murf-STUFF 4.0
If you’re just joining the party, you haven’t missed much since the party’s been dead for over half a year…
I last updated murf-STUFF, ART or anything in Nov. ‘06. Considering the terrible fact that is currently June ’07, my guilt for lack updating has finally caught me. First, I’ll explain the overly long hiatus of doom (my longest to date).
In October, I got a job as a web developer type guy. I still have that job. It’s good, fun, and I enjoy it despite the level of annoying it can bring sometimes. I digress. In January, I moved from my Dad’s to my Mum’s. Around this same time… I did something I’ve come to regret to some degree. I got back into World of Warcraft. So, my spare time became involved with running around Azeroth hurling firey balls of Gnomish death at creatures of various shapes and sizes, and screw the ones that resist me. This bout of WoW ran me into May. Wherein, finally… after years playing MMO’s of varying types wherein I’ve been Tarutarus, Gnomes, Superheroes, Supervillains… and usually of the sort that blows things up with magical vigor, my interest in such thing had waned.
That brings us to now. This chronological juncture at which we are poised. Not confined to digital halls of glory I once spent my time prancing about, my creative juices started flowing again finally. But sadly, there is nothing to show for my extended abscence. I mean seriously… nothing. Nada, zip, zilch. Okay… so maybe I’ll have a few doodles… but otherwise nothing. I can offer no words that express my internal shame.
So, in the odd hope of compensating for this tragedy, I’ve opted to hit the guns, and decided that like times past my grand re-arrival should coincide with a new site design. Ya likes? I do. It's simple, yet looks good. The simple touch of light gradients can work wonders eh? So take a browse around STUFF, and see what you think. Once you're done… I implore you to take a look at murf-ART, if you're an old visitor, you'll love it.
Aside from murf-ART's new design (not just a rehash of the old design that's been sitting around since April 2004, but a WHOLE NEW look), there was a lot of “under the hood” work in the PHP and MySQL end of things. I basically had to re-enter all my old entries as I amalgamated my “main_art” and “daily_art” tables into one single database table. Re-entering 448 entries was annoying… but still not the level of annoying that I used to undertake to update murf-ART in the days before I knew PHP.
Now, for my little jewel I'm so proud of. Browsing murf-ART's massive catalog is now totally different. Where in ages past, you could ONLY browse by the category of art (Color, Sketch, Daily, etc) you can now browse everything, and specify certain criteria to browse by. Want to browse by categories (the old way)? No prob. Browse all the stuff pertaining to Intentionally Left Blank? You can do that too! Instead of just a thumbnail listing, the new browse page can be sorted, picked and poked at to get at what you want to look through, and even when you enter the display, it holds your criteria as it lists things by what you set. It took some doing, but it works GREAT! (or at least I think it does, let me know if you think otherwise). Also, Flash animations have weaseled their way into murf-ART somehow.
So, murf-STUFF and ART are brand new again. ILB is in the works (again). Once my coding is done, I hope to tackle some other projects to add in. So who knows. Other things I'd like to add would be a photo gallery, maybe see the return of Nocturnal Studios… possibly get crack-a-lacking on something else all together.
But before I go to let you wander off (if you haven't already), I've got a few last things to discuss. If you're reading this… that means that I've moved. No… I still live in VA, but murf-STUFF has left its home at FuitadNET and joined it's brother (murf-DESIGNS) at Dreamhost. I'm excited cause Dreamhost offers much more than my old host, and at a MUCH better price. More space, more bandwidth, better support and much nicer user control panel… but enough of that.
Last thing is some items of note about the current state of the site.
Internet Explorer users! I'm talking to YOU! I have not had the time or chance to attend to whatever design issues IE may need to handle differently then Firefox or Safari (the two main browsers I use). I'll get to that in time, but if there is a problem, please feel free to let me know in… well… that brings me to item 2.
Forum. The old forum from my old host was under constant assault from spam bots. Rather then transfer it over, I'll be making a new one to purge it. Once it's up, there will be a “Problems / Bugs / Suggestions” area for the purpose for items of issue to brought to my attention, along with other sections.
That's it! Now be free my visitor. Go explore the newness!
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