After weeks of little-to-no updates, I am finally able to show the few people who still look at this site where I’ve been. The big changes: Dropping Movable Type and adding three new section; Albums, Text, and Links.
After weeks off little-to-no updates, I am finally able to show the few people who still look at this site where I’ve been.
##Finally: Treemeat v2##
The big changes:
1. Dropped Movable Type. The site is now all custom PHP/MySQL.
2. Added an “Albums” section, for groups of photos that wouldn’t normally show up on the photoblog
3. The “Links” section
4. This “Text” blog
###Customize This###
I was quite happy with Movable Type, and the shoddy, duct-taped template system I had set up for Treemeat’s photo blog. But Movable Type was not intended to run a photoblog (like [PixelPost](http://www.pixelpost.net) is), so a fair amount of template trickery had already been done to use it for that purpose. I had also shoehorned a kay value system into each entry, allowing me to customize the header and links colors for each photo (Treemeat’s most distinguishing feature apparently). I had become generally comfortable with MT’s huge system of plugins and system customizing “hacks” (I use that word lovingly), but to take it any further was going to require a knowledge of MT that I didn’t have the time or desire to procure. I knew how I wanted things to work, and with my nascent PHP/MySQL abilities, I decided it was time to build the site the way I wanted it built.
So that’s what you see now. The most glaring difference for me now is the lack of a pretty back-end for editing posts. I’ve been editing things directly in the database and most likely will for the foreseeable future. That, and the fact that there’s not a group of people who’s job it is to update and fix bugs in my site’s back-end code will probably be my biggest source of headaches for quite some time.
###Albums###
This was something I’ve wanted to add for a while. Up till now, I had been using [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterbaker/) for grouped photo albums, like from a party or event. Not every photo was worth putting on Treemeat, and would’ve gotten lost in chronology anyways, so Flickr seemed like a decent solution (and it’s pretty fun to use). But every-time I had to send someone different url for photos, when they already knew about Treemeat, it made me want my own version.
This part of Treemeat uses a third-party gallery script, [ZenPhoto](http://www.zenphoto.org). I debated about building my own, but after building the rest of the site I just wanted to get something working. And in this instance, the third-party tool adds something I may not have gotten around too; automatic album building from an uploaded directory of files. FTP a new folder of photos and the next time the Albums section is viewed, the script generates the database rows and creates the thumbnails. Slick.
###Linkin’ Park###
I’d always kind of felt bad when I looked at my server’s referral logs and saw how many people I respected had linked to my site, driving traffic from their popular sites to mine. I might have just simply returned the favor and pasted a link to their sites on a page and had a links page, but in typical fashion, I kept trying to create an overblown, super system of links and categories and ratings. And in typical fashion I didn’t get around to doing it until someone else did it for me. [MySQLicious](http://nanovivid.com/projects/mysqlicious/) is a PHP script that copies your del.icio.us bookmarks to your own servers database. Once all that data was in my own database, I could do whatever I wanted with it, like generating the “Photographers” list based on tags applied to the bookmark (there’s also the added comfort in having this data backed up and in a place that I control). I might be a bit narcissistic to think anyone else cares to look at everything else I bookmark, but this whole site’s more for me anyways, so again, whatever.
The best part; I get to use [Cocoalicious](http://www.scifihifi.com/cocoalicious/), a nice, simple Mac OS X app that views, adds and edits your del.icio.us bookmarks. So now, I’ve got a desktop application that (in a round about sort of way) edits a section of my own site! Geeky yes, but whatever.
###Not quite a blogger###
Text. By no stretch am I anything close to a writer. The last thing I wrote of any substance was a haiku. But I did want somewhere to post a few things that weren’t tied to the photo of the moment, so we’ll see how this pans out.
###Enough with the blah blah###
So, now that I’ve got the site done, will I finally put up some new photos again? Yes. After the last few months of moving to a new state, then to a new apartment, then starting a new job as a [freelancer](http://www.elevatedworks.com), I’m definitely ready to get back to normal. I’ve also been visiting what seems to be the only public color darkroom in the entire Oakland/Berkeley area and I’ve finally seen c-prints from the film shot on my Hasselblad. I’ve fallen in love all over again (I’ll also be selling prints if there seems to be enough interest).
Hopefully the additions make up for the negligence, starting from scratch turned out to be a much larger job than I had anticipated (which it usually does).