8+ Hours Hacking on Sound Noir
I went on marathon sessions working on Sound Noir last night and today.
It started out with my searching for an email announcement list service last night. I didn’t spend a ton of time looking, because the offering from Campaign Monitor looked so good that after exploring it I called off the hunt. Because we have yet to send an announcement, and as I’m currently the only subscriber, I’ll have to describe in better detail what it’s all about after I’ve had more opportunity to play with it.
After getting an account with Campaign Monitor I quickly added a sign up form to the sidebar at SoundNoir.net. That was easy enough, and as there was still a lot of vacant space in the sidebar, I started filling that out, first with links to podcasts and sites that are in line with us, then by adding syndication links.
I decided that we’d better get setup with FeedBurner before we have anybody subscribing, so I put time into creating feeds for posts and comments within FeedBurner. Through a page in the WordPress codex, I found Feed Icons which I tweaked a bit to match the color palette of the site. Building syndication links will require a bit more time once we get our first podcast cued up, so I’ll be writing a subsequent post detailing the way I craft the feed for consumption through iTunes; I’ve already got a plugin in mind that’ll allow for custom meta data and images for each episode.
While I was spending all this time integrating various services, it seemed appropriate to get Google Analytics dialed. Basic. Not much to speak of there.
Taking a break from tinkering, I took the opportunity to finally write the post announcing Andrey’s win in the Little White Earbuds Mix Competition. This is where things kinda broke down. So you understand the dilemma, take a look at the following screenshots:
keep scrolling…
See what I mean? No, I didn’t think so. When I showed the design I’d implemented to Andrey and Jacob last week, they weren’t feeling the three column layout, with the post’s title and meta data off to the left. It was a quick fix to extend the title and its bottom border across the top of the post, and when I’d done it, things looked decent. I was surprised, and everyone was happy. What happened this morning was I uploaded the first image to the site. The image basically fought the title creating a jumbled mess at the top of the post. Now you see what I mean… you probably don’t care, but these are the little details I like to get lost in.
What I’ve done to build my case is to duplicate the theme and tweak one version back to use the distinct three columns. I’ve uploaded these screenshots to Flickr for illustration, but can easily load both versions in adjacent tabs to prove my point. Pray for me.
I’ve had enough of the site for now. So I’m turning my attention to business cards and laying out the mailer, in that order. We’ve got to start driving people to the site, and without business cards, it’s tough to do at parties where people’s attentions easily wander.
