I have located the new theme for the pro website, which will be accompanied by a minor rebuild and rebrand in places, but it’s finally the site I want.

I’m hoping to have this up and running by the end of December or early January at least, but it gives me precisely what I want and soon, you’ll be able to see it. There will be a post about why I chose the site I did soon!

The long overdue “dot com” side of my website has hit another snag. Initially I was very happy with the final design and layout thanks to some assistance in design from @staceyjenkins (a local designer) however two things have troubled me.

The current ‘proposed site’ has zero blogging facility, and while I don’t need a blog, the component can be used to provide news and updates in other ways.

It also has no category function, every post is a picture an that’s that, no “drill down” gallery for things like events, special features, and again, this isn’t major as it is meant to be a portfolio, but the problem with no categories is the fact that you need categories to implement a store function, something I’m keen to do.

Short of a complete code rewrite, I’m now on the hunt for a better CMS solution that will allow it, and a theme to rip apart / create from.

It’s a real blow and another huge setback but I am confident that when I finalise and release the design, it will be worth it. The only trouble is working out how long it’s going to take!

Now I want to stress something, this website will not contain all of my pictures, it will contain a selection, and a very carefully picked selection that will be decided by me and other critics I have contact with, so I will after a while give you a link to my flickr site instead if you want to see all of them. It is however going to take me a few days to fully implement, but as of tomorrow at 12 midday thelongmile.com will go down, ready to be redirected into the new site, phwew, finally!,

By the way, if you want to critique the photos I have and suggest ones for my porfolio, go to flickr.com/thelongmile and let me know which ones you like!

The server experienced a catastrophic failure which was caused by a bad command in the system scripts. The system has now been restored with the help of the folks at linode.com and the server is performing normally. I apologise for any inconvenience anyone experienced

Previously the server that was hosing thelongmile.net was hosted in the United States. In Newark, New Jersey on server newark149 if your interested of course.

Now this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing at all, we had response times less than 100 milliseconds from the UK, it was in essence a very fast connection from the UK to the US, however, since the majority of my hits come from the UK, it would always be faster to have the server in the UK rather than the US.

Now thanks to Linode opening a data centre in the UK, (here if your interested)  http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/26/video-tour-telecity-powergate-data-center/ we were given the opportunity to move our server to London3 which of course has access to the London LINX exchange.

So, what does this mean for you to visitors? Essentially nothing, if anything the website will be ever so slightly faster but by an amount so small you might not notice it. However it does mean that we will also benefit from future upgrades to the UK london exchange and network speed.

So why am I telling you? I thought you’d like to know that I’m doing things, and of course I am doing them in your interests.

Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks to our new location in the UK, we now have ping times averaging 42ms! We previously had an average of just over 100ms! The site is now twice as fast to respond thanks to being in the UK as displayed by the screenshot below.

When I redesigned this site, I wanted it to be a combination of my blog, and my photography portfolio, but I find I am taking so many pictures now that I need to refocus those efforts. Not only that but people are now muttering about asking me to do photography for them or requesting certain jobs to be done, and since this is a personal site, I now need to look at having the more commercial nature of my photography, somewhere else.

As a result, thelongmile will remain my “personal” site for my blog, ranting and musings, and will keep the same design, although the image at the top might be resized or reduced. My photography on the other hand will move to another site that I will be spending a great deal of time working on.

I know that I’ve been quiet on here lately, but i’ve needed to re-evaluate the site a little, and sit down and think about what I really want from this. Plus walking up to people saying it’s “thelongmile” photography, kinda doesn’t work. So, I’m not sure how I’m going to work this, but I will.. I need templates and styles now…

Over the past few days I’ve been installing and configuring the server and getting ready for the move in general. If you didn’t already know my partner site, cardifftweetups.co.uk has already been moved to the new server, although that was done in a bit of a rush due to an error on my part that destroyed the old site. Fortunately I can confirm that right now the server is working perfectly and coping incredible well with the new setup.

I’m also introducing Google Apps to further take the load off of the server and give us access to advanced calendaring. Fortunately cardifftwetups now has it’s own email address system through google and it’s working well.

A few issues I’ve encountered so far.

Despite best efforts, the contact forms that we use are having issues. They work perfectly as in they send the email to me, but they don’t report back to you to say the form has been sent. So as a result I will be holding off moving thelongmile.net until we work out if this is an issue with the server or not. I’m going to be reinstalling the mail system for the server sometime over the weekend which WILL destroy the mail functionality for cardifftweetups.co.uk until the new one is set up. Contact forms wont work, but your comments will still be submitted just fine.

Other than that I’ve noticed a few performance issues but this is mostly down to me having to tweak and get the settings right. Once I’ve ensured the sites are working correctly, I’ll install a server side stats system & take a final reading of all stats for thelongmile.net & cardifftweetups.co.uk and transfer across. Please note, mail will be unavailable for some time whilst this is accomplished.

Once complete, new features may be coming, and you’ll get a proper blog post. For now this will be the last “post” on the site with the exception of one saying “moving now”. Again, I’ll be choosing an appropriate time.

Thank you all for your attention.

I am also now looking to have Flickr as the permanent resource for portfolio gallery. Some more research is needed to get NextGen to actually do it in the way I want, but It’s so nearly there.

So for the time being, head on over to Flickr, and enjoy the brand new images! I hope you enjoy

Click here to view thelongmile on flickr

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/08/over-25-new-photos/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/08/money/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/08/money/#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:56:52 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=483 Just a quick note for all my visitors about the recent additions to the site. Those of you who visit regularly will know that I have always been very much against adverts. However with the more… “Commercial” nature of having CardiffTweetups.co.uk (yes it is now a .co.uk domain) adverts are becoming necessary.

As a result, on both thelongmile and CardiffTweetups a donate button from Paypal has been implanted, unobtrusively into the sidebar.

I’ve also placed a Google Adsense widget into the sidebar of CardiffTweetups and into the footer of thelongmile.

These ads are design to be unobtrusive, whilst helping to generate revenue to keep this site and my other sites going. Donations are used for me to keep the site going, and for building onto projects like CardiffTweetups which has more than exceeded initial expectations. Expansion is not only “a good idea” it’s also now a requirement.

This is all the adverts will ever be for the foreseeable future, and I will NEVER EVER put a pop-up or pop-under advert on the site. I hate them enough as it is.

So please, I ask if you are feeling generous, to donate a small amount to help support thelongmile Group, and if you have time, just click on the ad’s

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/08/money/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/08/site-progress/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/08/site-progress/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:14:52 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=481 As some of you may have noticed, there are a couple of changes that have taken place to the site. First and foremost is the addition of the twitter widget at the bottom right of the page. This is something that has been long missed and I frequently get asked if and when it is coming back. So finally I’ve found an interim solution.

Next update, is the fact that, thelongmile.net is now just “thelongmile”. You knew about this in the last site update post, but I’ve finally updated the logo to include the .com and .net domains to reflect the new site structure.

August also saw the creation of another site Cardiff Tweetups.
Cardiff Tweetups follows on from a twitter meet that happened last Saturday at Y Fwch Goch in Cardiff. I’ve simply created the website so people can post meet ideas. I’m not arranging them all the time, but I’ll post ideas that people have.

This is of course the very first additional site I have made, and now am the proud owner and administrator of two websites, and of course with that, “thelongmile” has now become a part of what I’m calling “thelongmile group”.

Any website that I set up and administer myself, will be part of “thelongmile group” until such time as I choose ether a more appropriate name, or create a parent site. So say hi to “thelongmile group”.

The final update for you all is of course the sites backend and core. The stuff you don’t see.

As of August the 2nd we are now running on the latest version of WordPress 2.8.3 allowing greater security and hopefully improved speed. I’m already seeing reports of increased user performance and the overall statistics appear to be good, and certainly improved.

Similarly the security updates that come with 2.8.3 plus the additional security software installed on the site and recoded, allow for a more secure, and far more reliable system.

The site is now largely being limited by it’s own popularity and growth. In fact a large percentage of the sites loading time is coming from BuyHTTP’s servers simply trying to respond to an incoming query and load the databases. Whilst BuyHTTP have given me excellent service over the past few years, I am now actively looking to expand and that means a move.

That’s it for now everyone. I felt it best to keep you up to date with the website itself and make sure you’re checking out the new features and new sites. Also don’t forget that I’m also on Flickr and will be adding a flickr sidebar link in the coming days.

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/08/site-progress/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/flickr-integration/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/flickr-integration/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:21:53 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=451 Just a small update but thankfully the integration of the gallery into Flickr is now complete.

There is now only a single gallery on the site, The Portfolio which is based on the Cooliris Piclens Suite. All you need to do is have Flash player installed.

The remaining galleries are now hosted on Flickr, and the link will take you directly to Flickr’s own Photo Gallery, giving you the option to go back to the photo stream.

I will, in time, add a widget to the sidebar to show random flickr images from my photo stream, and will eventually re-integrate the twitter widget into the sidebar as well.

I am considering moving the entire gallery over to Flickr, but need to do some further research into this. For now though, after all the suggestions, I hope you like it.

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/flickr-integration/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/access-more/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/access-more/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:46:37 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=433 After a few years of waiting, I am now happy to announce that you can now access thelongmile.net through thelongmile.com!

At the moment this is simply a redirect but it’s a big thing for me since I’ve been waiting for almost five years! So, there will be a minor rebrand on the premise that this is no longer thelongmile.net but simply, thelongmile.

The next big change will be to hosting. Despite the excellent customer service I have received from BuyHTTP the market has changed somewhat since I took out my original hosting plan with them. Unfortunately BuyHTTP are not able to get even remotely close to other plans that are on offer from the likes of BlueHost or Linode, and so I am now investigating the plans available, and will being making preparations to move this site over to the new host.

This will bring a few great thing’s for you guys. It gives me a huge amount of space in comparison to what I already have. It will improve the site performance and responsiveness dramatically, and pave the way for more expansions and user communities. Yes that’s right I said user communities.

We need to start building up this, and giving you newsletters. So thats it for now! Your comments are always appreciated! So for now, toodles!

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/access-more/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/cleanup-consolidation/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/cleanup-consolidation/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:18:35 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=425 I thought I would give you all a quick update as to how the site is going, and announce something, so I’ll keep this one brief for you.

Since the revamped template launched the site has received a big increase in hits. In April the site saw 36581 hits, May saw 26810 and June saw 33066 hits. Based on the times before I wasn’t even breaking 10000. How much of that is valid I simply don’t know but the amount of data transfered seems to suggest it’s really going well. So thank you.

Anyway onto the title of this post. In a few of the comments and twitter replies i’ve had, it’s become very clear that the gallery needs a little bit of a cleanup.

I have three galleries up right now, one for Digital, one for Photography and one for my Portfolio. The Portfolio of course being the one where I showcase what I think is my best work. The rest are more of a ‘timeline’ of my progression through photography and digital art, and whilst I don’t think I’m that great at the artwork I do, I know I have progressed significantly since I first started.

As a result, and to reflect both on how far I’ve managed to come and to get rid of some of the more… dated images in my library. Starting tonight I will slowly start making my way through the images I have up here and begin deleting the images I feel are no longer necessary. Truth be told I will probably end up with only one gallery, one that will help inspire me to do more.

Don’t fear however, the old images will be added to a repository on Flickr where they will also be linked to for everyone to enjoy, in one big gallery.

If you have any thoughts or comments before I begin the cleanup feel free to express them, and of course if you have any particular favorites let me know, and soon!

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/07/cleanup-consolidation/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/a-long-list-of-thanks/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/a-long-list-of-thanks/#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:11:12 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/2009/06/a-long-list-of-thanks/

Whilst this site has been up, various pages have not been touched, so I think it’s appropriate that I give some thanks and credits to those that helped me develop this site. Because without them this really would not have been possible.

My first humble thanks go to the themes developers. GraphPaperPress created the original themes Modularity-Lite and F8-lite. They had the good sense to write both the themes on the GPL llicence, meaning I can hack them to death so long as I comment what I have done (And I assure you I have, probably too many comments in the code, but there are quite a few). So this entire site has been built on a heavily modified version of Modularity Lite, with the Menu bar coming from F8-Lite, again modified to fit the theme.

Secondly my thanks go to people like Andrew Kennett (who was with me on the first design) and to people on twitter like @foomandoonian and @mohdrafie. All of these people provided key feedback throughout the development process and made this site look as good as it does now. I would also like to than Laura for her feedback on the new logo design, and whilst she does not have a website to link to, her photography is slowly rivaling my own, within only a month or so of picking up a camera. Scary stuff indeed.

But perhaps, my biggest thanks go to one man, and one man alone. This man was subject my eternal nagging, and in one instance a late night phone call about a single line of code. A man who’s patience is clearly bigger and better than my own, and a man who’s skill in PHP makes me jealous even now. A teacher and a good friend, of course the man I am talking about is Sean Nicholls of SpoofScript. Without this man alone this site would not have been possible.

As well as this I woudl like to extend a great many thanks to the developers of the various plugins I use on this site for the support they have given me. I can only apologise that with security concerns, I cannot post a list of the plugins here, but believe me you are thanked.

This site has seen a tremendous uptake in the last few months. When this site was launched, March saw a total of 16927 Hits, followed by April with a staggering 36581 hits. May saw this site get 26810 hits and whilst we are only two weeks into June, this site is already at 14287 hits. The new templates that everyone has helped me work on have helped transform this website into something far more, and thanks to upcoming developments, I am hoping to see much much more.

I’ll be writing another post shortly to illustrate just what I want to do with this site, and what I’m going to be working on in the next few months. It’s all lined up and ready to go, but please, don’t be a stranger, drop a comment, say hi, and tweet this.

Thank you

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/a-long-list-of-thanks/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/new-site-layout-now-up/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/new-site-layout-now-up/#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:04:02 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=392 Just a quick note to say the new site template is now up! Hope you all like!

Just another note – the twitter widget is broken – i cant seem to change it’s colour so its transparent for some reason, so it’s been disabled, and the gallerys still rely on flash, as I’m still working on getting Flickr integrated.

Hope you all enjoy the new template!

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/new-site-layout-now-up/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/breif-update/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/breif-update/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:37:25 +0000 tlm - iPhone http://thelongmile.net/2009/06/breif-update/ I’m really sorry that I havnt been moving quicker with this, but my last post was not entirley truthfull. The website still had one major bug within the comments that made them completley unreadable. I am pleased to say that this has now been fixed, although I don’t think I will ever recover from it.

I can also confirm the web template code IS done, there is no more to do, everything has been covered.

I’m pleased to announce that in the next update to the web template you’ll get a new share button, so you can post to twitted or digg or even email a post. It’s also much much easier to read compared to the site layout you see right now, although wordpress has a few of it’s own quirks that I can’t seem to get around.

There’s also the addition of a tag cloud. I’ve never really likes having a tag cloud but it does help break up the site somewhat, else it would feel overly drab and bland.

Right now all I am waiting for is yahoo to get back to me about getting my account setup, and then me deciding how to implement flickr, as well as link it in with a mobile gallery ( that might be broken for some time once the change happens, it’s very limited) but anyway, I’ve found a flickr plugin that’s also going to let me keep piclens! Hurrah!

It’s not going to be long now, I promise, it’s more down to yahoo than it is to me at this stage.

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/breif-update/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/not-long-to-go/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/not-long-to-go/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:40:34 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=388 I’d like to give everyone a very brief update as to exactly what is happening with the site.

My Gnatt charts now tell me I am at 81% completion. In fact the entire site is 100% ready to be moved over to this one, however I want to fill out the other 19% which is of course looking at integrating flickr.

So thats on my task list for the next few days, but the time is coming very shortly for the rebranding and the brand new look site. It’s taken long enough, and the bugfixes are all done (I’m sure I’ll find more though) but brace yourselves, this could go up tomorrow night if I make enough progress!

Special shoutout to sean or @spoofscript as he’s known on twitter for keeping me sane and giving me the one last bit of code I needed to finish the site itself. Thanks man!

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/06/not-long-to-go/feed/ 0 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/05/update-and-a-favour/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/05/update-and-a-favour/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 21:14:36 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=385 Yes, I have a small favour to ask all of you, but more on that in a moment.

I wanted to update everyone on the progress of the new site layout. I will also say, I am really glad I made the decision to develop this, as everytime I look at the current site, It just, feels like a letdown. Appropriate for a teenager, or a kid that wants things to be flashy, but it just isn’t appropriate for me.

The new theme is based on Modularity Lite by GraphPaperPress. I chose this template originally out of compromise, but now I’ve been working with it over on the testing server, I’m really pleased I chose to go for it, you guys I hope will be very pleased to also know it is not as dark as it seems in that screenshot… at least not after all the edits.

The template is licenced under the General Public Licence (GPL) which means in short, I’m allowed to make changes to it providing I note what I’ve changed and give credit to the authors, so if any of you have the misfortune to look at my sloppy code, you’ll likley see a great many changes indeed.

An example of the things we’ve changed so far, range from text colours, to sizes, to bug fixes, to implementing new features, removing others etc..

Right now there are only a few things left on the list for the template itself

Create a navigation menu
Fix a bug on the full page view that causes it to go black
Fix a bug where the read more link shows on every post rather than just the excerpts

Thats seriously all there is, so I’m very very pleased to be getting this close to changing things over. There are two reamining things that are not on the template edit list.

One of which is Flickr.

I still know, NOTHING about Flickr and the way it integrates into wordpress. So my tasks over the next few days will be to gather as much information I can about it, and decide how to do it. I would greatly appriciate anything you have for me in that respect, be it advice or links to plugins etc

Thats my first favour.

The second, is one of a more serious nature.

My last post said about doing something, that I did not originally expect to do, and that was have a logo designed for the site.

Now, I can create logos for other people. I am more than happy and capable of creating logos for other people. But when it comes to my own site, I need a little help. In fact I need so much help that I am asking you, the reader, not neccesarily to come up with a logo, but ideas for the logo itself, so that I, or a colleague can develop it.

I don’t normally reach out to my readers like this. Sure I’ve asked favours before, and I’ve asked you all for your opinion on the website to help orchestrate changes, but I have never asked for advice of this level, so I really don’t know what to expect, but I look forward to it.

The final thing I am going to be adding, if I can work out how, will be a share button. I realise not everyone wants to comment but might want to .digg or del.ico.us or stumbleupon the links or blogs I have. So I will do my very best to introduce a simple, clean button system so that you can do that.

I hope to hear from all of you soon… we’re getting so close!

]]> http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/05/update-and-a-favour/feed/ 1 http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/05/the-face-of-the-future/ http://www.thelongmile.net/2009/05/the-face-of-the-future/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 21:33:29 +0000 thelongmile http://thelongmile.net/?p=382 Hello again everyone. This is a somewhat minor update yet one I am more than happy to type out.
Two days ago, both myself and Sean Nicholls my PHP consultant, began work on the new site template.
Currently we don’t know how long it wil be before the site is relaunched. We had hoped that it would be done by the end of this month, but this really isn’t something that should be rushed

It’s gotten to the stage where we’re able to give you a, brief look at the actual site, so, I give you a small screenshot, so here it is. Now, granted, the text colours are not quite.. there, nor is the design anywhere near close to finish but it’s a good representation of what we’re aiming for.

Currently we are working on getting the comments template formatted correctly, which is proving to be a right pain. Followed by adjusting the sidebar colours and finalising that.

Needless to say it doesent end there. I’m trialing a menu bar from another site template which may or may not be staying, so there is also that to code. I’m not 100% certain at this stage.

The next stage however, is the most complicated and slightly… daunting. Flickr. I just don’t know enough about Flickr at this stage to make an informed decision about how I would integrate it into this site, let alone whether I actually want to. So If you have any information, and examples, please let me know.

Once thats covered, there is also the restructure to ensure this website actually reaches the right focus.

However, despite all that, there is one task I am truley daunting.

I have decided that the restructure and rebranding and image, should also include the logo. I will not be dropping the name, I’ve used and have been thelongmile for far too long now, and the title itself  has taken quite well, and seems to have some meaning with the followers, a way to describe the long journey we are all on as we learn and develop.

But the logo itself does need to be designed, or relaunched. And Believe me, I do not know how, at all, or even where to begin. Perhaps someone could make some suggestions. I can happily design other peoples logos, but when it comes to my own, I need an external influence. This is why I use Sean and Andy as my design consultants. otherwise I get so caught up in the initial design of the main website.

So I would appriciate a little influence and some suggestions.

Please note, I have written this after drinking about two glasses of wine, so I apologise if I appear to have rambled or made very little sense. Hopefully you will get the gist. (and yes, i’ve decided to be a little less formal with this site, since it is my ‘personal’ project and not a business, despite offering some services.

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