Fingerprints

Prior to going into internet studio, I didn’t have much of an interest in web design. It had been something I had played around with when I was a young teenager who was just learning about tech and computers, and the sum total of my experience was a small fortunecity site that talked about how awesome Dragon Ball Z and a few of my favorite video games were. It had a layout that used frames, a black background with red text, a “beseen.com” web counter, guestbook, and chatroom, and a half dozen animated gifs on each page. On the main page I proclaimed that “I, lordfirebrand, and the master of this site.” By master I meant webmaster, a term that has nearly gone out of use and is almost comical to state now. All the HTML I knew I learned from an after school class taught by one of my friend’s father that met once a week. The page looked pretty typical of an amateur fan page of the time, but little did I know that I had been programming things incorrectly for years. I actually got into a bit of trouble on our first HTML assignment when running the error check because I was never taught the “alt” tag inside of an “img” element. I thought the header element was just for creating big letters, I had no idea what an ordered or unordered list was, and I used a paragraph element for almost everything. I knew a slight bit of css, which allowed me to put text and images along an X and Y axis, but wrought havoc with my layout anytime the page was viewed in a low resolution or non PC. The only javascript I knew was how to map links on top of images, and the rest I just plain stole from other pages.

It’s amazing how wrongly I was doing things and not even realizing it, and how wrongly I was thinking about HTML in the first place. I had no idea that as a markup language it was defining the meaning of content in such a nuanced way. I was thinking about it and now I have a very different and greatly enhanced understanding of how to build a web page properly, and more importantly, how to go about learning more. One of the most important things I learned in the class was not just tidbits of code and principles required to complete the assignments, but a knowledge of the vast array of resources for expanding my knowledge in the future. I did myself a disservice by not embedding myself in the class until the end, because once I hunkered down and began working on my page it rekindled my interest in web design altogether. Although, like anything involving coding and computers, it could be frustrating at time, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and will continue to build on my webpage in the future. Randy, I sincerely hope that you keep your “professor page” online even if you do not continue teaching so that I may use it as a resource in the future. Actually, I may go ahead and save the pages so I have it on my hard drive.

You know, leading up to giving my presentation I had assumed i’d be way more nervous than I was when I got up there. I’m definitely not the best public speaker and have a tendency to forget my main points when put on the spot, or rush through them too quickly. To my surprise, things went pretty smoothly and I was definitely not the first person to die directly from public speaking.

I’ve got to give props to Ken Landefeld. He built a great website and his presentation was very amusing. He definitely went above and beyond the call of duty when creating kenlandefeld.com, and I’m frankly amazed at how dramatically he altered his starting wordpress theme. The end result of his modifications looked nothing like the initial theme. I share in his desire to keep the website from looking too “bloggy.” Too many website have sort of a generic, almost magazine like look about them and he successfully made his design definitively his. I also got a kick out of his drawing depicting his caricature in a Target uniform. Having worked retail myself, I can identify with his pain.

Another website I particularly like is thesingleplate.com by Megan Edwards. Even though she claims to be nervous about public speaking, she came across as very confident and organized during her presentation. I worked with Megan on a group project last semester in digital imaging, but I had no idea that she used to be a professional chef until this class. I like to cook myself, and fancy myself an amateur chef, so I particularly liked her website and will probably try out some of her recipes one of these days.

The most entertaining presentation to me, by far, was Neil Garcia’s. While I have no idea how he is going to pull off the goals he is setting with exquisiteleisure.com, his charisma during his presentation almost convinces me that he will. Then again, as he pointed out during his presentation, he really only needs one or two customers a year to make a career out of Exquisite Leisure. While what he was proposing sounded a bit too good to be true, listening to him reminded me of the expression, “he’ll outlive us all.”

The “about me/contacts” page is up and has been updated since the presentation, along with a dedicated email account for the website. The links page is also up with several new entries.

The website is integrated using the wordpress theme “thematic.” This should be evident upon visiting the main page. The gallery pages have some kinks to work out. I should have tested them in multiple browsers other than just google chrome.

www.thefingerprint.net

Throughout Paul Boag’s “The website owners manual,” Paul talks about how communications between businesses has shifted from a monodirectional to a multidirectional format. Since it becomes more difficult for companies to control specifically the message that comes out from this two way interaction, many entities are hesitant to engage in it, yet it can be significantly to the benefit of the organization to embrace this multi-mode communication. For one, it creates a body of repeat  site users, who according to paul, can be as much as eight times more likely to purchase products. Users can develop a kind of identification with that company, like they are a part of it. Digg and Apple are examples of this, where users are are almost obsessive in their commitment to those brands. Having a website format that is conducive to open discussion can also reduce the costs of operating the business, as tech support and instructional guides can be handled by the users of the site. Blogging and Podcasting can be effective broadcast tools as they help to develop a more personal relationship between the customer and the company. Newsletters have long been a successful form of broadcast tool, but they are growing less effective over time due to the problems related to over spamming. Feedback tools can include surveys and questionnaires. Moving on to interactive tools that can actively build a community, you can have users rate products, send out emails using a mailing list (which allows a large body of users to receive the same message), you can request community reviews of your products and services (though unfortunately since they require a bit of effort on the part of the user, very few will go through the work to complete them) ,  Allow people to comment on your posts and articles, maintain a forum for user interaction, or a chat room (assuming your community is large enough). User-generated content is in my opinion proof of a committed community. If users love something enough to want to create it themselves, you’ve won.

When I first began planning my website, I had the idea that it was going to cover multiple subjects that interest me. At first I had intended to have multiple sections- The first section was supposed to be an art gallery to display some of the art I have created over my time in college. The second was to be a kind of computer geek repository of information, where I would discuss my thoughts on the benefits and limitations of computer hardware, and be sort of a “buyers guide” to building a computer system from scratch. Lastly, it was going to have a blog that had no particular focus other than to provide information and links to things that I found cool. As time moved forward I realized that this was perhaps too broad in its focus and would be too ambitious to complete and actively maintain. In the end I decided to go with a gallery for the reasons that I haven’t put any artwork on display in a public realm since the website I made when I was a teenager other than some high school and college galleries, and also because very much of my artwork has been damaged over the years, and scanning them and posting them would be a way to immortalize them. At the present time the intended audience is mostly people I know that would care to look at my art, but as my skill and portfolio grow it could eventually act as a supplement to my resume when I start my career.

My design is pretty minimalistic. That could change, but right now I see no reason to have a busy complex design for a relatively small website that is already focused on displaying art.

I originally tried to get the domain fingerprints.com(.net etc.), which was a bit too optimistic seeing as how I just got security companies regarding fingerprint recognition hardware, and a few variations had been squatted by greedy developers. As I explained in an earlier post, my grandfather had set up a correspondence between family members called fingerprints. I settled on thefingerprint.net, which was adequately catchy and still referenced my family history. I can look at at it as reading like “The fingerprint,” meaning my impression on the web, or “The finger print” (with the pause), to suggest a printing press.

The most useful things I learned in the class were css and php, as they are powerful tools for web design. While wordpress is a neat phenomenon, I feel that it stunts creativity and contributed to a homogenization of how websites look.

I still have a lot of work to do before i give my presentation, but I will have woven my different pages together by Friday.

Ok, I got three more gallery pages up. I tried to be a bit more chatty with my descriptions.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Ok, this is probably my busiest weekend of the semester, so it’s a smaller update, but here are two more gallery pages.

link 1

link 2

Ok! I have three new gallery pages uploaded. I intended to have four, but could not locate the piece I intended to scan…

Anyways-

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Task 1 – Gallery page 1

Task 2 – Gallery page 2

Task 3 – Gallery page 3

Task 4 – Gallery pages

Task 5 – Gallery pages

Task 6 -Gallery pages

Task 7 – Integrate into wordpress, or add php to my own design.

Task 8 – An about me page with photo, contact information, and a link to my myspace page. Create an email account on my webserver (ericfinger@thefingerprint.net). Also add a links page with my favorite sites.

Further modifications will be needed, several more gallery pages.