14 April 05

Site Details

Publishing System:

This site is managed with Textpattern, and man, I really like it.

It is my preference to use as few plugins as necessary. Nothing against plugins, mind you, just the extra upkeep that I don’t enjoy. Nevertheless, some plugins are simply too useful to ignore so ones I do use are listed here:

rss_live_search: A search feature to the next degree. Useful for site visitors and designers both…everyone wins. Rob “wilshire” Sable is a plugin purveyor above the call of duty. His plugin menu is extensive and all Textpattern.

zem_article_info: A small but useful little plugin that gives you word count for published articles, and their actual URIs. (The latter being a useful reference for site designers.)
zem_contact: A simple, secure contact form plugin, and a huge time-saver. Thank you Mr. Alex “zem” Shiels. I sure hope this baby sees a few enhancements and makes it into the Textpattern source code some day.
zem_prblock: A nice little plugin that helps to keep comment spam under control.

Code:

The PHP code is all Textpattern. XHTML and CSS is all me. XHTML aims to be 2.0 (Working Draft), but jives with 1.1 (Recommendation). CSS is 2.0.

The exception is with respect to comments and the contact form; these still flunk the validation exam, but that’s because they are straight out of the box and I just have not yet fixed them up; I will when I will. However, if you find things to be different with anything else, keep me honest.

Typography:

Always looking for the right typography, but one might recognize Trebuchet MS, Verdana...the usual fair.

Production:

Hardware

Still using a Toshiba Satellite A70 Notebook running Windows XP, and still have my eye on an Apple PowerBook 15-inch as an addition to the set. (My buddy has a 12-inch PowerBook and I just can’t get over how convenient it is for road writing. I’ll take two, please.)

I have also been looking at Wacom’s drawing tablets, and their product match wizard, suggests an Intuos3 (9×12) is right for me (and at $450, it’s a tempting buy), though I sure like the idea of a direct pen-to-screen approach capable with the Cintaq.

Graphics

Not employing many graphics in The Colloquial Tongue right now, but when I do they’re created with Macromedia Fireworks and/or FreeHand.

Photography

Photographs are all taken by me, unless otherwise noted. I like quick and easy, pocket photography, and right now I’m using a Sony DSC-P10 for the act (a little dated but still kickin’ it).

Web Hosting:

Handled by TextDrive, of course. If you are serious about Web publishing, and cutting edge development platforms, TextDrive is the place to be (specs).