Squashy Frog Photography</a>

Site History

Below is the site's history listed.

Site History

So what’s been done already? Well it’s probably worth looking around to give yourself an idea first but here’s a run-down:

  • I’ve created the site using WordPress, I toyed with WP before starting the old blog but went with Serendipity that time. I’ve since trialled WP in more depth and feel it’s a slightly better system personally and feel it’s better supported and I’m more comfortable with the backend/admin area. Being a non-coder means I’m after the easiest, most user-friendly system there. Serendipity is an excellent weblog system and has features that I’ll miss but WP edges it for me (more details in a future article ;-)).
  • Next I was recommended the Revolution theme (not free but fairly cheap and felt it was worth the expense). I couldn’t find a free theme I liked anyway and this popped out to me once I show it in action. I went with the standard version as the others were tailored for magazine or news sites, which my site is not. Again I’ll be writing an article on the detailed set-up and tweaking I’ve done to the theme in the future (but thanks must go to the developers I’ve mailed over the last few weeks and the guys from Revolution and on the support pages! I wish WordPress forums were half that good).
  • The sidebars (the columns on the right) have had some content added here and there. These will be altered as I’m not too happy with them. I’m after more customisability for each page so need to work out how to do that.
  • I’ve added a flash animation of my best photos to the home page. The application used here is called Soundslides. Alas it’s only a demo until I can afford to purchase the full version (donations gratefully welcome here) but it was very simple to create and easy to add to the page.
  • The blog page has been created. It’s not perfect but it currently displays all the recent posts and links to the full articles. What I’d like here is for pagination links at the bottom but that’s proving a pain to implement at the moment. I hope new content will be added here on a very regular basis.
  • I have added DiggThis and ShareThis links to all my entries. I hope they are not too intrusive (please let me know if they are?) but I’ve started with all this Digging, Stumbling and Mixxing malarkey and see that sharing articles could benefit my site.
  • The RSS feed comes with WordPress but I stumbled upon FeedBurner yesterday and have put my feed on there. What this has allowed me to do is add my Flickr stream entries and my Diggs to the feed. Is this a good idea? Only time will tell but this and the other features (oh yes another future article) seem like a good idea. The big problem is that I digg things that are not just about photography and so not relevant here but then again I write unrelated entries too. I feel, though, they are about my interests and important to the whole ‘project’ but we’ll see how it goes and what feedback I receive. I know it’s a cardinal sin to go off-topic on your blogs, so this ‘policy ‘could change. One important thing is I can track subscribers - and was surprised to find that I actually have some!! So thanks guys!
  • Portfolio pages for all my genres have been created. They current have a featured photo at the top then photo entries for that specific genre from there downwards. The pages were created as an alternative to a gallery but I’m having server troubles with Gallery2 and so far there won’t be one to talk of (1&1 support don’t appear to understand the gallery system and have been of very little help in solving the issues to date - but I will endeavour to rectify them!).
  • A News page has been created. It is the Revolution theme’s take on the blog page but I prefer the traditional blog format. It is a round-up of the latest news from the important categories. I’m not sure about the layout (3 categories at the top them 3 at the bottom). It’s very untidy at the moment too. But I need to change the articles to display excerpts only and would like the photos and social news buttons hidden. I will be an alternative view to the blog page.
  • Info and Links pages have been added. These will be amended ad-hoc. The Links page especially. I could fill pages and pages on the best links on the web so might have to reorganise that if it grows to a stupidly-long list.
  • The Contact page has a contact form. It’s a spam-protected one but for some reason the last box is off centre. It needs fixing and I’ve seen the problem in Firefox and Opera. I would check Internet Explorer but (oh dear) it doesn’t work on my PC. Shame. ;-)
  • About page added but is the old content. This will be updated and have social news/networking links for me on it (yeah you’ll find me on lots of lots of them!).
  • The Site Map page has been created - this was simple and a WordPress/Revolution standard page.
  • Then there’s been lots of small features added, for example: signature to end of each entry, addition ping services added (to inform others of my new entries), permalinks have been turned on (to make the URLs a little friendlier on the eye), a XML sitemap have been added (to help my site be indexed by the search engines), Google Analytics have been switched on (to track visitors and hits) and plugin and WP updaters have been installed among a selection of other useful plugins.

Squashy Frog Photography is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!