…I’ve been so busy lately, it seems only right to mention a few of my latest projects:

• I’ve been developing a Usability Plan for the college site. This is basically a document that outlines a specific procedure for testing how easy the site is to use. It’s a preliminary step that can really help out later on as we consider doing redesigns of various parts of the site. I’ve been using Steve Kreug’s wonderful reference to base much of the procedure and theory on.
• I’ve also been looking into various portal technologies for use by the college. The main requirement has been to find one that supports the JSR Portlet spec. I spent a week trying to set up a bare-bones implementation of JASIG’s uPortal. What a waste of time. Documentation is almost 0% and what is there is generally out of date. Plus, everything is in Java. Now, I’m not anti-Java; it’s just not my strong suit. If I’m going to muddle through something, I might as well be muddling through it at a higher level. So, I’ve been looking into some alternate possibilities. One of them is a .NET-based portal that fully supports the JSR Portlet spec. Woot!
• I’m finishing up work on a long-overdue project from last summer for a family-client. It is an osCommerce-based online store. Full browsable catalog, user pages, custom layout, search, shopping cart, PayPal integration. Honestly, osCommerce is doing all of the grunt work, I’m pretty much just doing design/admin type stuff, but at this point, it’s a labor of love. I’ll link it when it’s finished. It will be a nice addition to my portfolio…translation: never again! ;)
• There have been some twinklings in the back of my mind and the front of my computer screen that GloryFish.org may be seeing an update in the nearish future. This will be more along the lines of a major overhaul as opposed to a cosmetic adjustment. Expect to see some strange things when it’s all done. Don’t quote me on any of this, but Brian and I have been tossing around words like Content Management, End-User Customizability, and Webcomic. I’m not planning on revealing much more than that or really any concrete details at all before the new year begins. Winter break will give me the time I need to sit down with Brian and really hash out some of our key architectural goals for the site. After that we’ll take some community input and begin the graphic/UI design phase, content creation, testing, debugging…it’s really a big deal actually.

That being said, I think lately I’ve been experimenting with letting the site drift on its own for a while. No front page updates, minimal blogging, etc. I guess I wanted to see how badly the site would behave if I didn’t play with it. It turns out that few people actually care if I’m involved because my traffic has continued it’s slow steady increase into the holidays despite my lack of interaction. Stunning.

I suppose the biggest need that will be addressed with the aforementioned overhaul will be how I, personally, interact with the site. Right now static pages are straight HTML and the photo gallery is an FTP upload. While a good setup for learning, it’s too cumbersome for regular quick updating. I need to build myself a powerful, streamlined CMS. The benefit of doing that, is I can then extend the same functionality to my users, but methinks I speak to much.

Silence all, now go to sleep, the water’s free, the well is deep, how can we return that which we never could earn?

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