EoTD: Getting My Geek On

« Older • Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 01:19 PM • 49 views • 3 Comments • Newer »
Categorized with She's Got The Look • tagged with Aromaleigh, Bare Escentuals, blue, Everyday Minerals, green, grey, one year eyecolor challenge, red, Simply Naturals, The SheSpace, white

I’ve spent all day yesterday, and will spend most of today, fighting with software. The product I use to power this site - and my other 10 sites, business and personal - released a major upgrade, rewriting the program from scratch. This means that it will work better, but it also means that after I performed the backup and upgrade, I had to reinstall and reconfigure all my plugins, troubleshoot why half my sites weren’t working at all, get those working, fuss with the new software (which has been dramatically reorganized) and figure out where things were hidden now, and triplecheck to make sure everything was working. And once that was done, I started working on my “hobby” sites…like this one. The photo-gallery module has been removed (apparently because there wasn’t a whole lot of demand for it) and so now everyone who had used that module extensively is either staying with the old version of the software, or scrambling to find workarounds. I’ve been working to make the gallery-links into simple popup windows with the larger images (have to manually edit Every. Single. Entry. Ugh!!) but I kind of liked the convenience of having all my colors organized and displayed. Maybe I’ll install Coppermine…

I spend the rest of the day troubleshooting software, tweaking the site (it may go down or start acting wonky…in fact, Beauty Blogs’ Backstage is already a bit borked, after the last major server tweak on Friday evening), wearing my warpaint. (Rather subdued as far as warpaint goes…but that’s me.)

Part of the One Year Eyecolor Challenge (new colors used: 6)

Eyes

• Everyday Minerals' Bubble Tea, lash to crease
• The SheSpace's Crazy for Kisses, outer lid lash to crease
• Aromaleigh's Cranked, inner lid lash to crease
• Aromaleigh's Virtue, inner vee and inner brow / highlight and lower lash line
• Simply Naturals' Ivory, brow / highlight
• Bare Escentuals' Ell-if-I-Know, upper and lower lash line

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On 07/25 at 08:32 AM, Jaimi said:

There’s a color called Bubble Tea?! Excellent!  It’s a nice color on you.

Now I’m curious about what software you use…I’m an upgrade or two behind on my makeup blog (and even more behind than that on my knitting blog!)

On 07/25 at 11:28 AM, Phyrra said:

I like the colors you used!

On 07/25 at 12:32 PM, LiAnn said:

@Phyrra Thanks!! (I didn’t really notice, until now, that I’ve got an RGB look for today’s code-a-thon…)

@Jaimi I think I’ve seen a few other companies with a color called Bubble Tea. EDM’s version is a nice, soft blue semi-matte.

I use ExpressionEngine to power my site (all of them, actually.) It’s not free, nor is it open source; but it’s not expensive, it’s easy to upgrade (most of the time it’s a ten-minute process with no template tweaking necessary; this is just a major rewrite of the app from the ground up PLUS I had to upgrade some other server software at a client’s request and that’s thrown things a bit wonky for my sites), it’s incredibly secure, it’s flexible as all get out, there’s a huge library of plugins, extensions, and modules available even for version 2.x (which just moved out of public beta about two weeks ago), it’s easy to use, and it lets me run multiple sites off of one installation. Back in 2003 when I was evaluating new CMS software to replace Movable Type, I tried out several packages including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, phpNuke…and ExpressionEngine. EE has a free “core” version, which is fairly stripped down (no membership, no mailing list capabilities, other things missing, but it lets you create and maintain a blog or site), but I knew that I wanted the paid version. I’ve been using it for upwards of six years, and this - the jump from 1.x to 2.x - is the first major bit of trouble I’ve had with it. I’m very pleased.