WEB DESIGN BLOG

Just released the RED-E oil site. I started using RED-E at the suggestion of Roger Freeborn, kart racer, RED-E dealer and former mayor of the town of Cascade Locks, OR. Roger has been helping me out with my race and engine setups at the track. When Marilyn, the owner of RED-E spoke to Roger about possibly getting a website done, he referred her to me. It's an ongoing project and Marilyn is great to work with. Check it out at http://red-e.com

Just finished the re-design of the Designated Hanger site. This site is owned by the president of my kart racing club. He produces this baseball/softball accessory called the "Designated Hanger" which allows a team to organize bats, helmets, and gloves in the dugout allowing for ease of access and a more professional look. Check it out at http://hooksinc.com

Just released my wife's new website! She usually goes through a redesign every couple of years. This was a big effort over the last several months. As usual, she came up with the design herself, and I created a website out of it. We're really excited over the outcome.

http://racheloneilphotography.com

My latest project is the Formula One Appreciation Society as a joint effort between myself and Jay Runzi (swissf1fan from SPEED Insider Forums). This site is for like-minded F1 fans to get together. This site will contain F1 articles and photo galleries, including member galleries. Check it out at http://foas.us/

Released the FCFF site. Still a work in progress as I want the photo album to be integrated into the site. Take a look. http://thefcff.com/

Got hired to maintain the FCFF (Full Contact Fighting Federation) website. The FCFF holds Mixed Martial Arts events in Oregon. This site was horribly out-of-date, and I'm working towards correcting this. Also working on an all-new design. This site is hosted by DayanaHost.

Was able to transfer my email server from CrystalTech/SmarterMail to Google Mail For Domains. All I have to do is transfer my MX Records to Google, wait an hour, and it is ready. GMail doesn't have folders, but has this odd system where you can assign "labels" to messages. You can even add more than one label to a message. You can then decide which labels you want to view. They can either all reside in your inbox, or you can "Archive" them to keep your inbox clean. Takes a little time to get used to, but it is fantastic. I can have up to 50 accounts for my domain. With the hosting package that I chose, I only get 5. SmarterMail was one of the very few issues I have with CrystalTech.

Wrote an article entitled, "Adding a WYSIWYG Editor To Your Site". This tutorial discusses template-based design and how to include a WYSIWYG editor in order to allow the site owner to make updates from any location.

Converted my site to another WYSIWYG editor (again). This time it's the TinyMCE editor. With the FCKEditor, what I saw wasn't always what I got. There were occasions where I would type something, but when I saved it was different. Sometimes, I would do an action, and the entire page would change.

Considering publishing my first utility for general consumption. I have been using the HIOX Events Calendar in the calendar section for the Champions Family Fitness website. While this is a decent calendaring solution, it lacks several things. First of all, there are no provisions for the user to be able to add any HTML markup in WYSIWYG fashion; everything is plain text. Second, the data is stored in php strings instead of a database which also causes problems. Even with "addslashes()" there are issues with syntax errors.