Whoa ho ho. Look at this. I’ve been working on this website off and on (in equal parts) for about 2 months now. Despite the challenges, or maybe because of them, it has been a fun project. This is the sort of project that requires focus, attention to detail, patience, dedication, good music, an occasional beer and a really sweet mohawk. Tonight the music is courtesy of TV On the Radio - Dear Science. The mohawk has been gone for a while and a single bottle of Rolling Rock will have to do.
There were times during the project when I wondered, “Will I ever write that welcome message?”. I’ve attempted this project many times over the years, but have never felt as close or satisfied as I am now. Why? I’m not exactly sure. I think it’s because this time, I started with a design I found visually appealing and forced everything else to conform. Yeah. That must be it.
This site is dedicated to you, my friends, my family, random internet wierdo. Enjoy your visit.
If you would like to be notified of changes (blog updates, new photos, etc..) just hit the Subscribe link up top, or click here.
Until next time.
Aaron
Blog: I am pretty pleased with the integration of Wordpress into my site. I’ve managed to get the most recent blog post (you’re veiwing it now) out of the Wordpress directory and onto the home page. I’ve decided to not allow logins or registrations for the time being. I will allow comments without registration. On the note of comments, I need to investigate how they are handled and displayed. I’m not entirely sure I like how it’s setup at the moment, but this will be a project for another time. I think it’s time to move on to a couple of other sections.
Photos: I haven’t put enough time into figuring out how I want to handle my photos. I don’t even really have a concept in mind yet. With the blog in place, I might be able to integrate my Photos via Wordpress. I’ve always liked the yawnarific idea of a daily photo. I may use the Wordpress install for that and use the Photos section of the main menu as a means of sharing some of my favorite photos I’ve taken over the years. If I go with a photo album format, I’d really like something easy to navigate and very well organized. I might have to investigate how I can tag photos so they are searchable by content.
Music: This section of the site really lacks concept. It’s been a while since I’ve played or recorded any of my own music so I don’t know that I need a section of the site dedicated to it. The original thought was I would put anything music related in here. I’d like to share some of my musical interests on the site, but I think I can handle this within Wordpress now (kind of like album reviews).
There are a few place holders hanging around the site here and there. I’ll tackle these in order of priority. I’m still trying to keep with my deadline of having the site ready by the end of November. Just in time for snowboarding 
Aaron
This post has been modified to contain my personal To Do list for the site:
- Add a link back to main blog page from Archived and Searched sections.
- Customize the 404 page (maybe make it notify me when it’s triggered?)
- Hitcounter…not sure about visibility
- Further Automate subscription notifications
- Enable RSS on WordPress (really just need link)
- http://www.toadly.com/blog/?feed=rss2
- Format the Search box in the “Other Tools” section
- Create categories
- Delete all these bogus posts
- Link Most recent blog post to replace home page content
- Check all existing Page Titles - should read “toadly: title”. Many pages are wrong.
- A lot of the static pages have default Sub Menus. That’s lame.
- Investigate “keep alive” script to keep initial page reload times low
- Set default pages on subfolders (”/photos” for example)
- Some pages are missing the subscribe link