TDH: Portfolio » OrnTales.com

Slowly Getting There with the Redesign

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:57:21 +0000

If you’ve been sitting here reloading tdhedengren.com like a madman today, you’ve probably seen things acting funky, temporarily freaking out (twice), new stuff appearing, disappearing, and then appearing again. In other words, I’ve been messing around a lot today, and I feel I’m getting there. Sure, there’s a lot left to do, but most of the really tricky things are in place. Loads of graphics and visual fixes to take care of, but still, I’m slowly getting there.

This is as far I’m gonna get this week though, as I’m taking the weekend off. I try not to work weekends, and although it is fun to dabble with something like this site, being somewhere in limbo on my work-scale-meter-thingy, it doesn’t change the fact that I need to reload sometimes. I’m not 18 anymore, working 7 days a week, and pulling a few all-nighters every month.

What I’m getting at is that tdhedengren.com will look like this for a little while longer. I hope you can cope. But naturally I can’t leave you at that, so why not talk a bit about what’s yet to come in this redesign?

Urgent Fixes

These things are elements and fixes that I feel is necessary for me to let this redesign go, at least a bit. I won’t feel “done” with my phase 1 work before these are all done.

Visual brushup of search fields
Prettier tag cloud boxes
Prettier sidebar elements (recent comments, links etc.) overall
Remade comment section, just pulled the one from BloggerTalks this time around
Recent Comments and Tweet Tweet at the bottom of the front page needs some lovin’
A network page (it exists, but there’s nothing there)
Natural entry points for static content (i.e. pages, such as stalker, about etc.), totally lacking right now
More visible contact information
More subscription options (blog, fiction, etc.)

There’s probably more, I can’t be expected to remember everything this late in the evening, on a Friday, can I? These should be the most visual things though, other than that I’m sure there’s a lot of CSS classes and more to mess around with. As always.

Upcoming Stuff

I’ve got a bunch of things I want to add to this new version, some are a bit too far into the future, but I think I can mention a few things at least. It’s not a very bright thing to do, really, since this means I’ll have a bunch of readers waiting for things they otherwise didn’t know where coming along. Still, this is my world, so I don’t need to heed my own advice here!

Completely redone portfolio page, with some case studies
Better presentation of the fiction, including series pages
Reader’s guide to the Orn short stories, as well as revamped static pages (current are just imported from OrnTales.com)
The stream, mashing up everything I’m writing/doing online, linked

So yeah, I have plans. There’s more, of course, but I don’t want to bite myself in the tail if I can help it.

Oh, and then there’s a whole lot of content to write as well… I certainly hope that you’re a subscriber?

Possibly Related

Pardon the Mess, it is Temporary

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:14:27 +0000

OK, that’s it for the day. Regular readers are probably stunned by the amount of RSS items, but they are all old, well, almost all. Since I moved from one WordPress install to another, all RSS items went out again, and so did the trackbacks. Sorry about that, but I didn’t do anything funky, just ye olde import/export from within WordPress. It works pretty well, by the way, I endorse it.

I don’t endorse the fact that the category to tag converter won’t let me convert every category though, but I fixed that manually.

As you can see, things are a bit messy at the moment. This is far from done, expect tdhedengren.com evolve during the coming week. I’m away all weekend, so nothing then, but I’ll put some hours in after that.

All OrnTales.com content have been moved to the new Fiction section of this site, and as I said before, the domain points there too.

Other than that, everything visible should work, so happy reading and commenting, as usual. And stay tuned for more. Thanks for your patience.

Possibly Related

OrnTales.com Content Imported

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:06:04 +0000

I’ve improted everything from OrnTales.com to tdhedengren.com, and the domain will point to ~~tdhedengren.com/category/fiction/~~ tdhedengren.com/read/fiction/ for now. Expect better presentation later on. One step closer, today will be all about this site for me.

Possibly Related

Site Work in the Works

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:41:20 +0000

I’m sorry to yet again have to flag for some craziness here at tdhedengren.com. There’s things to be done, mostly behind the scenes at first, but then also in a more public, visual way. I might redirect traffic for some time to make sure that everything can work as it is intended, or I might just deal with it.

Upgrading tdhedengren.com to what it is intended to be is long overdue. There’s no serious portfolio here, despite me making my living designing and blogging/writing for others, and on top of that the current design is just a test run for the Notes Blog WordPress theme that I’ll be releasing whenever I get the chance. An old test run, at that.

You might say I’ve neglected this blog. Yet again. That wasn’t my intention, but as always things seem to happen. Mostly good things this time around, but being the editor of The Blog Herald and Devlounge, along with redesigning both (the latter being up, the former being previewed any day now) is taking its toll. Along with my own projects.

Anyway, I’ll write more on this in the coming hours, days, and weeks, I’m sure. Right now, I’m taking the day (having finished my freelance stuff) to get everything up and running. Hopefully it’ll mean a revamped design as well, I know what I want to do, I just have to style it accordingly. And I’ll be moving orntales.com to the fiction section previously discussed.

I’ll also make a final decision for Feeling Productive. It might not launch after all, since I think I’m taking a slightly different approach to my blogging, with the editorships and all. We’ll see, I’ll blog it, and the content will go in a productivity section here if I should decide on that route.

Stay tuned, and thank you for your patience.

Possibly Related

Consolidating My Fiction Writing

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 09:44:21 +0000

I’ve reached a decision. I will consolidate my fiction writing under one banner, namely a subdomain under tdhedengren.com, the domain hosting the very blog you’re reading. It’ll be a separate entity, this fiction section of my site, since I don’t want to mix things up too much. Many thanks to those who weighed in on this matter in my previous blog post, and also to those who sent me e-mails of encouragements. It’s interesting to note that none was against this move, although some pointed out that the branding of the various worlds, whereas there are such, like Orn would be less persisting should I decide to consolidate the writing. That was also the original idea with OrnTales.com, enforcing the brand further beyond my writing by having it housed on a dedicated site.

No more, soon. I’ll announce my plans in the near future, and perhaps use the Easter holiday free time to setup a temporary site, and move the OrnTales.com content there. It would be nice to start The Green Knight story on its intended place.

Again, thank you for your input, dear readers. I appreciate it!

Possibly Related

Thinking Of Consolidating My Writing

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:36:57 +0000

Having trouble sleeping is sometimes good for you. Last night it seriously got me thinking about my fiction strategy, as I’m getting ready to post the first part of the new short story on OrnTales.com. You see, while I do try to focus my fiction writing on the Orn project, I just can’t do just that, and I feel it is limiting me. Out of nowhere came two new ideas, and I found myself thinking about how to handle them, checking out domain names and such.

It didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that having several OrnTales.com-ish sites focusing on various projects is far from ideal, especially since some of my writing is more miscellaneous and not attached to a specific setting.

So I’m thinking maybe I should consolidate it all under one roof, a site dedicated to publishing my writing? What do you think?

Possibly Related

March 2008 Goals, Half-Way There Edition

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:05:31 +0000

I realize that this post is a little late, but I figured I’d try a new way to put some healthy (as opposed to evil) pressure on myself, with public goals. So here they are, my goals for March 2008!

Finish and deliver four (4) client designs!
Reach beta for version 2.0 of my Swedish blog network template.
Closed beta for the Notes Blog theme. I’ll be offering it to a select few bloggers, to see how it fares.
Get BloggerTalks up to speed after my moving the office this weekend.
Publish part 1 in The Green Knight short story over at OrnTales.com.
Move the office!
~~Move my home!~~ Oh, I already did that…
Get the last photos from Japan up on my Flickr account.
Deliver the last freelance articles from my trip to Japan.

As you can see, I have a few things to do this week. It’s not as bad as it looks though, since I’ve planned ahead and everything.

Oh, and I have to plan April as well. That’s going to be an interesting month…

Possibly Related

Happy Holidays! (OrnTales.com will be back soon)

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:30:26 +0000

I’d like to wish you all Happy Holidays, and thanks for reading the Quest for Knighthood story. I’ll be back in the middle of January with some Orn related articles and writing. The new stort, titled The Green Knight, will begin in February, most likely.

Make sure you subscribe to updates so that you don’t miss out on anything Orn.

Again, Happy Holidays!

Possibly Related

The Quest for Knighthood story is done

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:01:17 +0000

Yes, you read it correctly. Part six of the Quest for Knighthood story is wrapping it up. Painful, isn’t it?

The next story here on OrnTales.com, because we’ll have more of course – that’s the whole idea – will also feature the green-haired knight Stiel. I won’t be publishing the first part until early 2008 though, due to the Holiday’s and a short vacation. Actually, I won’t even give you a date at this time, so if you’re really psyched about what’s coming up, be sure to subscribe to updates.

That being said, there are a few other things coming along here, such as reading tips, comment functionality, and something else…

Oh, and the name of the next story – the one coming early 2008 – will be The Green Knight. It’s mapped out and partly written, although I’m planning a rewrite of parts of the storyline.

Possibly Related

Computer’s well, I’m not

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:20:11 +0000

Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m ill and I don’t have it in me to do the final edit on part five in the Quest for Knighthood story. I’ve saved it from my computer, but that’s about it.

Stay tuned for an update any day now. I just need to get a hour of clear mind from the fever and it’s up!

Sorry for keeping you waiting. I feel really bad about that…