hands down;

The Chromatophore theme makes 454 javascript calls to “slide” their colorchooser down, where as my version only makes 88 calls.. 454 man! I have no idea what they are doing of course because they obfuscate their code and I don’t feel like eval’ing it out and running tidy to figure it out..

My color chooser will also be fixed once down so you can scroll around the page and have the color chooser open to see how your changes work live on the page, instead of having a mini-preview — right now this isn’t the case but it will be.

I’m still very excited about this and working on it.. but this is taking time.

• http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com
• http://blogs.fanfilmsforum.com
• http://blog.amateurfilmsforum.com
• http://blogs.amateurfilmsforum.com
• http://filmsblog.org
• http://filmsblog.net

Only the first one works 100% correctly right now.  My virtual hosts file and dns aren’t quite syncing up correctly — should be fixed eventually.

By that, you should take this as a very serious effort on my part.  I want this to be a success.  The next thing I must do is figure out how to correctly style the MU entry page such that it’s a self explainitory advertisement of what it does, and such that it incorporates content from the various other blogs.

I’m looking at other free blog portals to get some idea of how they do it.

Theme wise I’ll need to come up with something that will work both as a blog portal, a login page for the users blog, and as a forum theme for invision power board — no small task.

Once I get the main page design working, I’ll create a post that allows users to request new themes, and try to explain to them that I’m but one person so it takes a bit of time.

Each theme will need to have a way to tie into the forum and vice versa.  The whole point of this is to tie these two components together.    This will be the part that comes last as it will take the longest — likely coming after release.

The main blog will have many categories that replace the functionality of the former wiki.. Tutorials, instructions, ideas and the like will each live on the new blog.

I hope to make the main blog a virtual classroom on all things film making in order to bring folks in, as such a very thorough tagging system will need to be implemented and used.  (Lucky for me WP has a great tagging system.)

I also hope to make it so that any tag-cloud feature and any search feature will search across all blogs.  I think this shall be easy, and may already be done.. not sure.

Note to self:  wp-signup and home.php will need to be the same design unless I can get the dns virtual host thing to settle down..

Over the years I have started and stopped several projects for the forum. Most of them looked good on paper, or even half way through production but just didn’t pan out for one reason or another. The latest attempt was at making a film repository and voting system that was similar to IMDB but specifically for amateur/fan films. As of right now that project is on hold – likely forever.

For many years the forum in and of itself has done very well with out much additions. But it’s not a blockbuster domain and traffic is moderate to be sure. At this point we only get about 45k hits a month which really isn’t very good, but just fine for a small community like ours.

I have been noticing a slight decline in the visitation of the site over the course of the last year. The odd thing is, my Unique hits per month is actually going up, a lot. That’s good. That means new folks are showing up, but the over all total is going down, which means a general lack of repeat visitors. It’s an odd situation to be honest.

What this implies to me is that it’s lacking in content or atleast a reason for people to come back more than a couple times a month. The issue is, I don’t have the time to create the kind of content required to keep folks rolling in and enlisting people on the forum to do that job for me, especially for free, doesn’t really seem a good idea because they have lives and don’t have the time to do it either.

I need a way to bring more traffic to the site, and do it in a “work free” way. I think I have an idea that solves that nicely.

First of all it’s coming up on time for a new theme for the board. It’s starting to look dated and needs a new look. With that new look I’m pondering giving forum users their own blogs.

What I’m thinking of doing is encorporating a MultiUser version of WordPress such that any user that wants it, can create his own blog about his film project and experiences. They’d have complete control over the blog, it’s content, what it looks like, how it behaves, the files associated with it, etc..

It would most likely live at http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/{users blog name}/ .. These would be free individual blogs — Since the traffic to the site is primarily associated with fan films, most likely these blogs would be about peoples films. However I wouldn’t enforce that.. if you want it about something else that’s fine.

I would need to figure out a way to tie in the forum, some link that ties directly back to the forum or maybe my ads on the page or something.. Something minor and unobtrusive that doesn’t piss folks off..

This would give the site a new outlet for content that is user created. This means people like myself wouldn’t have to dig for new content on a daily basis and I wouldn’t have to beg my users to do it for me. Instead users who actually wanted to do this would do it of their own accord. Plus it’s a way to give back to the community and give those folks who want it a free outlet for their own creative juices.

This is still very much in the idea and planning phase. Thoughts and opinions are very much welcome.

Additional Information:

• Main blog will be at http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/  Anyone with a forum account and of a certain rank will be allowed to post.
• Anyone can have a blog and the address will be http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/{users blog name}
• The main blog will pull blog entries from the user blogs
• With this, redesign the forum to show a blog feed like a widget on a side bar or something

Hard parts:

The only thing that seems remotely challenging is making wordpress and IPB play nice with one another. I don’t think it will be hard, but it will be time consuming as I’m not 100% sure about some of IPB’s DB calls.