http://www.dapacreative.com/blog/ en dan@dapacreative.com Copyright 2010 2010-07-28T21:17:40+00:00 http://www.dapacreative.com/blog/entry/taming_top_news_on_facebook http://www.dapacreative.com/blog/entry/taming_top_news_on_facebook#When:21:17:40Z Have you ever noticed that news on facebook tends to be from the same people over and over? This has been something that has annoyed me for quite some time. I finally took the time to figure out how to update these settings see the news from the friends you really want to hear about. From facebook: Editing more advanced News Feed preferences To view and edit more News Feed Settings (i.e., how many friends to show in your stream and which friends you’d like to see more or less stories about), follow these steps: 1. From the More Stories stream, scroll down to the bottom of your News Feed and click "Edit Options." 2. Add individual friends to the "Show More" or "Hide" lists by typing their names in the open fields; remove existing friends from these lists by clicking the "x" next to their names. Control how many friends you want shown in your News Feed by adjusting the number in the "Number of Friends" field. 3. Click "Save." You can also view the recommended friends that facebook has been automatically adding and modify this list as well. Social Media, 2010-07-28T21:17:40+00:00 http://www.dapacreative.com/blog/entry/dissecting_dapacreative http://www.dapacreative.com/blog/entry/dissecting_dapacreative#When:16:40:56Z About 3 years ago I created my first portfolio website. It was a good first effort but it left a lot to be desired. So last year I decided to take on the task of redesigning and rebranding dapacreative. It hasn't been the smoothest job but after many months of back and forth I have finally finished. And by finished I mean pushed live. I'm sure to be adding and updating things for quite some time. So that's dive in and dissect dapacreative. The Name This could have been so much easier if I had a cool and unique name. Unfortuately I was blessed with one of the most common names on earth, Dan Smith. This pretty much guaranteed that any variation of dansmith.com was taken. So I decided to combine a little of my first name (Dan) with a little of my middle name (Patrick) and dapacreative was born. Updating the Logo I was never really pleased with the original logo that I created so I decided that one of the first things to do was update the logo. I liked the simplicity of the original but decided I needed to take it a step further. The clean lines and omission of the word "creative" helped to turn the logo into something that better represents my design style. Old:   New:   Design/Layout This next step proved harder than I had originally thought. The nicest part about my old website was that I created three different themes that user could choose from. This satisfied my greatest hurdle in that I didn't have to settle with one design. I could create as many as I wanted. The problem with this approach is that my website and myself were lacking any real identity. So the first step was to create a design that reflected my personality and my style of design. The next step was setting up a grid that I could use to easily layout secondary pages. The last step was to rethink the way I was displaying my work. I decided up front that I wanted to display both websites that I have designed and websites I have developed.  I also wanted each design piece to have it's own detail page that I could easily showcase the work and accompany it with a nice write up if I so desired. Helvetica Smetica One of my secondary priorities was to break from the traditional fonts that plague web design. I researched and have used some of the various options including SIFR, FLIR and Cufon. Each of these has their pluses and minuses. My biggest problem with these solutions is that they can be difficult to implement. I decided to try a new solution called Typekit. Typekit is a subscription-based service for linking to high-quality Open Type fonts from some of the worlds best type foundries. The downside is that I had to pay for a subscription service. The upside is that it is extremely easy to update and add new and cool fonts on the fly. I give typekit an "A". Making it "Cool" I try with every project that I work to push the envelope of what I know and what I can do. I decided up front that I wanted to make this website as cool as I could. In order to do that I had to push what I knew of jQuery. So as you will notice while navigating my website is that I have added a lot of neat as well as functional additions of javascript that help to create a unique and "cool" experience for the user. CMS (Managing Content) Expression Engine has been my CMS of choice for the last 2 years. I like to think that I have become somewhat of an expert in building websites with it. To give myself an added challenge, I decided to rollout my website in the newest version 2.0. Even though this version was still in Beta, I decided that this was the best opportunity I would get to learn the minor nuisances of the new system. I soon found out that there were quite a number of changes to the CMS. None of these proved to be a deal breaker but it definitely added some time to the rollout of this site. Conclusion Finally pushing this website live has been a huge burden off my shoulders. This project unfortunately has gone on longer than I had anticipated but I am extremely happy with the results. If you have any questions about the design or developing of this website, please leave me some feedback and I will be happy to assist. Design, Development, Expression Engine, Jquery, 2010-07-23T16:40:56+00:00