Over Break

I will be:

• Coding the html/css of the site, and planning the general page layouts.
• Try out a few jquery plug in's I want to use.
• Finalize tables in database (all are in, just need to make sure they are correct).
• Start redesigning projects for portfolio.

Do we need to keep a blog for portfolio prep?

Approaching the End

If I keep writing on this thing during break, would it count towards next quarter? That would be nice. This quarter was really insane. Never tell any student to take this many classes, let alone the internship. The bonus is the quarter flew by, but I know I didn't put as much into the classes as I want, and normally would do. You know me, I rarely half ass anything, and that's why I want to turn this process book in next Tuesday, to make sure everything is inside and it's fabulous!

Hopefully the click through is sufficient, I can add to it if needed.

layouts

Who would've thought laying out the homepage would take so long? I "think" I want it to look similar to the comp, but I may tweak a bit over the break (or beginning of next quarter). It's just how I want the images laid out and such, no drastic changes (I'm not crazy). I think I need to revisit some of my "competitors" and see how they lay things out. I clearly want to showcase some images on the homepage, but I need text too, and a search box. Which reminds me, I don't think I had a search box on the page in general... maybe I should find some space to squeeze one in? I also think I'm having an "add to cart" button, and I don't have a cart. Something else to think of... clearly I have more pages than I originally though! Lots of work this weekend :)

Click Through

Do people really do something other than powerpoint? I suppose you could still make a bunch of images then use the button coordinates to use html... still seems like more work than ppt!

I'm really happy with this design (aside from the register/login tags), I think the site will look awesome when it's live! Hopefully the code doesn't give me too much trouble, I'd like to keep from turning gray this early in life!

Top Tags

Trying to figure out a good image/location/setup for the register and login tags. The current spot will be the location, I'm just not sure what image/graphic to use. I guess as long as I have a placeholder for the comps it'll be fine for now. I will look over break for the perfect image!

Design Comps

I'm realizing now how much is actually going onto these pages. It's really good, don't get me wrong, I'd rather figure it out now, I just didn't realize exactly how much I had going on these pages. It's insane!

That said I might not use the same exact images in my comps, but I know an image will go there.

To login, or not to login, that is the question

More so to have a separate page to login or to use a slideout div.... I suppose having a separate page I can collect more info from the user, but the div then can be on every page. Hmmm.....

Separate page it is, after doing a little browsing.

Another db table

Photographers might want to get paid.... so I should probably have a table to keep track of when their images are downloaded...

id
photographer
image_id
fee


I'm sure I'll be revising that one... I'm still in design mode and not fully into php/mySQL mode :)

Revised List

1. Design
2. Login
3. Image Uploader
4. Image Display
5. Image Watermark
   
6. Jquery Image Preview
7. Image Details
8. Add to Cart
9. User Profile
10. User Created Folders
    
11. Image Download
12. Image Tagging
13. Tag Cloud

Speaking of uploading....

I was browsing a stock website's contribution section and found they allow ftp uploading... They have the photographers upload the various sized images, and then approve them and add them to their account. I think this will be great long term (when my hubby and I do this after graduation), but for now, I think uploading single images will be my best bet to get content from student photographers.

Content

I'm realizing I'll need to have a working copy of the site up asap, so I can get a few people to login and start uploading their images. I'm pretty sure I can't batch upload (will take too long on my server), so I guess one image at a time will have to be fine. I did a little research on the batch uploading, and it seems more difficult than I thought.

Judith is yelling at me to finish my work (even though it's rendering). More later! I'm feeling better, although still coughing up a storm, so I'll be in class tonight!

Finishing List

I need to finish the comps (2 left), and throw together a power point for the workable copy. Then tweak the process book and I "should" be done. I wanted to try some coding things, but got sick at a VERY bad time. Either way, it'll be done next Wednesday! Over break I'm going to start coding, I don't want to wait until next quarter. I'll have a lot going on as it is!

Next quarter, not that I have any idea what goes on in Portfolio Prep, but assuming I'm just getting my porfolio ready for the review, I plan on working on one project per week. I'm undecided if I should start with the redo's or start with the smaller projects that need little changes. I'll probably start with the difficult redo's, incase they need more work than I think, and I'll need to spend extra time on them.

Ideas

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/inspiration/46-sites-to-get-inspired-and-familiar-with-hand-drawing-style/

That website has a lot of great uses of paperclips, staples, post-its, etc. Hopefully I can add different things in and it'll work smoothly. The hanging logo looks fun right now (I'll find some "string" to add in and see how that looks). I'm very happy I'm going in this direction, I really want to love the design (or I'll hate working on it later and waste time redesigning when I don't have extra time).

Tweaking Design

Going to do the "fun" design, and add some realistic elements. The logo will hang, and I'm in search of a good "string" image and was a bit shocked on what I saw....

Moving on :) I want to use a paperclip somewhere, maybe some staples... I don't want to go into the cheezy realm, but I want to push it as far as I can (I'm fairly certain Judith doesn't think I push things far enough). I'd like a cleaver navigation, but again, don't want to go into the cheezy world.

Really nice this project is two quarters long... Paul Martin told me a year ago to take Sr. Design 1 as early as we can, and try to have a quarter inbetween 1 & 2 to allow you time to work on it. Wish I could've had that!

New Design

Design #4, waiting to get your opinion :) Probably need to do more work on the process book, but I want to get the design nailed down, as I'm having a more difficult time with that at the current moment. I'm much stronger at coding, and right now I'm not fearing the code list, mostly b/c it's not exactly a new technology, just new parts of the technology. Hopefully I can get to trying some of that out tonight!