WordPress theme problems...

I seems to have so many problems this week with this project. It's so close to the finishing line, it's so frustrated to find bugs you don't know how to fix.

I have been building my website project using a local server in my machine (by using MAMP). For the final deliverable, I have to of course upload the site to a host server. I have a hosting with godaddy so I decided to use that instead of the UTS server.

Anyway, the problem started when I uploaded my whole WordPress files onto the server. For some reason, my images won't get uploaded. I have tried changing the permissions, etc. However, on the theme I was using, I was able to upload a header image to replace the blog title. I can upload it in WordPress admin system, I can see the file is uploaded on the server. However, my theme doesn't pick it up! =( I don't know what is going on and how to solve it.

The way around it now as temporary measure, I placed the image using CSS. I slowly has to update all the links which previously pointed to my local server to the new location so it loads up properly.

Anyway, there were still a few issues with the project, which I'm not so sure now if I have time to fix them all. If you're interested, you can view it from: Jade Remedies Website

Any feedback and comments are most welcomed!

Problem with my JavaScript Menu...

I've been trying to solve my JavaScript menu problem with no luck =(. I've tried a few different options but the solutions I have experimented so far are not exactly what I'm after.

Here's what I want to do:

1. I have a menu listed on the side bar like this:
• Menu 1
• Menu 2
• Menu 3
2. Menu 2 has a child menu like this:
• Menu 1
• Menu 2
• Sub-menu 2.1
• Sub-menu 2.2
• Sub-menu 2.3
• Menu 3
3. I want the menu on the home page to be like no [1], but when the user click on Menu 2, it goes to page 2 and the sub-menu is opened automatically like on no [2]. If the parent doesn't have a child menu then it won't opened. 

The easier way to do this to put different navigation menu on each page. However, I'm using the PHP include function for my menu as I mentioned in the previous post and I would like to keep it that way.

A friend suggested that I should give an 'id" for each page and tell JavaScript to behave a certain way when go to the particular page. I'm going to try to do this next.
If anyone has other suggestions, please let me know.

Thank you in advanced.

PHP include and JavaScript

2 weeks to go...

Yesterday lecture was on more JavaScript and AJAX. There are alot of these fancy things that JavaScript can do which I still need to get my head around. I'm afraid time is running out for me to complete the final report and the project..=(

I'm planning to package the final report together and create a mini website with links to all the reports we need to hand in. I've learnt a few tricks of using PHP to include my navigation on every page so I can have my navigation in a separate file (e.g. nav.html) and use PHP command to include that file in every page. The advantages of this of course, if you decide you want to change your navigation, you only need to do it once in your navigation file. Alastair helped me with the code which actually pretty simple. All you need to do is to include the function called "include ("your file name here") inside the php tag.

And make sure you then save your file to .php files instead of .html file to make the code works.

The other thing I was trying to experiment with is to have a drop-down navigation menu or more like an accordion menu. Alastair showed similar behaviour I'm trying to recreate during the lecture, but it doesn't work for my menu. I'm going to do more research on the JQuery library and see if I can find something there to make them work.

As for the project, I think I'm happy with the state it was in now. I just need to figure out how to upload it and install it to the server.


So this week would mainly be finalising the project and trying to finish up my report as much as I can.

Guest Lecture - Chris Mills from Opera

We had the Guest Lecture: Chris Mills from Opera last Tuesday. I couldn't make it to the 4pm talk because I couldn't get out of work early enough. Anyway Alastair managed to record the video for our 6pm class. It's a little bit hard to see what he looks like. However, the talk was interesting. Particularly when he talked about the development and future of web technologies and how it evolves overtime. It becomes apparent even further when he talked about the needs to support different browsers and devices.

A question I was going to ask him if I was there when he did his talk, I'm interested to know why there's another browser in the market like Opera? How is it different from the other browsers we used to like Firefox, etc? What is the advantages of Opera browsers on desktop compares to other browsers?
I'll keep pondering until I get the answers =)

Deadline Getting Closer...

Weeks went by so quickly and we only have less then three weeks before the deadline. This week my focus is to finalise the project whether I like them or not and start working on the revising my Macro and Micro Analysis, System Plan and doing the Final Report.

Thank you for those in my team who gave me their feedback on my Macro and Micro Analysis and System Plan. I'll start working on them this week.

From Design Research Workshop by Kelly Goto

Hi Everyone,

I went to the "Design Research: The art of getting it done" workshop by Kelly Goto yesterday, Wednesday, 7th October. This workshop is part of the Web Directions South 2009 Conference. The workshop was held at the Masonic Centre, Sydney. I've gained a lot of information and knowledge in one day. It's a pretty intensive workshop and we went through things very quickly. However, it was a pretty hands-on practical approach. Overall, it was a fun and enjoyable session.

I would like to share with you a few notes that I took, which I might be useful to you. I didn't take many detailed notes (I apologised in advance!). As I said before, it's pretty hands-on and we pretty much went straight into doing the practical exercise.

As mentioned before, the topic is about design research. To put it simply, it felt like I was doing a whole semester subject pack in one day.

We had lectures on Design Research. Kelly used a quote from Liz Sanders of Dubberly.com to describe what Design Research is. According to Sanders, "Design Research is a jumble of approaches that, while competing as well as complimentary, nonetheless share a common goal: to drive, inspire and inform the design development process". This includes research methods such as user needs analysis, usability testing, card sorting, contextual inquiry and so on.

System Plan Draft

Finally finished my draft version of the System Plan. They can be found here.

There are still a few things I wasn't sure about. Architecture Diagram is one of them. I"m new to WordPress and I don't know enough how the WordPress architecture works. The diagram I've done is based on my current understanding. If anyone who reads my system plan and can help me correct a few mistakes that I might have made, please let me know.

All feedback, comments and critics are most welcome!

Thanks

Choosing the right WordPress base theme

I spent a few days this week going through the WordPress documentations in particular how to set up WordPress site as CMS. While it is great that WordPress has extensive amount of documentations available and community supports, it's hard to decide which one I should start to follow. Different resources has slightly different ideas of to approach the problems. Unless you are clear on exactly what you're looking for, I have to keep trying the different solutions until I found the right ones.

I've started choosing the base theme framework which I will use as a base for the website. It's still at the trial and error stage at the moment and I haven't made a final decision if this would be the theme I would be based my design on. I'm using an open source WordPress theme framework called Thematic from ThemeShaper, which seems to have pretty good reviews on the flexibility and extensibiliy of developing your own theme. I tried a few more themes to see how it looks and Thematic seems to offer the better solutions so far.

Thematic theme can be extended by using the WordPress Thematic Child Theme, which gives the flexbility to customise the theme to suit your design. At the moment I'm experimenting with Thematic Child Theme called Early Morning. Although it hasn't got everything that I need, it has certain elements in it that I like to use in my design. I will need to customise it myself to achieve my design. So far, I manage to upload my own branding at the top, change the page background and all just by using CSS.

There are a few challenges that frustrated me at the moment. I need to put my own page navigation, but somehow I haven't found the way to do it to achieve the type of layout I wanted to achieve. It doesn't behave the way I expected it to behave! I need to do more research and read the documentations.

That's all for now. More progress coming up.

Great Personas Resources

I'm also doing Digital Media Development Process subject this semester and Grant, our lecturer, has put up this great personas resources from Fluid Project. I thought, it came a the right time as we're preparing for our Sytem Plan. So, I post this in here so you can benefit from it too. It is really helpful to build personas and think about the users to be included in your System Plan.

Working on the System Plan

Time flies too quickly for my liking and it has been a while since I put entries to this blog. I have to admit I'm not very diligent on writing in this blog. I guess I'm not used to it and I kept forgetting to write! =(...Oh well I should do better from now on.

The vacation break is almost over already!=( During the break, I've started working on my System Plan. I've got my draft personas and user scenarios. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do this but I'll find out from the feedback I suppose. I've never built personas before and it's actually quite hard. You really need to put yourself in the user's perspective and try to figure out their goals on coming to your site. Then, think about how would "you" as a user will accomplish that goal. It's sounds simple but it takes quite an imaginative and creative minds to write the narrative stories.

I also started sketching the site map for the website structure. Again, there are a few things I'm not so sure about such as: does site map include the functionality task flow? or would that make the sitemap too complex? If anyone has any advice on this, please let me know.

I have started sketching the visual design layout as mentioned in the previous entry. This will help me to start with the CSS to design the website. The design will no doubt will keep evolving as I'm going through it and learning new things.

I haven't done wireframes yet. Yes, I know! it's weird I should've done the wireframes first before visual design layout! What I meant was I've done the wireframing on my head and sketches on my sketchbook. But only me can see that clearly and know what's going on. So what I need to do it to translate that into a more understandable format so other people can see what I'm planning to do.

There are clearly a lot more things to do before I can finish my System Plan. I'm planning to do them this weekend so I can receive some feedback on Tuesday.