H3RALD: Back on Track...

Back on Track...

h3rald — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:38:00 -0600

…or better, on Rails. Yep, this 7th (!) version of the H3RALD website is powered by the overly-popular Ruby web framework and by the Typo blogging platform.

Nope, I decided not to re-develop my website entirely from scratch this time, although I was tempted to, for three simple reasons:

My “coding time” is close to non-existent nowadays, and even with a framework like Rails re-developing a site from scratch would have taken at least some time, which at the moment I don’t have.
Typo is a fairly robust and feature-rich blogging platform, and after learning a little bit of Rails I could customize it to my needs straight away. URLs didn’t break thanks to Rails’ routing system, migration was easy enough, and developing the missing bits (like a rudimentary BBCode parser and a TextLinkAds sidebar) wasn’t hard at all.
I wanted to take a break from my site, not code it again.

Fair enough, but why the new site anyway?

Again, there’s more than one answer:

Lately I didn’t feel comfortable sporting a Cake-powered website - that makes sense, to an extent, right? Good.
I got fed up with spam. I wanted to re-open comments but I didn’t want to implement spam protection for the old site.
To be totally honest, I got fed up with PHP itself as well, after trying out Ruby for a few days and ordering and reading the 2nd edition of the PickAxe, which I highly recommend.

…But let’s say something about what’s new in this new release, shall we?

A new, black (and red) theme. Something completely different. Probably not that good, but quite useful: Every day I check my site from my laptop at work, and if it looks like a big black blob I know that I have to regulate my monitor. I showed it to my parents on their old monitor, and they realized that perhaps it’s time to buy an LCD one…
Comments, trackbacks, desktop client support, theme support, a cool admin area and everything else Typo offers.
Full RSS feeds. With no ads. So you don’t need to see this black blob anymore, if you really don’t like it.
No projects or bookmarks, just my blog and my articles. Let’s keep it simple.

More to come…

"Back on Track..." by AD7six

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:49:44 -0600

PS. The nav bar is completely invisible (at least to me) until I mouse over. I like black themes but atm it feels like my monitor has it’s contrast set too low and brightness too high – except of course it hasn’t. I wrote about colour contrast before, you might want to test your colours out on Snook’s colour contrsat checker In any event good to see you writing again. Cheers! AD

"Back on Track..." by AD7six

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:38:55 -0600

Hi H3rald,

I hope to still find your articles interesting, whichever MVC flavour they may be.

I like the new site with the exception that I can read almost nothing of what is written in red :). Hypocritical though it may seem (I know that kabturek has his bookmarklet to hand when he visits my site, that he isn’t alone, and that I also need to put that style switcher in place). Please choose a brighter red or something else a bit higher contrast :)

Cheers,

"Back on Track..." by Fabio Cevasco

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 10:20:23 -0600

lol @ kabturek… The new theme aims to be relaxing for the eyes, energy-saving and different from the previous one (not that there was anything wrong with it, I just wanted to try something completely different), however I can understand that it could be a bit disturbing for someone… I’ll see about changing it or implementing a theme switcher… who knows!

"Back on Track..." by anon

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:06:44 -0600

I always suspected this was why Cake might eventually fail. Not because the code is weak, but because the core community drives people and possibilities away. Rails has always had a much better culture of openness and freedom. Interesting to see the first high-profile switch…

"Back on Track..." by kabturek

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 08:43:48 -0600

please please allow a diffrent color scheme ( black on white) or whatever .. now i have to use a bookmarklet on every page that resets the styles :)

greets,