Writings on web design and higher education from Missoula, MT

There’s been a lot of problems with this site lately, all caused by the quality of my hosting service going down hill. These issues mostly show up as 404 errors (even when the page exists) and slow load times.

To combat this, I’ve purchased a Virtual Private Server (VPS) from ModWest to address the problem, but the move will take a couple weeks to finish. My apologies for the hiccups and downtime while I make this transition. Things should be much better after the move to the VPS.

I’ve already got two of my other domains on that server, and they are running as smooth as can be.

It seems that this new year has already reached its quota of problems, with the false positive on antivirus software, and most recently my domain expiring without my knowledge (and bringing down this website and my email), things are finally all taken care of.

On the upside, I’ve found some good topics to make some useful posts on, so stay tuned for something actually worth reading.

Dan

Over the holiday McAfee and CA both issued new virus definitions that incorrectly identified common external JavaScript files as potentially dangerous virus carriers. Mint, my web stats program, was (incorrectly) flagged as well.

I apologize if this has caused any concern for my users.

Well, I finally got around to creating a decent front page design (the blog design is still old and outdated, but I’ll get to that in a second). And in the process I have constantly been thinking about how I really need to start over completely. Making tweaks regularly to the design has left it’s CSS in bad shape, filled with hacks and utterly reliant on a conditional comment for IE6. It should display nicely in mainstream browsers, but it just doesn’t feel up to snuff to me. I would never dream of sending code like this to a client, so why am I letting it slip on my own site? The answer is simple: time. My personal site does not get priority over anything, and a wholesale redesign takes a large chunk of my time.

Assuming that I wish to spend the time needed to improve the quality of my code, I am left with two choices: recode the current design from scratch or start the design from scratch. Both have some positives; the feedback on my current design has been mixed (mostly due to the disjunction of the name Northlander and the fruit scheme) and I did the concept for this design over 2 years ago, so it feels very old.

The blog design will probably get updated whenever I do one of the two options. So, should I keep this design, or develop from scratch?

Today is
Annual CSS Naked Day. As I did last year, I have removed all my CSS files from the design so you can appreciate the pure bliss of simple HTML markup. The old, crappy, design will be back tomorrow. Maybe some day soon it will get updated, I hope.

On the suggestion of a comment, I have put in Spam Karma 2 to help with the nasty comment problems I have been having.

Let me know if there are any problems.

Where did all the style go? No need to adjust your browser, today (April 5th, 2006) is CSS Naked Day. Read the rest of this entry »

Northland College now has a book exchange

After running the idea over in my head for several years, I finally decided to implement t textbook exchange for Northland College students, so I am happy to announce that the community can now utilize the Northlander Exchange.

Read the rest of this entry »

I switched over my feeds to feedburner today. I did this for several reasons, but most importantly of which is feedburners ability to track subscribed users and optimize compatibility between readers software. You won’t have to update the feed URL because I installed a great Wordpress plugin by Steve at Ordered List. If you are running Wordpress and are thinking of using feedburner too, I highly suggest taking a look at this option.

I recently installed the lightbox plugin for WordPress. I think it adds some neat functionality to blogging in general, and I have found that it incorporates greatly with my flickr account.

Read the rest of this entry »

Only a few of my friends (and some readers on craigslist.org) are aware of some of the dificulties I have had recently with domain names. DanBowling.com, my prior personal site, is no longer mine, and is a giant ad for bowling balls.

I am trying to take it as a mixed blessing. This gives me a new opportunity to start a site from scratch. I hope northlander.org becomes not only my online home, but also a community area where friends from my alma mater can meet up and communicate over the next several years while our alumni website still lacks those abilities.

New design to come. I just have some final CSS tweaks and then it gets ported to a WP theme.