mikeberryart.com

I think I’ve got my blog completely up and running. I’ve got the galleries working, random artwork on the sidebar, the ability to post pictures within my posts, a blog roll, and all elements skinned (or “themed” as WordPress says) with html and CSS control of it all. All that is left is regular updates and maybe a few extra pages here or there.

I found some more of my work while looking through the art room, so I took some pictures and uploaded it here. It’s just a few works from a session with Natalie Nicole, and two gesture drawings with another model, but it’s something. I’ve added some of them to this post for fun.

I hope to start drawing again now that things are looking more stable at work. It didn’t make sense to hire and pay models when my income was in question. It should be easier now that this blog is out of the way as well. Getting it “finished” in my eyes has really consumed all of my efforts, but I suppose it was good timing seeing as how working on it is free and I was worried about my finances.

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At last, my gallery is finally live! Every two steps toward this goal seemed to be followed by one step backward. It's this NextGen Gallery that I'm using. It has an amazing back-end (just like your mom, -- zing!), but it's just so overly complicated and difficult to tweak. I feel that I have managed to massage it into working with my theme, but there are still a few bugs and features that are not yet working. For instance, I haven't yet tested attaching a single pic to a post such as this one. All things in due time though. First, I want to finish notating the works in my gallery, and then I want to get my blog roll going. Following that, I might work on the rest of the gallery functions. We'll see.

Oh, and also take a look at the page I created covering the details of modeling work. I send something similar to every model that expresses interest in working with me. I've built up its contents over time by just writing down the answers to the questions I receive, so really it was nothing to port it over to html, and give it a bit of a navigation menu.

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I’ve made great progress on my galleries.  I’ve completely skinned them to match my theme, and I’ve added room in the layout for a description.  The only remaining tasks are to make the css work with IE6, and tweak the “album” page.  Once those are done, then I’ll be able to install the gallery plugin here on my main blog.  I’m not quite sure how to solve the IE6 problem, so even though there isn’t much left to do, it might take a while.

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Well, this gallery thing is going to take longer than I thought. I’m trying to modify it somewhat to both match my theme, and to allow me to post longer descriptions with my images. Unfortunately the javascript that loads the images is kicking my ass. I may have to call in the big guns on this one (meaning Seth).

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I’ve found a gallery manger/generator that I think will meet my goals. It’s the NextGEN Gallery by Alex Rabe. It’s extremely popular, and integrates exceptionally will with the WordPress backend.  I have to say that I’m impressed.  It doesn’t do everything my heart desires, but I can’t imaging anything will unless I make it myself.

I’m testing it on my test site now, and I think it will work for me.  Before I make it live though, I’ll need to tweek it a bit to get it to mesh with my theme better.  Then comes editing and resizing the images that will live in the gallery.  Once that is all done, the gallery will go live.  I’m guessing it will only be a few days, depending on how well this project holds my attention.

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