My brain asplode (website ranting).
Friday, January 19, 2007
Like I mentioned a few weeks ago, one of the things I've been trying desperately to do with Army of the Ohio is to make the site look better. To that end, I've spent the past few days just abusing and manipulating the frell out of CSS/html code, vainly trying to figure out what in the world I want to do.
I actually have a scrap blog to do it in, AotO Beta, but if you take a look you'll see that I'm having an impossibly hard time trying to do anything. So far all I've been able to do is make up the background, which is actually a picture I took of the bottom, horizontal stripe around my Blue Jackets' jersey, manipulated and tinkered with for background wallpaper use.
The big problem is that I don't know where to go from there. In my mind, I'm envisioning two sidebars, one on either side; one with a long list of links to sports sites and other blogs, as well as an "About me" section like you currently see. The other side I want to have statistics on the Blue Jackets, since the current way I do them has led me to just stop bothering with them altogether (having to redo the top banner for AotO after every game is just a pain! And that's why it hasn't been touched since late December, too).
The other thing I need to work on is a new banner that will fit accordingly in to the center section. That's been a titan's task in itself! I already know I want it to involve this image I found of a Union Army kepi, but after that it becomes a fight in futility to make anything that looks good.
The real problem, and this is my own fault more than anything, is that unless my blog looks good, I feel weird even updating it (though that also has to do with being extremely busy with real life obligations the week after my final projects wrapped up Sunday, and not only 'feeling weird'). Call it being graphically shallow, but I like to have my blog look just as good, if not better, than the content I might write for each entry.
Too bad I have the Photoshop skills of a typing monkey.
Give me until Sunday, folks. I plan to keep at this, and once this is done and over with I'll finally be able to focus on the sport and the team, and not just what the site that talks about those things looks like.
Edit (3:06 PM EST): Before I head to work, here is a crude example of what I am trying to do. Seriously, am I just code retarded or something?
I actually have a scrap blog to do it in, AotO Beta, but if you take a look you'll see that I'm having an impossibly hard time trying to do anything. So far all I've been able to do is make up the background, which is actually a picture I took of the bottom, horizontal stripe around my Blue Jackets' jersey, manipulated and tinkered with for background wallpaper use.
The big problem is that I don't know where to go from there. In my mind, I'm envisioning two sidebars, one on either side; one with a long list of links to sports sites and other blogs, as well as an "About me" section like you currently see. The other side I want to have statistics on the Blue Jackets, since the current way I do them has led me to just stop bothering with them altogether (having to redo the top banner for AotO after every game is just a pain! And that's why it hasn't been touched since late December, too).
The other thing I need to work on is a new banner that will fit accordingly in to the center section. That's been a titan's task in itself! I already know I want it to involve this image I found of a Union Army kepi, but after that it becomes a fight in futility to make anything that looks good.
The real problem, and this is my own fault more than anything, is that unless my blog looks good, I feel weird even updating it (though that also has to do with being extremely busy with real life obligations the week after my final projects wrapped up Sunday, and not only 'feeling weird'). Call it being graphically shallow, but I like to have my blog look just as good, if not better, than the content I might write for each entry.
Too bad I have the Photoshop skills of a typing monkey.
Give me until Sunday, folks. I plan to keep at this, and once this is done and over with I'll finally be able to focus on the sport and the team, and not just what the site that talks about those things looks like.
Edit (3:06 PM EST): Before I head to work, here is a crude example of what I am trying to do. Seriously, am I just code retarded or something?
Labels: blogosphere, insanity, ranting
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At 9:02 PM,
said…
No, you are not code retarded. Blogger is. If you need an example, I did a similar thing in blogger when I was making a site for two teams (a battle) where I had one teams news and links on one side, and the other teams on the other side. It took a little head scratching, but I got it to work.
I can email you a text of the template, link you to the blog, and walk you through a few things I did to make it work. But I'm pretty code retro too, so don't look for miracles here.
my coding skills are pretty weak too. What I did for my other blog, The Soap Box http://boxedsoap.blogspot.com
was find a 3rd part made template online that I liked, then changed the subtleties of it until I got close to what I wanted. If nothing else, you could use it to check your code and look for improvements. Try searching for "blogger templates" on google to find some you can look at it. Good luck!