Being a creator vs. being an editor. I prefer the latter.
16 Nov 07 / # /
I’m sitting here, trying to figure out how to start this post. Normally, I wouldn’t be writing that, but in this case it’s particularly appropriate, since the thought I’m having is in regards to my abilities to create something from scratch versus modifying an existing product and shaping it into something better.
When I started doing design work, I was very much about the opportunity to start fresh and create something from nothing. I still enjoy that occasionally, but I’ve really come to relish the chances I get to take an existing design and freshen it and push it to become better than it was.
A great example is a site we at D2 just relaunched for WXPR. It’s not particularly flashy, but the consensus is that it’s a huge improvement over the old site. The key here is that while the graphics received a substantial update, the general layout of the site was strong, and so we could focus on only improving what needed it.
Of course, some sites need more love than others, but my favorite projects are the ones where we have a solid base to work from. For me, having that one constant helps in grounding the rest of the design, which makes for a smoother process with less second-guessing.
This approach finds its way into from-scratch projects as well; Citizen Wausau’s design was the result of a wireframe that was sketched out and approved before anything moved further along. There were a number of failed attempts to capture the desired “feel”, to the point where I was tempted to throw the wireframe out and start over again. I’m glad I didn’t, because the result of all this work is – you guessed it – a solid base from which the next iteration of Citizen Wausau (still in my head at this point) will be born.
This same philosophy applies to writing. I enjoy writing the occasional post when inspired, but I appreciate that CW has Dino willing to contribute his writing talent so I can sit back and move things around after he’s done.
In which I succumb to the Twitter.
02 Nov 07 / # /
So at some point this week I apparently lost my mind, because I signed up for Twitter. If you don’t know what that is, then you’re probably not reading this because you haven’t yet gotten on the internet or maybe even a computer. But that’s beside the point. The point is, I’m on yet another social internet thing.
But why Twitter? The other day I went to post a blip. But it was not a link, as they traditionally have been; more of just a state of mind sort of thing. And I thought “this would be apropos for Twitter.”
Of course, nothing ever comes easy. It wasn’t hard finding a plugin that suited my needs, but my laziness in keeping my WP install up to date came back to bite me in the ass. I’ve been running 2.0 since, well, too long; because it worked for me, I never bothered to follow the updates. Which meant that to make the little birdie happy, I had to set aside a larger chunk of time to get WP up to snuff. And by up to snuff, I mean, WP 2.1 (they’re now at 2.3). So I did that and fixed the custom field junk that had changed between 2.0 and 2.1 (fortunately I had dealt with it on another site months ago).
Having done that, it was time to actually install the plugin. Doing so turned out to be hassle-free, once I had the right version, but the output wasn’t quite to my liking. The default is to truncate the Twitter post and make that the title; I wasn’t thrilled with the post slugs that resulted in, since my general blip posts don’t have titles at all and therefore are just assigned numbers. I can’t fault the logic in this design, though; it’s easier to figure out how to get rid of it than it is to implement it. Case in point: line 196 of twitter-tools.php
, 'post_title' => ''
Now that Twitter was producing title-free posts, I turned my attention to the other hurdle; creating a link back to the original Tweet. I did some searching and came up empty-handed; fortunately I had the good sense to see that Twitter Tools adds the post ID as post meta, and from there it can easily be called from the WP templates themselves. Fortunately, that solved my other problem as well: how to get the Twitter link to only show up on Tweet posts.
I’m pleased with the entire result, as it’s exactly what I was looking for, now the question becomes whether or not I will continue to use Twitter in the first place.