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    New Design- Design

    This is part 2 of a 5 part series starting here. This post is going to focus on the overall design of the site, and some of the decisions I made regarding it.

    The first thing some might notice is that this design is wider than my other ones. I decided in creating this new template to go with a site optimized for a 1024 screen resolution. According to w3schools, only 14% of users have a screen resolution of 800×600. That is compared to 80% using 1024×768 or higher. This is also down 11% from September, the last time I checked the numbers. Further more, my target audience is tech-savvy people and college students. I’m sure if we break those numbers down into these two demographics, the number of 800×600 users would be even less.

    With this new design I also wanted to move away from a tradition blog template. I made it so one post would appear on the homepage, along with a number of other resources I’ve made available. These resources include my Resume, Projects, links, and of course the traditional (to this site) site navigation. I did this in an effort to merge Casabona.Org and this site into one. I’ve also create TheJoey.Net’s first logo. It’s a circle broken into 4 quarters. Each quarter represents one of the following: Personal, Professional, Play and Projects. The Personal is any news or information having to do with me. Professional for the work I do for clients through JLC Web Design. Play is for fun/cool things I might find interesting and Projects for side projects I am working on on my free time.

    I hope the new design has also made the site a little more user friendly for post navigation and searching. If you have any questions or comments, of course feel free to leave them below!

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    New Design- Overview

    Introduction

    I suppose if I had to give this version a number, I’d say it’s version 4.0. TheJoey.Net has seen 3 major redesigns and I had a “blog” when I first started web design. This design by far has seen the most innovation and customization on my part. On the About Page it says this site is my sandbox. That is the absolute truth, and probably the reason the design changes so often (I’d say once a year is pretty often). But this time around I wanted something that will hopefully last longer than that. So not only did I work in a ‘change of face,’ I added new features and showcased some of my new skills.

    What’s Coming

    This mini series on the redesign will probably be four posts: Design, Dynamics, Projects and Plug-ins. Within these four posts I’ll be able to talk about all of the new and improved features of the site. For example, I am using a layout optimized for a 1024 screen resolution instead of 800. I also changed all of the pages so they can be updated from the back end. I worked in some Ajax and wrote my first plug in.

    What do you want?

    If there is a feature you want to hear specifically about, just leave a comment and I will make note of it. I personally think I was about to do some cool stuff, and while there is still some house keeping I need to attend to, I am happy with how the site came out.

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    New Design Launch!

    New Design

    Announcing (finally), the new design of TheJoey.Net. You may have noticed over the last 2 days, this design was up more and more. I was putting the finishing touches on the design and wanted to see how it looked live, in the flesh. Over the next couple of weeks I will talk about all of the new stuff, including the design, AJAX features, my first crack and a WordPress plugin, and more.

    As for right now, I am just happy I finally launched it. I started working on it in late December, and if you’ll recall, I started doing a live update a month ago. Let me know what you think in the comments!

  • Live Update

    Well, it’s that time of the year (as trends show) for a new design. I will write more once the actual site is launched, but this one comes from a more mature, more experienced me, so hopefully this one will stick around for more than a year, and I can actually focus on content. This is just notice that I will be doing testing in house, so the site may be in shambles some times- but I will try to keep that to a minimum- Thanks for your patience!

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    Announcements

    Just a few general things:

    • My brother is selling his guitar. If you are interested, drop me a line!
    • It’s that time of the year: The Weblog Awards. Last year I found some pretty awesome ones and I hope this year I will too. (Also, getting nominated for best-kept secret would be cool too- polls close tomorrow at 10pm eastern time).
    • While I will not contribute to the hype that is the iPhone, I will say, it looks totally awesome.

    That’s about it!

  • New Server

    TheJoey.Net has a new home! After a lot of debating (and pulling my hair out), I have decided it is time to move onto bigger and better things than my really bad ex-host, Jiffynet.Net. You may have noticed lately the frequent site outages, errors, etc. This was due to very poor hosting that has pretty much existed since I have been with Jiffynet. While these things can be expected sometimes, it recent weeks it has become unmanageable. I have decided to switch hosting over to DreamHost, after hearing some good things about them.

    Right now I am still in the moving process, and it would be a great help if would tell me about any bugs you see on the site (you can find a report bug form on the about page). Thanks! Later!

    UPDATE: The comments are not working nor is the Report Bug function. I will be working on these later. for now if you see anything else, email me at joe [at] casabona [dot] org. Thanks!

    UPDATE 2: Comments art FINALLY Working! With that said, I will probably be doing a more AJAX-tastic redesign soon. Later!

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    Page Nav

    Just a bit of site news: I finally added buttons at the bottom of the main page to navigate through older pages. Click Previous to see older pages and Next to see newer pages. Later!

    UPDATE: My friend Dan (of What’s on my Bookshelf fame) was so gracious as to redesign the side bar and page navigation buttons to make them look a little (ok, a lot) nicer. This of-course has sparked something in me to go around the site updating somethings to make it look and feel a little more “Web 2.0.” So look out in the next few weeks for some changes! around these parts!

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    TheJoey.net aStore

    aStore

    I am proud to announce the new aStore for TheJoey.Net! As an Amazon Associate, I have ref feral links that, when used to make a purchase, I get 4% of the sale. Recently Amazon launched the “aStore,” which allows associates to make a page with 9 featured products, their wish list and similar items. While I usually feature these amazon links in reviews, The store will be saved for the most recent 9, or coolest 9 (I haven’t decided which). So, if you’ve got the time, stop over. Right now I am featuring some good books, dvds and my new digital camera. Later!

    PS- I also have a link on the sidebar.

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    Half.Com Store

    I love the summer for three reasons: No school, Free Time, and I get to unload the year’s books on Half.com. This is just an announcement that My Half.Com Store is officially open for business once again. I will be adding a link to the side soon, as well as fix up the Books page. So Browse around- see what you like! Later!