One of the things it was lacking was the ability to add links and other html to the messages. It used a simple text area and did not allow any formatting at all. In the past I had used TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor which can turn any text area into a full-fledged WYSIWYG text editor.

I wasn’t looking forward to digging through an entire application to figure out how to add TinyMCE but I found a post by Matt Gibson which detailed exactly which files needed to be edited. He does a great job of walking you through the initial addition of the TinyMCE files so I won’t repeat it here.

Following his steps adds the WYSIWYG editor, but ProjectPier uses something called textile markup to allow some formatting and the information TinyMCE was passing into the application was getting mixed up. In the comments to that post someone suggested a quick fix to allow the html added by TinyMCE to be passed into the app and be recognized in the messages. If you follow those, you will see that the htnl is now recognized.

Now we have links and lists and all of the formatting shows up on the message pages but when I went back to the overview page, the display was broken again. I realized that one of the functions which I had commented out was working working great for one area of the site, but not for another. So I had to dig a little and tweak a few more files.

I tested it and it seemed fixed by adding back in the commented function. But in case that function should be avoided somewhere else, I created a second function and altered it a little.

In the main folder of your Project Pier installation go to:

/environment/functions/general.php

And replace the newly commented ‘clean’ function at line 72:

function clean($str) {
//$str = preg_replace('/&(?!#[0-9]+;)/s', '&', $str);
//$str = str_replace(array('< ', '>', '"'), array('< ', '>', '"'), $str);
return $str;
} // clean

with this:

function clean($str) {
//$str = preg_replace('/&(?!#[0-9]+;)/s', '&', $str);
//$str = str_replace(array('< ', '>', '"'), array('< ', '>', '"'), $str);
return $str;
} // clean

// Added this extra function to return the ability to clean strings when needed.
// Listing the comments on the front page needs this in place.

function clean2($str) {
strip_tags($str);
$str = preg_replace('/&amp;(?!#[0-9]+;)/s', '&amp;', $str);
$str = strip_tags($str);
return $str;
} // clean2

I then had to change the call to the ‘clean’ function on line 27 in
application/views/application/render_application_logs.php
And simply replace the word ‘clean’ with ‘clean2′.

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Here is a screen capture of the new page:

And the old one:
(click for a larger view)

It gave me a chance to use a new technique I had read about using “CSS Sprites”. I have to thank A List Apart, a site full of amazing resources and how-to’s which talked about this technique. Here is a link to their great Tutorial on CSS Sprites.

I will post a more technical version of how I tweaked their code to work for this situation later, but here is a quick explanation:

Normally to create all the rollover buttons on the page, eight separate images would be used and the old way even meant using javascript, which is a fairly cumbersome language compared to the simplicity of the CSS used here.

Very simply, instead of creating, editing and uploading eight images, all of the needed images are combined into one image. Then I just tell each button which part to use for the normal state and which part to use when the mouse hovers over it. The file size is smaller, so the page loads faster and if it ever needs to be edited or updated, I just download and edit one image instead of eight.

Here is the image:
(click for a larger view)

When Jules had mentioned wanting to mouse over photos to reveal her logos underneath, I remembered reading about this somewhere, so I gave it a try.

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They needed a custom logo and this is what I cam up with, just a simple cursive font with some buildings in the background made to fit into the header at the top of the page…

They also wanted a splash page with a movie that would act as a little teaser for their company and what they do. They had some pictures and a script with the words they wanted to say, I just had to put it all together.

I approached it a little differently than most sites I have seen. The usual approach would be to create something like this in Flash. Being a filmmaker, I am more used to the video editing and titling software. so I used Motion (which is packaged with Final Cut Pro) and created the movie as Quicktime. Then I used a little programming trickery to hide the white Quicktime window you usually see while a movie is loading. Once it is loaded it plays normally.

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Apparently Five Day DVD is a featured design on We Love WP (WeLoveWP.com) – a site that showcases custom WordPress sites.

Only a few days ago, I found the site and browsed all the amazing work on there, getting inspiration and ideas for my own designs. They had a section where you could submit your own site, let them know about it and if they like it, they would include it on their page.

Well, I guess they did, because here it is:

Five Day DVD was my first go at WordPress and to have it noticed on a site like this means a lot. It took me so long to get it to look like it does!

I have big plans for a new site which I plan to do all in WordPress. Plus – I am working on my first custom theme, built from scratch. No details yet…

A big thank you to We Love WP!

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It is still a work in progress, and for now is just the single page with a simple description and a form to send an email. I will be adding some functionality to the form tonight and working on the rest of the site when I can fit it in.

So, if you know any actors looking for a website – send them on over.

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Derek Craigie

More importantly, this was the first site for a side project that has been in the works for a while now – www.headshotsandreels.com

I finally launched a temporary page today, as you will see in my next post!

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Check them out:

Y9 Electric

Y9 Kitchen Remodeling

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The site has lots of great recipes and some Step-by-Step Recipe Videos to cook along with which were pretty much hidden in the old site. Some time soon, we will be shooting and adding lots of new Step-by-Step Recipe Videos and a few other surprises.

It is still somewhat of a work in progress, with a lot of work to do on updating the old database and old CMS system which currently have some issues.

Here is a shot of the new site:

Custom website for caterer Lenny Bent

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Five Day DVD Site

Five Day DVD grew out my consultant wok with the American Film Institute and several local high schools. I ended up developing a fairly comprehensive training program based on teaching beginners everything they need to complete a large DVD yearbook project over the course of a five day workshop.

Five Day DVD, was created with WordPress, a great blog system that allows some pretty complex customization.

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