Seasonal Plume

I upgraded my WordPress installation to 2.1.3 for Seasonal Plume, plus tweaked the CSS a bit in order to fix a small bug that makes the content nudge down a bit whenever you hover over the “table of contents” link on the navigation up top. Should be fixed now and still working with other browsers. :)

I was actually hoping to get a social bookmarking plugin thing going but it’s not cooperating with my contact form at the footer. Will have to look into it a bit more.

Yes, this is another one of my many revamps. ;) The design study/comp has been done since two weeks ago, but due to work plus the Philippine Blog Awards, I haven’t been able to upload it until now. I feel this is better because frankly, I feel that it’s more conducive to writing—that I feel like the layout itself is something I’d enjoy writing on. A kind of environment to surround myself in; in addition to an actual, real-life environment, the website itself then provides an atmosphere that inspires writing.

Now, while the markup uses very few images (you can take off the stylesheet and all you’ll see are text, save for the actual image content) the actual design does use images rather extensively. There’s around 500kb worth of images, broken down into 25 files, and almost all of them are used as backgrounds. Yes, that header image is a background. If you don’t see the header image, then that’s a problem. :p I’ve used a preloading script of sorts, but it’s possible that it’s not working as optimally as possible—feel free to holler if you keep losing the header image.

Allow me to quickly run though the structural changes:

• All completely-website-related posts are now contained as an “aside”, like the snippets category. Which means, the blog posts/articles themselves will not be interrupted if I feel like rambling about website changes! (Well, except if you’re reading through the RSS feed.)
• You should get a quick glimpse at all the recent posts if you click on the “table of contents” link at the top of the page; there’s also the search form. Clicking on the “table of contents” link will close it.
• Recent comments are featured below along with excerpts from most recent interesting posts such as a literary snippet, most recent website update, and a review (not yet shown on the front page).
• Posts from my other blogs are also given a link shown below, in case something catches your eye.
• The footer contains much more information: a contact form, Flickr images, my recent readers, last status and tracks, as well as links and information.
• The layout is optimized for 1024x screen resolutions unlike my usual minimum requirement of 800x. Of course, it will still be viewable without horizontal scrollbars in 800x, and there shouldn’t be a big loss of style; it’s just that it looks better in 1024x and upwards. Naturally, it’s also cross-browser compatible.

As mentioned, if you see anything wrong, go ahead and comment. If you see another website post in the front page that’s not in the side column below, it’s probably because it’s something as “important” as this revamp. :p (Though I know importance is subjective, hee.)

Much love to Lynn for helping me troubleshoot the layout a bit. ♥

I went to the Philippine Blog Awards Night last night with Lynn, TJ, and my Ate. Seasonal Plume didn’t win, but congrats to all the winners! I was also representing Vix’s Post Avatar plugin, and while she didn’t get the best plugin award she did win the raffle for Krispy Kreme gift certificates. :)

Updating of the blog will be sort of on hold until I get the new layout up. :)

Edited to add: I have hate mail! Seems like I’m a celebrity, hee. I’m glad to know my “losing” made someone giddy with joy that it scrambled their brains. ;)

Okay, non-writing post. Bear with me, because I’m also a little confused at how this goes. I’ve been waiting for an email from them since I expect that hey, someone will get in touch with me regarding attendance on the said event. I’m concerned that they haven’t started disseminating information about the awarding night earlier, but well that’s that. I’m a little confused now since I haven’t gotten an email yet but on the 2007 Philippine Blog Awards blog, they posted that you post about the event on your blog to get your event tickets. Uhm, alright? So if I didn’t think to visit their website, I won’t get a ticket? Or, I’d have to pay on the event itself? Or, OMG what if I arrive late? And all the tickets are gone since it’s limited seating? What if I plan to bring a friend along? I have to post twice to get two tickets?

Seriously, I don’t think this has been thought through very well. I also don’t think it’s been thought through about the whole semi-formal/formal dress code for the evening. Last I know, the Webbys don’t ask people to go in such glamorous attire. And these are bloggers, for crying out loud. I’m not saying bloggers aren’t capable of being glamorous and dressing up for an affair, but bloggers, more often than not, are casual people. They’re everyday people sharing wonderful tidbits and thoughts and opinions. You’re asking these everyday people to come dressed up to the nines?

I suppose I will still go, after all, I don’t want to seem like I’m treating the whole event like it’s not that important. It is and I’m very honored to have been chosen as a finalist, given that stellar panel of judges. I’m just a little disappointed at how apparently difficult it is to get tickets, to facilitate me bringing along a friend or two since I don’t want to sit in some corner.

If anyone wants to argue that it’s not really difficult, then I’m all for discussing it. Maybe it just boils down to a lack of proper communication and dissemination of information.

Edited to add: Apparently it’s (just?) a lack of proper communication. Tickets are given only to bloggers to make sure the night is for bloggers, hence the procedure. Finalists get two tickets each. There, that’s the basic rundown of who gets tickets, and how.

Phew, seasonalplume.net (the domain) is finally back! It propagated sometime last night while I was sleeping, but I’d been too swamped in the office to comment about it. You can still see this website via the indisguise.org address, but now my real domain is back in action. I’m happy. Those two days were absolutely nerve-wracking.

But naturally those two days isn’t a complete waste: it spurred me on to re-evaluate Seasonal Plume, specifically its contents and architecture, the way it’s served (and designed). Of my three blogs, I suppose Seasonal Plume is the most “hazy” — even with tacking on the “writing and literary blog” handle to it, one might say I’ve always been trying to feel the waters and find the best Seasonal Plume reincarnation. Let’s face it: friends will read my haphazard rambling at my journal, and users of my scripts will always take a peek now and then at my scripts archive; but writing? And someone who doesn’t have 39857394562 bestsellers already published?

Those two things have been in my mind a lot more frequently over the last two months. One might say that I just need to read the 872398435 articles on “how to blog effectively” and “5872985679 tips on blogging” or whatever else the Internet spews out of its (significant) mouth; and I actually have. But I guess, coming from a time when the blogging phenomenon was juuuuust starting, I’m a little old-fashioned in the sense that I need more than just a blog in my website. A blog is a blog is a blog, but what about the content? (*hides from other bloggers*)

That’s why I kept fluctuating between a “regular-style” blog (like the Blue Semi-colons theme and the Wet Sponge theme), and a “blog-style” blog (like this one right now). That’s why I never seem to know exactly what to write here (it’s already complicated by having two other blogs after all).

The forced downtime of my domain somehow triggered a few decisions within me, and now I have an actual direction. It will take a bit of time before these soopersekrit plans actually take place, as I’m still laying everything out (plus I don’t think I should change my blog’s design just yet). I’m rather content about the decisions/plans I’ve come up with, though, so yay for that.