redesign

Hello? Can Anyone Hear Me?

Hey there. Long time no see! If you’re reading this post on the actual site, you’ll see I’ve gone through a bit of a redesign. Also check out the new domain name! Spiffy eh? I plan on getting back to my roots and publishing what I want to publish instead of obeying an audience. I’ve had alot of things on my chest but have had no where to publish them. Jeffro2pt0.com built an audience expecting WordPress stuff, icons, news, with a mix of personal stuff. Now, Jeffc.me will be all about me. No barriers, no constraints, just saying what I want, when I want.

So what I’m wondering is, can anyone hear me? Are you still around?

What A Busy Week

I am pretty excited to know that I am almost finished with my 32 hour work weeks at the grocery store. At least, for the time being and everything continues to go well with freelancing. The grocery store will serve as a crutch in case things in the freelancing world cave in. This past week, I published an interview on BloggerTalks.com with Steve Hodson, published a great post that was welcomely received by the Performancing community called 7 Tips On Building Relationships Through Blogging, produced a fun open mic edition of Perfcast and to top it all off, produced an hour and a half WordPress Weekly with Jane Wells were we covered a ton of ground related to WordPress 2.7.

WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 is out and ready for the publics consumption. November 10th looks like the date for a release candidate while the end of November is aimed for the actual release of 2.7. I am going to bite the bullet and work on getting my content from my Jeffc.me domain and the content on Jeffro2pt0 back into one file and then import that into a new installation of WordPress, that being 2.7 beta 1. Then, I’m going to work on slimming down the theme and installing one plugin at a time and get back to the basics.

One of the subtle changes I am going to make is to remove the FeedBurner graphic. I was having a discussion with Andrew Rickmann on the WordPress Weekly after show and I was talking to him about going back to the basics and how I am getting to the point of doing things my way instead of the popular (what the rest of the blogosphere is doing) way.  So, I’ll remove the graphic because I don’t care to see it everyday. I’ll check in from time to time but it is not a priority for me anymore. My priority is to clean this place up, highlight my freelancing work and then publish content on a regular basis by treating this blog as if it was my Tumblr account. That means, publishing links to articles that interest me, sometimes I’ll write a long form article, opinionated pieces, bits of my personal life, random thoughts, etc.

I just feel that it is time for me to reclaim this blog as my own and no one else’s. While I enjoy writing content for people, I always enjoy writing content for myself and getting my thoughts from my head, out into the open. I want to get back to the point in time of where I can freely express myself without thinking about the boundaries I have placed on this blog by writing for others.

Will I still talk about WordPress and Web 2.0 and all that other stuff? Of course I will, as I see fit, but don’t expect this site to be an authoritative figure in any subject. I want to converse with people and discuss things, concepts, ideas, whatever. So, that will be the focus of the site after I have reformatted it. Along with the reformat, I plan on doing a redesign but it will not be anything drastic. I’m tired of spending 17 hours each time I redesign the site. I’ve always been a fan of forests and so, that is the theme I am going to head towards with the redesign.

For those that will continue to ride the train of life and blogging with me, its time to move on to the next stop. For everyone else, you can get off here. But don’t forget to send me a postcard :)

Talkshoe Client Receives A Major Face Lift

talkshoe.com logoThis weekend was a big weekend for Talkshoe as they completely redesigned their client. The new client contains quite a few new features as well as ShoePhone integration.

The new client now has an area on the right which showcases information related to the talkcast. Underneath that box, is a mini user profile that users can see at a glance. The overall design is a bit more streamlined than before and in my opinion is a welcome change. Other enhancements include:

  • Text Wrapping When Chatting
  • Integrated ShoePhone
  • Anonymous Calling

The new client did introduce at least one new bug. When users copy a link from the chat window and paste it into their browser, instead of a link, a random number is pasted. Talkshoe is aware of the issue and will be releasing a hotfix within the near future.

Below are two different screen shots. The first one, is the Talkshoe client before the upgrade. The second, is the Talkshoe client as it is today. Click on the images to see a larger version.

Before:

After:

Pardon My Dust

Blog Construction
I have spent the past 24 hours redesigning this site. I wasn’t too happy with the top half of the site as well as the sidebar. I also wanted to change the sites appearance as I am going to start blogging about more subjects rather than strictly adhering to Web 2.0. As I become more involved in the blogosphere, I am generating new opinions and knowledge that I want to share. I also wanted to give the blog a personal look and apply a personal feel.

It was a painstakingly long process, filled with problems. At times, the site looked like a complete mess which was viewable to anyone who visited the site. Instead of doing all of the changes locally, I decided to make live edits, something I discourage anyone from doing if you want to keep traffic flowing to your site. I’m still messing around with a few different design elements but for the most part, the redesign is finished.

Let me know what you think!

CNN Hops On The 2.0 Bandwagon

CNN Redesigns Their Site With A Web 2.0 LookCNN.com launched their redesigned web site over the weekend. The new site features one-page integrated story-telling, the largest Flash video player of its kind, local coverage, better weather, blog links, commenting, and free live video for breaking news.

Judging by the comments on the BehindTheScenes CNN Blog, quite a number of people do not like the redesign. Not surprising, considering people do not like the idea of change, especially after they have become accustomed to a certain way of seeing things.

The new CNN site definitely has a clean look but I am not too keen on the amount of gray and white used through out the site. I think if CNN wanted to really impress their viewers, they would make CNN an editable start page. Using Ajax and all sorts of other Web 2.0 goodness, CNN could of allowed users to disable or enable widgets which contained different sections of the news. By using this method, CNN probably could of pleased the majority of people by allowing the customization of the main page so that users would only see items that they were interested in. At the very least, they could of created a minimize/maximize feature on the different modules located on the front page. With that being said, I must also add that the video player on CNN is very nice! The video area is large and the quality of the video footage seems to be pretty good.

Visit CNN.com to check out their new design. When your done, come back here and leave an opinion.