Skin of Stars

Over the last few weeks Mike Robinson and I have discussed and decided an SVN restructuring for improving our build and deployment processes. I would encourage you to read a bit more about that (and various other geekness) at his blog.

So I’ve spent this week moving our company hosted SVN from Beanstalk to Springloops. I feel I’ve been swinging between hell and zen, but the learning has been awesome. As a summary of what I’ve found I thought I’d give a quick walk through how I did it.

Most of this stuff was the usual dump/load cycle, but there are a couple of things which needed some extra attention.

Firstly, both Beanstalk and Springloops have the ability to export and import SVN dumps via easy-to-use web interfaces. This really could be as easy as download, upload. Try that first.

We had a couple of problems though. Previously we had a mishmash of company repos and project repos; these had to be merged and sorted. We also had different usernames on each system(!) which meant that during an import previous commits were not matched to current system users.  The author attribute needed to be updated for all previous revisions.

This was all done on OS X, but should be applicable to any Unix-like with the appropriate libraries, etc.  So we’ve got our dump from Beanstalk, now we just need to create a local repository to do our work on (always work on a backup!!).

$ svnadmin create --pre-1.4-compatible newrepo

We use the pre 1.4 compatible flag to overcome files system changes within SVN between versions. These changes can potentially cause errors (svn: Expected FS format ’2′; found format ’3′) when propset-ting revision histories, in my case, author/committer names.

Next job, import your dump file.

$ svnadmin load newrepo < dumpfile

If you’re looking to do the merging, as I was, then you want to make yourself a directory in your repository (usual ’svn mkdir’ commands) and then load it in the following fashion:

$ svnadmin load newrepo --parent-dir myfolder < seconddumpfile

Ok, we’ve done our merging, now we’re going to update our author histories.  Now the SVN manual gives you information on doing this one version at a time with a propset.  It also talks about other recursive actions such as deleting files, which isn’t our concern.  For changing authors, I found a tidy script called svn-author-tweak.py from CollabNet.

If you want to give your repository a check before you upload it, just checkout to a local test.

$ svn co file:///path/to/newrepo /path/to/test/repo

Once that’s done, dump the file.

$ svnadmin dump newrepo > my.dumpfile

Upload

???

Profit

Hey all, just a quick one today. I just had a job interview and I was asked the question “which design websites do I frequent”? I ummed and erred a little before mentioning Digg and Slashdot. Not very design focused I know (except maybe Digg’s design section). I also said that I trawl the blogs for Ideas, which is true. I neglected to mention one of my favourite sites though, one which each and every one of you should have in your Feed Reader: A List Apart. I love that site and I felt a little ashamed for forgetting it, so as penance I am reminding you all to check it out.

Hey All,

I’ve decided to do a blog hack in a day and here you see the result. I was struggling with Drupal as a blogging platform, and frankly an anything platform, so I decided to move to the decidedly easier Wordpress. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with Drupal, it’s a great platform. The problem is that it’s built for so many tricks that you have to give it a real shove when you want something simple. For example, handling images. On a content sytem one would have thought that would be an obvious feature, but with drupal you have to go get a plugin. Madness I tell you! Not that getting Wordpress means I’ll be bloggin frantically, but it makes life a lot easier.

So here is how I got from Drupal 6 to Wordpress 2.7 in a day:

1. Backup the Drupal database & import the data into Wordpress

Moving around between platforms is quite common, so you’ll often find a script to aid you in moving database info from one structure to another. Wordpress has many such scripts built in for many platforms, but for Drupal I got my assistance from Mike Smullin. I had to make some minor changes, for example I added this SQL statement to change my Drupal post_type ’story’ to Wordpress’s ‘post’

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_type = REPLACE(post_type,’story’,’post’);

Pretty easy stuff really. If you’re going to do it yourself, make sure you do it locally on backup copies. I hosed a few before I got it right.

2.Theme Hack

Ahh yes, the inevitable theme quandry. I had thought about what I wanted Skinofstars.com to look like for a while, but I wanted to do it reasonably quickly as I hate it when these things hang around. My layout plan was simple enough. Only one or two blog posts on the front page with info on my other nettyness, like tweets. I also knew that I’d want access to other pages (as you find in the Further section.. not sure on that name). So I searched some Wordpress themes and came across Grid Focus. It seemed to have the right level of minimalism that I was looking for as well as reasonably suitable layout. In order for it to work for me though I had to make a few hacks including some JQuery magic to include my further section (hope you like the transitions) and some layout hacks for the differences between a narrow and wide content column (you’ll see if you view this in single/comments mode).

3. Content Update

Probably one of the most time consuming parts. Much of my old content was Uncategorised for no reason and lacked any tags. Many posts from back in the Blogger days didn’t even have a title. I went through almost all of them (I’ve taken a break from the 1996 stuff) and finally managed to put these years of outpourings into some kind of order.

4. Update to server

Well, that’s just a bit of FTP and MySQL. Job done.

I’m preemptively titling this post as Boxfire 1 as I know there is more info to come. My dissertation produced a website, or should I say that I have produced a website for my dissertation. Either way, it’s a collaborative news filter for Oxford that relies on user interaction to find the most important news story for the area. Please try it out and tell me what you think:

http://boxfire.co.uk

I’ve been looking at some interesting research regarding the manner in which users read web pages. I’d come across click mapping previously (links below), software that records where users click, but the Nielsen Norman Group’s eye tracking study follows where users actually look. Though their study tends to focus on commerce aspects (how much do users look at your adverts?) it is also fascinating stuff for those of us wanting to create clean and clear designs.

First thing that’s worth noting, users rarely spend time looking where you want them to. They tend to follow common patterns, the most notable being the F pattern (a couple of quick horizontal scans of the page as we head down it). This means it is for us, the designer, to be aware of this and place our most important content in these areas. One might argue that a regular visitor would know where the most important information on a site is held, yet anyone with any sense knows that we want to make a site clear for everyone.

Now for banners and adverts/promotions. I’m not going to say how to get people to read them (in fact, I’d recommend getting AdBlock Plus to just cleans the web of them!), but if you want to ensure people read all information on your page then make sure that it doesn’t look like an advert. Users have an automatic tendency to ignore anything that looks like a promotion.

Next up I’ll point to Nielson’s study on how pages are read. The key point is that people don’t read, they scan. If you want to make life easy then you could put important anchor words in bold to aids the reader down the route you’d like them to take. When you’re marking this up in HMTL consider whether you should use the ‘b’ or the ’strong’ tags. Are you merely creating a visual guide (b/i) or do you want to emphasise a word (strong/em)?

The final point I’ll pick up from Nielson is his discussion on screen sizes. Nothing surprising here, most people use 1024×768, that’s a laptop widescreen. One thing I’d like to add to is the misconception that laying out a web page is like laying out for a newspaper or a magazine. Screen sizes and resolutions are not fixed, there is no ‘above the fold’, like we find in newspapers. Even different choices of preferred system fonts or different browsers have an impact on where the cut-off will be on different machines. Interestingly, Neilson does point towards making site layouts fluid for different. Though I don’t consider this such a hard n’ fast rule, I’d like to point you CSS monkey’s 456 Berea St’s article on elastic layouts.

That’s it for this week folks. Happy building.

Some further linkage:

* A wordpress clickmap: http://www.rogerstringer.com/projects/wpclickmap

* A more general use clickmap using PHP and JQuery: http://css-tricks.com/tracking-clicks-building-a-clickmap-with-php-and-jquery/

* Strong or Bold? http://www.think-ink.net/html/bold.htm

I was recently contact by Parker Jones to see if I could add to the development of http://activethanet.com, a wiki site dedicated to clubs and societies in Thanet. I thought to myself, what a great idea, just add yourself. Still, seeing as I don’t live in Thanet anymore I wasn’t sure how I could help, I could think of no other clubs to add. I’d like to be helpful though and I saw my chance in their FAQ. He suggests that people create their own site and then get that added to the list. It really is very easy to do and needs little technical skill, especially if you are using a service like GooglePages or Webs. These are easy enough to do, but in my opinion lack a something important, your own .com/.co.uk address. What you can do though is get a .co.uk address from a domain registrar and then get it to just forward to your Google Sites webspace. I’ve used uk2.net as my registrar for years, but others I know have recommended 1&1 who also do an easy site builder. It’s always worth having a look around though, it will cost you maybe £15 a year, which is little more than a cheap night out and gives a definite ‘pro’ factor. If you really want some cheap hosting with loads and loads of geeky goodies then I’d recommend a look at Dreamhost, you won’t get the greatest search rankings, but they give you loads of space (off-site storage perhaps?) and do include one click installs for popular software like Wordpress (blogging) and MediaWiki (same as Wikipedia).

If you want to host your own site (not a GooglePages type thing) and still keep your site up in the rankings then then you really need to use a UK hosting server, especially if you are using a .co.uk extension. Maybe then consider shared hosting like 1&1, who have UK servers. Naturally we are spiraling up in cost here, next steps are Virtual Private Servers (VPN) from £15 a month all the way up to dedicated servers where the sky really is the limit. It really depends on whether you are serious about visibility or thinking of this as a business or hobby.

Lets take a look at http://oonagi.co.uk which has been around for eight years, they are hosted on shared server-space with Dreamhost in California, a google search for “oonagi” brings them top, a search for “Thanet music” brings them in 4th, for “Thanet gigs”and nothing till page 3! That has cost about £40 per year, it would probably be a little more but the cost is offset by sharing its space with other sites. Now there are some SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) issues there to start with which could bring them up the rankings, but still it provides a gauge as to cost/visibility balance.

If one thinks about it though, where does traffic come from on a local focused site like a club or society. It is going to be links from other local sites, like Active Thanet or some of the blogerratti (EastcliffRicahard, BigNewsMargate). So to conclude, you can do yourself a free site using any number of web services, just contact some people, get yourself linked and they will come.

EDIT: correction to Active Thanet link.

I’m now in the last few weeks of the rundown to the end of the semester, which means I’m crazy busy. This also means that I don’t really have anything prepared for todays post. I’ve decided to just post a collection of what I thing are cool links and you can spend your time there:

http://www.maninthedark.com/

http://www.xkcd.com/

http://www.activethanet.com/

http://www.digg.com/

http://www.delicious.com/

Just a quick one today. It seems that cookies are more than just tasty little treats. I’ve never advocated all-out removal of internet cookies, they are useful way to save you time when you are on the internet. They generally have a Time To Live and are restricted as to how much information they can store. More often then are just used as a marker for websites when you return so they can help you carry on where you left off. Of course, if you really want to rid yourself of them then it’s generally a very easy process… Not so with Flash cookies. To be honest, I only learnt about them from a recent Slashdot article. Alas, you can’t just delete these in the way you can a normal cookie. They also have the ability to store far more information and don’t have the option for an unlimited Time To Live. Not cool at all! Still, you are able to delete them, but only through Macromedia’s website using a flash GUI. Personally, I feel this leaves a more pressing issue though, if we can only delete them through Macromedia’s website, who is controlling what they put on your machine. Yet another black mark against proprietary systems.

What am I driving at with a revamp of a blog that I once killed? Well… I always wanted an area of the net I can call my own. I’d registered skinofstars.com some time ago but I’d never really got round to sorting it out. In the end I just annoyed myself, this is my bit so I really should have a little ‘me time’. So here we have it, a revamped skinofstars.com. As I’m sure you can tell, the blog is now the front page and I intend to update regularly. When I say regularly, I mean every Monday by noon. What I’ll be saying I’m not sure, but I think some consistency is very important right now so I’m going to stick with that regardless. If you want to follow without the need for a visit then subscribe to this page’s RSS using http://www.skinofstars.com/rss.xml http://skinofstars.com/feed

See you next Monday

This Drupal install has been replaced with Wordpress

I’ve just added some more sections to the site.

Social – covers various social networking sites.
Net Work – this section is like a portfolio of my work on the internet (job please!).
Geekness – a section where I can while away time on my more general interests in computing, expect lots of open source zealotism.
Further – bit like a misc section, but I feel a little funny about filing the rest of my life under miscellaneous, so I called it Further

This was a framework that I came up with a month or two back and I think best sums up the point of having a site dedicated to myself (bar ego, of course). It should make it easy for me to add to the site with notes and information I have written for myself and others. I hope this is now to be the encompassing personal site I’d always wanted.