Hazel McKendrick » Wordpress

Web Work

Hazel — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:58:03 +0000

I guess very few people have seen KCNB in its original form. If you’re interested in some of the previous (hideous) themes from the site, I’ve stuck them up on my portfolio in the section titled “Web Development”.

Probably the most interesting is the theme that almost came into being this time around:

KCNB Fresh Front Page

I’m still trying to find the source code for the terrible blogging/forum software I wrote before – I know it’s archived somewhere. I’ll get it up here too if I can get hold of it.

Updates, and a new theme.

Hazel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:53:50 +0000

New Theme

Oh yes. That is a brand new theme you see before you. Thoughts? Opinions?

It’s a bit minimalistic (read: boring) and relies more heavily on the default Kubrick theme than I would like, but it shows up and seems to work – what more could you ask for? Hopefully being plain and simple means I won’t get sick of it as soon as I have with other themes, and it’s as simple as can be – no magazine style front pages to fiddle with and waste time on.

If you want any of the source code, drop me an email and I’ll fire it off to you. I don’t think there’s anything particularly complicated or inspiring in there, but if you’re curious let me know.

PS. Did I mention I *HATE* web coding?

Linking To Me

On this note, I’ve also pointed http://hazelmckendrick.com at my about me page (which still hasn’t been updated unhappyface), as you can hopefully see from the different banner I’m using there. If you’re linking to me in any sort of professional or academic capacity, I’d appretiate if you could use that link instead. Blogging people – feel free to stick with kcnb. Cheers

Portfolios

A few of my friends have now got their portfolios online (or will do in the near future) – please go check them out on my links page.

Plugins and Stuff

Hazel — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:32:24 +0000

Since Ashok just got a new WordPress blog and was asking about plugins for it, I thought it was about time to update my own.

Behind the scenes now I’m using wp-super-cache (not that I get enough traffic to actually need it), the All in One SEO plugin that everyone recommends, and an XML sitemap plugin. I’ve also set up automatic backups.

I’d really like to have a go at writing a WordPress plugin, but I can’t think of anything that I want which doesn’t already exist. Anything in particular you would like to see?

Otherwise, are there any other great plugins which you think might help my blog?

Gravatars

Hazel — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:19:50 +0000

You many have noticed that the comments on KCNB have a little avatar next to them. Since most of these are showing up as the default image, my little blue space invader (who by the way is called Marcel), I thought I’d share with you how to get your own image showing up.

This site, like many other blogs and websites, has been equipped to use Gravatars. The idea is that you sign up for an account, and an image is tied to your email address. When you enter that email address on a Gravatar enabled blog or website, your avatar will automatically be displayed. This makes it easy for you to have a perpetual identity between a range of different sites – essential for bloggers hoping to promote themselves.

Hope to see some more pretty images soon – feel free to comment on this post to test your Gravatar. It does take a few minutes to appear after you’ve created an account.

New Theme Issues

Hazel — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:36:45 +0000

As you will hopefully have noticed, KCNB has recently undergone a change of themes.

Whilst I consider this one mostly complete (although I’m always open to suggestions and changes) there is still one particular issue I don’t know how to sort. It occurs on the index pages with lists of posts, and as far as I can tell only in Firefox. Each post extract is contained within a

element, which is in turn contained within a link to the correct page. For the most part the CSS functions correctly – when you move your mouse anywhere over the box, the background colour changes.

However, from time to time instead of this each piece of text becomes a link, as you can see in the image here.

The strangest thing is that this doesn’t even occur every time the page is loaded, reloading the page can cause the post to be displayed correctly. It also occurs more on certain posts than others, although I can’t find anything which makes them different.

I’m left wondering whether this might be more a problem with Firefox’s rendering the page, but I’d still like to fix it.

If you have any thoughts on how I could achieve this effect in a different way, I’d be happy to hear it. Also, if you’ve noticed other problems with this theme in modern browsers, please let me know here.

I’m Doing Science And I’m Still Alive

Hazel — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:14:08 +0000

I’m back again. I know it’s been a while.

It’s easy to say the blog is back for good now, but keeping to that is going to be tougher. First of all, I want to thank the people that emailed or messaged me prompting me to write again. I’m going to try my utmost to write regularly, and if I don’t, I encourage everyone to yell at me until I do. I have no idea how people with blogs that have lasted years manage to keep this up, suffice to say I’m impressed.

There will however be a few changes around here. I’m going to aim to write shorter posts several times a week, just to make sure I am writing something. When deadline time approaches I wont have much time to write articles but if I am used to giving shorter reflections then I should be able to keep up.

You may also notice the new theme. There are still a few kinks to work out but I think it’s far more professional and also much simpler than the previous theme. And of course, less pink. If you have any thoughts or suggestions about it, I’d love to here from you – just drop me a comment below.

Last time I blogged, I wrote about the ‘insane project’ I had planned. This was referring to my ideas for a piece of PS2 Coursework which actually turned out to be very successful. I wont say it went without a hitch, but I did get it completed by the deadline without preventing me finishing my other coursework too, so overall I’m very pleased with the result. I’m not really sure how to attempt to capture a video of it but as soon as I work it out, I’ll stick it up here.

You might also notice I’ve made some separate space for my projects on this website. I guess you’ll be glad to know that I have written more than four programs during my time at university, but I’m trying to offer a selection of my more complete work there. I’ll continue to add to it as I embark on more exciting projects in the future.

Thanks for sticking around – don’t forget to let me know what you think of the new look.

Knowing When To Quit

Hazel — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:44:10 +0000

Pare!!! by elNico.

So I spent most of my Christmas holidays programming a blogging engine and community site. It was going alright, and with a little more work I could have had it usable, and yet, I’m now sitting with a WordPress blog and no intention of going back.
Why?
First of all I admit there were several flaws with my system. Big flaws. Flaws which I opted to ignore and work around as I continued to build the project. But that isn’t really the point here – I recognised that the structure of the project was terrible and I could have rebuilt it.The real issue here was, “Why did I feel the need to be different?”. There are huge numbers of high quality blogging engines out there, all customisable to do what I wanted. And yet I was sitting working from the ground up, on a low quality piece of software writing PHP I was already comfortable with, just so I could have the satisfaction of saying “Yes, I wrote this slow, insecure, feature lacking site by myself”. It all seems a little ridiculous now.

Not only ridiculous, in fact, but selfish. I could easily have spent that same time contributing to one of many open source blogging projects, learning to create new plugins or themes. Instead however, I was trying to reinvent the wheel.

So, in the end I hope I learned my lesson here – don’t be afraid to benefit from other people’s work, because in turn you can give back to the community. And perhaps you’ll be downloading some of my efforts in the near future.

Think Pink

Hazel — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:16:37 +0000

So, opinions on the theme?
I built it from the design my website was meant to have and the default WordPress theme, which was far easier than I expected.

Pink isn’t normally my colour so this is a bit of a change, but at least it stands out.

Anyway…
Any bugs or glitches in your browser?
Parts you like?
Parts you don’t like?
Things you think I should tear out entirely?

At The Beginning Again

Hazel — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:41:12 +0000

So after spending most of the Christmas holidays trying to build my website, I’ve eventually settled for using a WordPress blog instead. The site was going well, but with term starting again I wouldn’t have time to complete it, so this seemed a far more sensible option. And it still looks pretty much the same.

I’d like to try and migrate some of my more interesting older content over to here, but since I’d have to do it manually I’m not sure how realistic a goal that is. I may repost a couple of articles which were particularly popular (well, popular for a blog read by only 3 people including my mum).

As you can see (unless you’re sensibly using an adblocker of some sort) the site is now supported by adsense. I’m not running this blog for money, but it would be nice for my hosting fees to pay for themself.

Anyway, the site will be updated as often as I feel fit, most likely a few times a week, so sign up to the RSS feed and wish me luck.