rare pattern thoughts in a blog

So by the time the party started, I was totally and profoundly exhausted. Kate and I had done our best to recharge with a yummy Thai dinner following a brisk walk up Market Street, which had been just the trick to recover from the way-too-dance-clubby music and the way-too-comfortable comfy chairs in the W lobby, where we had been attempting to relax after a several-hour client meeting where I had walked client and web developer through the web design process I was envisioning, which, in the end, was the reason I was even in The City -- not for the party.

But here I was at the party, not quite awake, not at all alert, and, among all these brilliant, beautiful and oh-so-hip and in-the-know BlogHers, feeling like a total dork from the boonies -- and probably acting like a pod person. And this was not good, considering that the celebration was for the official beta launch of the BlogHer website, which was designed and developed by yours truly.

"Hi, I'm Marnie Webb. I'm involved with a lot of web projects that use Drupal and CivicSpace...." I prepare a response and she's now ten feet away, turned in the other direction....

Several people came up and introduced themselves like this. A big guy named Marc came up and sat at the next table, and I listened to him talk about structured blogging. Elisa and Jory introduced themselves. I had moments of clarity, but otherwise I was on the event horizon of a black hole, moving in slower time relativity, not quite able to keep up with everything. In fact, I think what shook me out of orbit was Jennifer Myronuk's Sony DV camera. Here I was, tired after 20 hours of driving, untold hours of website preparation, several hours of client meetings and not nearly enough hours of sleep, and feeling like a tired kitchen towel; there was no way anyone was going to get me on tape. She was quite insistent. I was quite resistant. Jennifer is tall, and I appreciated the company above 5'8", but I did not appreciate the camera -- or, rather, the tape inside it, ready to roll.

Suddenly, Lisa Stone was in front of me, saying, "Make your escape now, while you can!" It took a moment to register, but then I saw Jennifer's camera pointing my way and I dragged by rolling computer bag on out of the restaurant.

#

I have a general sense that people liked the site. It took a lot of doing to pull together. I had to hack several of the modules, and write a few php calls to pull up content dynamically in ways Drupal and its contributed modules don't quite do. But that wasn't the hard part.

The hard part was getting the theme to work on all major browsers. (A pox on Internet Explorer!)

In the end, it came together and, if I do say so myself, the site looks pretty good, and people are using it in the ways that it was designed for. And as things progress as they must, the designer/developer fades from their awareness ... until there's a problem. Such is life.

I still have to clean up the theme -- there's some extraneous stuff in the stylesheet, for example, from things tried and nixed -- and make sure there are no unused data calls in the custom php. And then, over the coming months, the evolution takes place as the site grows from what it is to something akin to what it could be.

But thankfully the launch parties are behind us. I appreciated the kind words and well wishes, and I look forward to meeting these women again for the first time ... when I'm just another person in the room.

(Thank you, everyone!)

One of the more exciting projects I'm working on right now is a semi-major website for the as-yet-to-be-announced "Client B." ("Client A" is the as-yet-announced DVD project client.)

(A note about as-yet-to-be-announced clients: Sometimes you want to announce the new gig right off, and sometimes you want to line up your ducks first -- and we like to have our ducks all lined up in pretty formations before the fanfare starts.)

Anyway....this will be an interesting site because we're building it in Drupal but, in the end, will be approaching something similar to what a CivicSpace installation might have yielded. (I won't go into the why's of not just using CivicSpace except to say that this was the client's preference.)

A big part of this project will be the incorporation of CiviCRM into the site. The site's membership is expected to jump up into the several hundreds in the early going, and having robust membership directory management features will be key.

The real challenge has been getting all the essential information into the site's front page. Most websites, frankly, don't need to manage so much information.

Needless to say, the front-page module will play a key role, and include much in the way of php code calling up lists and excerpts from recent and most-active posts. The challenge lies in keeping that front page scannable. Most front pages like this end up being an utter mess to my eye; I think concepts of visual chunking of the interactive interface elude most people. Hell, sometimes they elude me -- it's not easy, getting a lot of information on a single page without making it look like a monkey got ahold of a keyboard.

I'll also be using directed themes guided by the particular sections of the site. The exact approach -- using the sections module or the taxonomy theme module or something else -- I'm undecided on.

Anyway, this design and coding challenge is what will serve as my early holiday entertainment. We'll be going with a public beta sometime in December, so in the end it will be Client A, and the as-yet-unknown Clients C-Z, who will offer respite from Christmas carols and holiday cookies and divinity fudge and extended family.