January 1, 2006

Year Of The Dog

Year Of The Dog I want to wish a sincere Happy New Year to each and every visitor of the site. May all your hopes, dreams and desires come to fruition in the year of the dog, 2006. If you have some new years resolutions for 2006 then good luck in meeting those goals.

The year 2006 is going to be a very busy one; huge for us in so many ways. In order to celebrate “a new beginning” I decided to rework the entire design of the site. My previous site design was my own creation; a home-grown Wordpress theme called triSexuality. I plan to release a final upgrade to triSexuality Standard which will essentially be the theme as I was using it. No current release date is set so stay tuned.

For my new design I decided not to reinvent the wheel. I opted to make use of probably the best, and most adaptable, Wordpress theme available today - k2; basically an upgrade to Kubrick, the default theme in a fresh install of Wordpress. K2 comes with a number of nice features and supports a wide range of plug-ins with almost zero configuration. To top it off it offers the ability to make use of custom styles.

If you want to use the theme but are interested in personalizing it then you can do just that by modifying a custom CSS stylesheet and selecting it from the k2 option page. It is how I achieved this design, which is starkly different from that of the default k2. Take a look at some of the other customizations that people have done with this exceptional theme.

Please take a look around the site and let me know if you run across anything that looks out of place. I took my time to ensure that everything functions properly but there might be some loose ends that I missed. The design has been tested in IE6, Firefox 1.5+ and Safari 2+ and although it does look a little funky in IE it is more than functional.

Some of the fun new features that I installed with this upgrade, mostly thanks to built-in support in k2, are a brand spanking new archive page, AJAX based commenting on posts, a sidebar that changes based on the page being browsed and a major increase in site performance. I also tweaked the Gravatar display and a few other minor things.

The URL to this site has slightly changed; no longer is the addition of www placed in front of the domain. Attempts to surf to www.jarkolicious.com will redirect the site to jarkolicious.com so that there is no need to update bookmarks.

Anyhow, ultimately I want to offer my thanks for the fun times we had around here in 2005. The year of the dog is going to be far more exciting so keep an eye out on all the interesting things that will be transpiring around this part of “town.”

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27 Comments on “Year Of The Dog”

Comments

1 Zadie Jan 1st, 2006, at 19:26:17

I like it.

2 Alan Jan 1st, 2006, at 19:48:06

All your RSS feeds seem to have emalgemated into one. =/ 31 new entries from my Jarkolicious feed threw me somewhat.

3 Scott Jan 1st, 2006, at 20:30:54

I need to put together a page that depicts the new feeds and their locations. But it essentially boils down to this:

Everything: http://jarkolicious.com/feed/
Posts: http://jarkolicious.com/feed/main/
Asides: http://jarkolicious.com/feed/asides/

For some reason it does not appear to be working. Wordpress 2.0 seems to really act funky with its .htaccess rewrite rules. I hope to have it fixed here soonest so please bear with me.

4 Alan Jan 1st, 2006, at 20:43:31

Well, NetNewsWire has been updated with the new info, just time to wait for the new feeds to work, I guess.

On another note, how are you finding WordPress 2.0? I thought the GUI was horrid, personally, and not much has really changed in terms of the way I use it. Plus, Owen’s “Admin Revert Plugin” doesn’t work with it, so I can’t remove the insane amounts of AJAX it seems to implement (I’m no AJAX fan).

Still, it seems stable enough. As long as my custom theme still works with it, it’s fine with me.

5 Danny Jan 1st, 2006, at 20:51:16

Altho I love K2, I do not really like this design. The grey just isn’t appealing in my honest oppinion.

I’m working on a new revamp of my current design, but perhaps I need to update K2 First. :P

6 Scott Jan 1st, 2006, at 21:27:42

Alan: How you liking NetNewsWire? I tried it but am much more fond of NewsFire even though it has some shortcomings.

I like WordPress 2.0 for the most part. It is a slight improvement over 1.5.x. Do not use that plug-in so it not working in 2.0 does not affect me.

Danny: Understandable. I went for minimalism and a lack of colour for a reason. Maybe later in the year we will see a more vibrant jarkolicious.com but for now this shall do. :-)

7 Alan Jan 1st, 2006, at 21:34:57

My details aren’t being saved in this form….

I like NetNewsWire a lot (despite the awkward name). I have it set to use one of the greyscale view options, and it’s made keeping up with different feeds so much easier. The fact it’s styled after Mail 2.0 helped ease me into it, also. lol

Personally I like this new theme more than the old one. I

8 Alan Jan 1st, 2006, at 21:36:25

…cut off.

“I heart greyscale and minimalism.”

9 Scott Jan 1st, 2006, at 21:39:47

Interesting that your details are not being saved. Were they saved previously? You using Safari or Firefox?

10 Alan Jan 1st, 2006, at 21:54:22

I’m using Firefox… the data seems to disappear whenever I leave the site. Should I just use the ‘Register’ link and stop worrying? lol

11 Scott Jan 1st, 2006, at 21:58:12

Methinks that would be the best thing in the longrun. ;-)

12 turkystuffing Jan 1st, 2006, at 23:20:46

“the default theme in in a fresh install of Wordpress”

Typo? Two “in”s :)

13 Mom/Lorri Jan 2nd, 2006, at 00:10:04

Have a prosperous New Year, filled with joy, peace and love. We think of you all the time. Love you all.

I like this minimalistic look to the site.

14 Patrick Haney Jan 2nd, 2006, at 02:36:13

Scott,

I’m liking the new theme. It’s not overly complicated or fancy, but it’s stylish and easy to read, and that’s important.

As far as your feeds go, I use NetNewsWire and I love it. I’ve tried NewsFire and the others but found myself liking all of the features of NNW. It has a few downfalls, but I expect that the application will only get better with the NewsGator support behind it.

Happy New Year!

15 Eric Jan 2nd, 2006, at 02:47:27

Nice job, a few things about this bug me, mostly it’s the rounded edges, they’re not so… round, they look like they’re more square (just a bit). And the icons used, that came bundled with K2, don’t really go with the color’s you have.

Though, I really like what you’ve down with this, it’s not as colorful as before, but it’s alot more interesting.

16 Matt Hoult Jan 2nd, 2006, at 04:03:39

I love the new design! I have been using K2 for a while now, but I haven’t got around to editing it at all; I am just too busy/lazy I guess.

Much as I loved the triSexuality theme, I think this is a little more grown up in a way, more rounded off overall and slightly easier to read. Maybe it’s just me, but I like it anyway.

Happy new year! Have a great one.

17 John Jan 2nd, 2006, at 05:24:22

I’ve just installed WP2 as well, it looks like the same thing happens with your trackbacks that happens with mine. “This file has moved” appears when you click trackback. the “Official comments” plugin seems to work ok though, despite not being on the offical site for working plugins.

Personally I think I prefer triSexuality, but there y’go. Nice blog. Cheers.

18 danielsemper Jan 2nd, 2006, at 07:12:27

Nothing too dramatic, but it would be nice if your orange “jarkolicious” logo links to the jarkolicious.com index.

I like the new design, but I still think it needs a 30% more colour besides the gray tones ;)

19 shane Jan 2nd, 2006, at 09:24:30

i only noticed the lopping of text
so i just used a space or 2.

20 Scott Jan 2nd, 2006, at 11:56:15

John: I belive that only happens if you attempt to load a trackback URL in the browser. If you use your blog to trackback this entry then it should work properly methinks.

21 Chad Jan 2nd, 2006, at 14:28:15

Looks good Scott.
Only problem I’ve found is there’s very little contrast between the font color & background on the ajax search results, makin it a pain to read!

22 evilgohan2 Jan 11th, 2006, at 13:14:04

I personally preferred the old theme :(
Happy New Year :D

23 evilgohan2 Jan 11th, 2006, at 13:15:15

I personally prefferred the old theme, triSexuality. :/

Happy New Year :D

24 Giz Jan 13th, 2006, at 18:14:37

Loving the new look Jark and a belated Happy New Year :)

Trackbacks

25 jarkolicious’s Blog Jan 2nd, 2006, at 12:02:18

Year Of The Dog…

I want to wish a sincere Happy New Year to each and every visitor of the site. May all your hopes, dreams and desires come to fruition in the year of the dog, 2006. If you have some new years resolutions for 2006 then good luck in meeting those goals…

26 jarkolicious :: Deviant Irony Jul 4th, 2006, at 21:38:29

[...] After roughly 7 months in to the Year of The Dog, it is time for a change. I thoroughly enjoyed my simplistic monotone modifications to K2. The design was easy on the eyes, and straightforward in presentation. K2 is an exceptional building block theme, which offers some incomparable features and wonderful community support. It is a rock solid core foundation theme that serves a much needed purpose, though one that I am no longer using. [...]

27 jarkolicious :: Year in Review Jan 7th, 2007, at 20:26:41

[...] In celebration of the New Year, I redesigned jarkolicious and called the design “Year of the Dog.” In keeping with the spirit, I wrote about the essential software that was released in 2005. [...]