My Web Development Recap for 2008

This post is coming in a few days later than I had originally hoped, but that's okay. 2008 was a very busy and successful time for me in regards to my personal work online, and I wanted to take a moment or two and recap some of the highlights and numbers.

Four New Sites!!!

With the launch of my largest site, Ka'anapali Dreamin' back in 2007, I would have figured the majority of my time the following year would have been spent with upkeep and expansion of that site. Indeed, I put quite a bit of time into it, with close to 20 updates released last year, not to mention all the new content around our April '08 trip to Maui.

But who knew I'd also be serving up 4 new websites in that same year, bringing the total of sites in my portfolio to 9. Here's a quick recap of each of them.

• Maui Wall Candy - This is my online photo store powered by smugmug. While the Pro account that I'm subscribing to handles most everything for me, there was still a bit of customization to get the site looking unique, and it was anything but the traditional coding and markup process, either.
  View Site - View Announcement
• photonelly.com - This site is my portfolio site for my photography work, much like webnelly.com is the portfolio site for my web development. It was one of those that I decided to throw together in a matter of a few weeks and have been very happy with it.
  View Site - View Announcement
• kris.nelson - Shortly before completing photonelly.com, I came up with the concept for kris.nelson and literally launched the site in 3 days. It's not a traditional website and bends a few of the standard site design rules, but I think it's a neat little place to visit
  View Site - View Announcement
• Igloo Surfing - This little blog should have been the first site in 2008, but was put on the back burner almost the entire year. It's a small blog featuring photos of our rabbits doing cute things and my attempted humor with captions.
  View Site - View Announcement

While I have some site redesign and enhancement ideas for my existing sites, there are no plans for new sites (yet) in 2009.

Blogging

By the end of 2008, blogging finally became part of my daily routine, and I was very proud of myself. Setting small goes to start with, I finished the year with well over 200 posts on my four blogs, and in December I was averaging 2 a day.  Here's the breakdown:

• Ka'anapali Dreamin' Blog - 136 posts
• Kris and Cindy's Blog - 42 posts
• webnelly.com Blog - 28 posts
• photonelly.com Blog - 26 posts

Photos

With the launch of my photonelly.com site last year, photography, much like blogging, became a regular part of my life as well. As a result of our April '08 trip to Maui and my renewed interests in everyday photography, I posted 1,900 new photos to Flickr in 2008.  Checking the 2008 Archive calendar at Flickr, the biggest spike in April from our Maui trip, but the last 3 months really started to pick up in terms of frequency.

Twitter

It addition to making Twitter part of my Maui vacation in 2008, I've become a modest use of the micro-blogging service during the second half of '08. I recently posted my 1,000 update on Twitter before the end of the year, and while I only have a handful of followers, it makes a nice balance. My Twitter updates are already integrated into kris.nelson, and I have a few ideas on future uses as well. Fun stuff.

Pretty Much It

That about covers the major highlights. There were so many cool things that worked on this past year, it would just be too daunting to list most of the smaller ones. The new sites are always fun, but the blogging, photos, and Twitter conversations I engage in daily are really what is making it exciting to share my life online right now. The web is such a great place right now, and I'm happy to be a part of it.

Here's to bigger and better things in 2009!

Project Time Next Week

Next week is going to be the second year in a row that I get the entire week of Xmas off, which is giong to be very nice. Since I haven't been skating as much I as want to, that leaves me with more time for working on different site updates and projects during that week.  Now, the only issue is deciding what to work on!

Here are a few things that I'm considering giving face time to next week.

Finish my host migration

Believe it or not, the host migration to a new web host has been going better than I had thought. In fact, I only have 3 sites left to migrate, upgrade, and test. They are, however, the largest sites that I have, which is why they're going last.

Add my Maui Photo Calendar to Facebook

I just recently launched my Maui Photo Calendar as an Google Gadget, and I was thinking yesterday about trying to add it as a Facebook application. I was doing some research and found opensocket, which is supposed to take care of much of the integration for existing gadgets to work on Facebook. Going through some of the settings, however, I think it would be more beneficial to grab a book and learn more about Facebook apps first.

Finally launch Igloo Surfing

It seems like only yesterday I had this idea of launching a fun little website named Igloo Surfing.  Actually, it was over a year ago. Going through the web host migration, I revisted were I had left off with the site, and I was a lot closer to finishing it than I remembered. So that makes this another good candidate. Odds are it could be my first new site of 2009.

Redesign for Kris and Cindy

Speaking of a year ago, around this time last year is when I put Kris and Cindy in a dormant mode. Not only is it long overdue for a redesign, but probably some restructuring as well. The current site structure and sections were good a few years ago, but SO MUCH has happened in our lives since then. Mainly for the good, the current structure just isn't going to hold all those new pages.

This is still one of the sites to be migrated to the new host, so that makes time for a redesign a good candidate, as well.

Minor design and layout changes for Ka'anapali Dreamin'

I mentioned last month that I had a few minor changes in the queue for Ka'anapali Dreamin'. The biggest of which I'm thinking of is a slight redesign and layout change to increase the standard page layout for 1024px browser widths, rather than the current 800px width. My other motivation is that we leave for Maui in less than two months (yay!), so I really need to get caught up before we come back with even more content to add to the site.

New feeds for kris.nelson

Last week I shared something I discovered with Google Reader to be able to share my favorites from the different RSS feeds I follow. That, and a few other similar additions, are racing around in the design part of my brain right now, and are itching to come out.

Flickr and Google Map integration for photonelly.com

Just this week I quietly snuck in some new changes to the home page of photonelly.com to include recent posts and photos from Blogger and Flickr. That was more of a spur-of-the-moment idea because of recent work with the Blogger Data API I was doing, so it was completely unplanned. What I really want to add to photonelly.com is an integrated photo gallery like I did for Ka'anapali Dreamin'. You can view that here, and as you can see, there is both Flickr integration and maps displayed with Google Maps. 

So that's what I have to look forward to next week. Obviously I'm not going to get to all of it, and I don't really have a set idea on how to prioritize the above. I'll end up playing it by ear, but if I can get at least two of these things knocked off the list by New Years, I'll be happy.

Google Reader - My Shared Items

Not only have I committed to making my personal contributions to the blogosphere as an author, I'm also a big reader as well. After slacking for awhile, I started using Google Reader again to keep tabs on all the different blogs that I follow. And to confess to how long it's been since the last time I used it, I'm only now seeing some of the new features, like Shared Items.

So, for the last week or so, I've begun marking some of my favorite new posts for sharing, and for now, you can find them on my Shared Items page. It looks a little plain right now, so I might think about dressing it up a little bit.  But knowing how I never like to leave well enough alone, I happened to notice the little Atom Feed icon on my shared items page. Hmm, makes it seem like a fine candidate to be added to my kris.nelson site, doesn't it (hint, hint).

Just another thing to add to the list. I already am working on a web host migration and will be launching my first Google Gadget in the upcoming days, so there's a bit of a queue. In any case, feel free to read what I'm reading, and enjoy!

Minor Blogging Goal Reached

It's been just under a month since I launched my Blog Calendar widget for kris.nelson, and aside from a few kinks that I need to work out, it's been holding its own.

More worth mentioning in that post and in the review of my Dell Mini, however, is reaching my initial goal of posting at least one blog entry a day. I realize it's nothing to throw a parade over, but for me, I think it's a big victory and I'm happy to be able to reach my goal of one post a day for an entire month.

For me, it's not as much as being able to write enough or create enough original content to fill a blog post each day. Those who know me know I always have something to say, and coworkers in the past have commented on some of my emails being way too long. No, to me, it's about getting into the habit and making time in my daily routine to sit down, tune out the rest of the world, and write. I think that has probably been the most rewarding part so far.

My Blogs

A big part of the blogosphere is creating engaging content and generating user interaction and coummunity-based discussions with your blogs. Obviously I'm far from that, so that is yet another, longer term goal. For now, just the joy of writing is my motivation at the moment. I currently write on four different blogs, which has it's pros and cons. The biggest advantage is that I have that much larger of a range to write about, from things regarding Maui and my photography, to things in my daily life and for my web development work.

Perhaps the biggest disadvantage, though, is that having so many blogs covering different topics can lead to less continuity at the individual level. What I mean by that is by posting on a different blog each day (although there is no set rotation), there are fewer posts on each individual blog as there would be if I was focused on one topic solely. I have a combined RSS feed that aggregates all the latest posts from each blog, but with a wide range of topics, there is likely not a large enough audience out there that cares about everything I write. I mean, I like to think of myself as sort of an interesting fella, but I know the difference between what's important to me and what everyone else thinks is important are not always the same.

Next Goals

To counter that disadvantage of scattered posts at an individual blog level, my next goal is focused on targeting more than just one post a day, and getting to more of a regular schedule with my different blogs. Namely, the two blogs (and sites, for that matter) that are getting most of my attention right now are Ka'anapali Dreamin' and photonelly.com. I already have a recurring series for my Maui site, which is the Sunday Photo series that features a new photo every Sunday (hence the name). I have long since wanted to expand on that concept of scheduled topics, such as having a news post on Tuesdays and having something for Aloha Fridays, but haven't had the discipline to do so. I think reaching this first goal was a big step closer to that.

For my photography site, there are also many places I can go with that. There are still some functional aspects of the site I'd like to add, as well as more photos and locations that I have visited that I would also like to feature. Something similar to a Sunday Photo, or maybe just a regular post about some of my existing favorites. I still have a lot to learn in the photography arena, so as I push myself there, the lessons learned and notes from my experiences may also be worth writing about.

High Hopes

Like just about everything else, the sky is pretty much the limit here. For those of you who haven't had much experience writing regularly on a blog or similar site, you might not think it's such a big deal. For the rest of you that are already main contributors to the blogosphere, you know exactly what I'm referring to.

So, can I pull it off? I like to think I can do more than I am right now, but I don't know if I can reach that point where I have enough time to devote to this as I ultimately would like to. But as long as I never lose the spirit of wanting to write and continue down this path for all the right reasons, I think I'll do just fine.

What About You?

Have your own blogging stories or experiences that you'd like to share? Comment away.

Updated Flickr Section and other fixes - kris.nelson

With a lot of the time and effort I've been spending on my photography lately, I thought I'd clean up the Recent Photos view over at kris.nelson. I switched it from the small 75x75 square thumbnail view to a little bit more profound by comparison, as well as added a few details about each photo.



Behind the scenes, I did some housekeeping as well. Previously, the Flickr integration on this site was being handled through the phpFlickr package, as I'm using for Ka'anapali Dreamin' (at least at the time this was written). Instead of using that entire PHP library just for this simple part of kris.nelson, I decided to switch over to the REST version and made a few corresponding changes on the scripting to display the results. It feels like it's running just a little bit faster (without the PHP and MySQL overhead), but I haven't actually don't any formal testing with it.

Other Updates
In addition to just making this piece of the site look nicer, I also cleaned up a few bugs here and there, including a weird issue that I didn't realize at first on the Twitter updates display. It turns out that the date format that is returned from the Twitter API (for example: Mon Nov 03 18:32:33 +0000 2008) is supported by and parses fine with Firefox, however IE treats it as NaN. I ended up just manually parsing out the fields and building the date parts manually. Oh well.

New Blog Calendar - kris-nelson.com

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not going to win any awards for blogging, and although I currently write on four different blogs, I've only posted about 200 times in the last year or so. There are probably different reasons and/or excuses why I don't post that often, but I'm putting forth a new effort to change that.

Like many people, I do well with rewards and incentives, so I went ahead and ordered myself a little Dell Mini earlier this month to make it easier to blog any time, any where. So to prepare for it's arrival (since there are severe delays from Dell), I went ahead and created this fun little Blog Calendar widget to supplement the Blogger section at kris.nelson and my combined RSS feed. It's a little motivation to keep me online and contributing to the Blogosphere on a more regular basis.

What it Does
It really isn't that big of a deal, but I had fun putting it together. It's just another little calendar control rendered with JavaScript like the 11,000,000 others out there, but it showcases days of a given month that I have posted on one of my blogs. You can see when I've been a happy little blogger, like back in April when I was in Maui, and when I've just been asleep at the wheel like this past July when I seemed to have taken the entire month off.

The days with at least one post are highlighted and when clicked, the posts from that day are displayed. And it all is done with a little flashy animation created with script.aculo.us. There are still a few quirks that I need to track down and work out, but it was working enough to roll it out and, of course, blog about it. There are a few interesting things going on behind the scenes to aggregate all the archive feeds from each blog and querying against them, but I'll save that for another time.

To view it in action, just go to http://kris-nelson.com and navigate to the "Blogger" section from the menu. Once it pops up happily in the upper left hand corner, you can use it to travel back in time and view my previous posts (or lack there of), all the way back to my first post (I really need to update that blog template).

In the coming weeks, I'm thinking of putting this on a bigger stage instead of just a small little widget. But for now, I've been playing around with my newest camera and trying to be a regular contributor to my photos on Flickr as well. Not enough hours in the day, I tell ya.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the new blog calendar.

New Website - kris.nelson

Here I am again, announcing yet another website. This is a small one, but it's still a little different from the others. While it might still be cliche to buy a domain name of your own name, that's what I did. :) And, by the way, the "-" in http://kris-nelson.com saved me $850!!! Not sure exactly who thought that particular name was worth so much without the hyphen, but they'll have to get somebody else's money.

This is just a single page site, but it features a few technologies that I haven't been able to use on other sites as of yet. Most notably, there is animation with script.aculo.us, search powered by Google Custom Search, a combined blog feed created with Yahoo Pipes, and real-time updates from Flickr, Twitter and Blogger via their respective APIs.

You can read more about it in my portfolio section, and if it sounds interesting, check it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks.