Joe and Jamie’s Blog

Way back in October I told everyone in this post that I was creating a new website for www.joeandjamie.com. Well I finally got around to doing it…somewhat. The previous post talks about getting the URL of the blog updated and changed. That was step one. Step two is the picture gallery, which I have set up and configured. I just have the grueling task of putting descriptions on the categories and the pictures, as well as updating the naming structure (maybe) of the files , uploading all of the files which takes days, AND looking at each picture, rotating the ones that need to be rotated. Doesn’t that just sound like fun? Easy, but horribly redundant and boring work. Gee I wonder why I put it off for so long…..

So the picture gallery is there for you to look at, along with the simple main page to the site with a choice to the blog or the gallery. Go to www.joeandjamie.com and choose either site to enjoy.

I have made a decision to finally start using www.JoeandJamie.com as an actual site and not just a forwarder we tell everyone to visit to get to this blog. What I want to do is have a nice simple page come up with two choices, our photo gallery that I am developing, or this blog. Once I get that set and finish uploading all the pictures to the gallery and organizing them, then I can work more on what I want to do with the blog.

There is only one thing that bugs me about this blog, its the fact that the link is www.joeandjamie.com/blog. I don’t know what possessed me to keep that as the live one, it was only for testing, hence the “2″ part. I really want to make it so its www.joeandjamie.com/blog which matches the blogs title. I know all my hard SEO work will somewhat die off from losing links, but I’ll make sure the mod-rewrite in the .htaccess file works right to redirect it to the correct links. At this early stage I can afford to lose a few back-links, I don’t have too many.

Now that I got that out off my chest, I should talk about the photo gallery. I don’t want to give it away yet, I’ll post the specifics when it is complete. We have always wanted a place online to store and share photos so I decided to create a gallery for them all. I’m in the process of uploading thousands of pictures and organizing them all into albums and categories so the site is nice and navigable.

So stay tuned for more stuff to come, I should have something by the end of the week.

I came across the NextGEN Workpress Plugin tonight. I was looking for something to do a nice gallery or slide show for pictures on the blog. The plugin can be found here. So far I am having an issue getting the thumbnail pagination to work, but if I leave it showing all the images in the post you can click on it and the pagination works for the full image size. It’s pretty cool. To see what it can do/looks like, go to the link above and click on FAQ.

These are some of the features:

• Sortable Albums : Create your own sets of images
• Upload a Zip-File with pictures : Upload pictures in a zip-file (Not in Safe-mode)
• Watermark function : You can add a watermark image or text
• JavaScript Effect : Use any available popular image effect : Thickbox, Lightbox or Highslide
• Multiple CSS Stylesheet : Use a nice shadow effect for your thumbnails with your own CSS file
• Slideshow : Full integrated flash slideshow
• TinyMCE : Button integration for easy adding the gallery tags
• Sidebar Widget : Show a slideshow, random or recent picture at your sidebar
• Language support : Translated in more than 15 languages
• Upload tab integration : You have access to all pictures via the upload tab
• Tag support for images : Append related images to your post
• Meta data support : Import EXIF, IPTC or XMP meta data
• Sort images feature

Well even though it was a horrible day (read previous post), it was still my birthday so I should at least post some pictures of the cake or something.

Here’s the dinky little thing they tried to give me at first, surprisingly good for a tiny cake!

And here is the real deal with the candles. You have to love ice cream cake!