Word Press Blog uniquness ?!?

   Sooo this is my word press blog theme I created for Chris. I utilized his website header and 404 page background to make it appear cohesive with the rest of his site. I went through and changed fonts, colors, and hover options but the question is does this look to template like? I was happy with the appearance until Phil's  scary email. Let me know what you guys think.
- Jenessa

Process Book and Checklist

   I spent the afternoon completing a process book for our groups fantastical journey through Evil Don's site creation. Compiling all of our original sketches shows how far we have come as well as point out how clear our vision was from the beginning. I feel satisfied that the final look of the site is reminiscent of Don's studio space. A tattoo studio may be the first judgment a potential client has on whether or not they will use the services and our site offers a strong portrayal or the studio's hip environment. 

   Also after going through the checklist on Phil's original handout, I realized alot of minute details not covered thus far. Primarily naming our files and script correctly. Everyone should double check his checklist just to make sure everything is covered. Good luck to everyone on their final leg of the race.

- Jenessa

On The Home Stretch

   As if anything else couldn't go wrong, I was sick and absent for our beta testing class yesterday. Thankfully my awesome group picked up on my slack and apparently our site passed-ish. Other than a few java script issues (when it is turned off), our site did pretty well. On a positive note our group was able to manage the size of the site across different browser resolutions, where as my previous site design was very large in most browsers. At this point my group is just waiting for our clients bio to replace our lorem ipsum place holder text on the about page, and then we are ready to hand over our site. It has been known since the beginning that our client is interested in using the completed site so as a group we would like to research domain name purchase so that we may plan a meeting with him to discuss the pricing. If anyone has any knowledge on domain purchase let us know. Good luck everyone! - Jenessa Nahon

Final Critiques

   So as of my last post our group was pretty much finished with our site design and coding. We are all very happy with the final design that Chris so kindly put up on the web (and a link on his blog).  At this point I am wondering if the awesome class has any last minute critiques for us, before the site is turned over for grading and to our client? I hope everyone had a good turkey day and successful coding. - Jenessa

No Errors, No More Warnings, Sweet Success! Oh and awesome fake tattoo.

   Today = validation testing which = no errors but more warnings than the eyes could see. Turns out our about page slider gallery code contained ALOT of junk and bad coding. Luckily our awesome coder Chris was able to decipher the jargon and clean it up. Yay! So after the days work we were able to: show our external CSS style sheet, confirm we had function links, validate our site and check resolutions across browsers. After our check we worked on rescaling our site for optimized viewing across browsers. This successful test was followed by a successful embedding of google maps (thanks to Josh). 
   After class our group stopped by Don's to show him the almost finished site, which he was extremely pleased with. During our visit he was kind enough to stencil the 404 error tattoo on Chris for a photo shoot.  Awesome! 
 For this next week our to do list includes:
- adding captions to the fine art gallery
- refining client request for the home page (no word bubble)
- creating the 404 page
- adding the clients written bio to the about page
- creating a fav icon
- creating meta tags


   I am excited with how far the site has come, in general and since our first websites. 
- Jenessa

Not so many Errors

   Thursday's work day was awesome for our group. We had some pretty major success (for 3 kids with 2 computers). Chris was able to get our external CSS up and working, which included our header and rollover navigation. From this point Chris will have to battle the centering issues. While Chris coded, Chelsey and I color corrected, organized, and bundled the images for our clients multiple gallery pages.  This afternoons work day should take care of the jquery plug ins and then we are on the home stretch. Our group is hoping to have a functioning site by Tuesday that contains all of our relevant material, while leaving placeholder text.  
   Since Chris will probably share an image of our main page, I am posting an image we had Don draw for our 404 error page. We discussed the idea of doing a custom 404 page with our client after all the fun we had creating our own. Our suggestion was to have our client draw out the words 404 error and "tattoo" it on one of us. The image would fade into the background and be treated similarly to our home page. We plan to meet with our client again on Tuesday, after class testing to show him to "finale" results and take the image for the 404 page. - Jenessa

 

Epic Computer Fail

   I am blogging from a foreign computer after a liquid incident with my laptop. Because of my clumsiness, I will be out my computer for 5-7 days. On a better note, I was able to retrieve my documents from my hard drive, and my group is ready to code this week. While our site is moving along, we will need one more meeting with don to finalize the tattoo image gallery. For this section of the site, our image files are coming from multiple sources. Photos are being taken from his camera, as well as printed photos that he taken of clients. Our initial presentation of the coded site that will be tested next week will probably house some placeholders, but we are at a good place in our progress on the site.  Hopefully Saturdays blog will show a glimpse of our coded progress. - Jenessa