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What do you do behind the scenes when you update your website?
Last updated: Sep 27, 2006
1 Deleting excess headline stuff
With the update otherwise complete, I just need to make a few final touchups - clearing the excess stuff, and updating the indexes. In the screenshot above, I'm deleting those excess items in the headlines. They are there in case I need to put something after it. I sometimes may forget to do this or forget about one as it's tricky to see and distinguish one or two of them. This only takes about 10 to 20 seconds, depending mainly on how many gaps there are in the top part. When fully finished, at the bottom, it looks like this, which is much more like it:
2 Editting the main index
2.1 Transferring the headlines summary
At the start of any blog entry in the headlines section, you can find the major headlines summed up in about 600 characters, often less. There are some exceptions, but rarely seen. I copy this and transfer it to the main index in the "latest news" section. The main index may have items here not in the blog. This is from me doing stuff that I don't otherwise expect and often used to alert my visitors that it may be a while before an update due to an extreme involvement with something with a motive far higher than updating my website. Once copied and pasted, this is what I see:
2.2 Category update notifications
With the headlines summary now done, it's time to make note of the updates to my website. However, there is something that is a level 6 update as it's a pretty big update. To keep the consistancy, I made a few notes to myself. The screenshot above shows you what I mean by this. You can't see it on the main webpage - it's a comment. I use my notes to see what text size and text color I need to use to denote the special update. Levels 2 through 4 are the most common type. Above 5 is rare and thus are specially colored and formatted. 10, the maximum, denotes a serious update, almost a complete rewrite of an entire major section. 0, the minimum, indicates a very minor change (such as fixing a small bug not easily noticed), something I almost never use. By using my notes highlighted in the above screenshot in the category it belongs in, the screenshot below shows this in use, along with what it looks like partway into the edit.
2.3 Dump those old entries!
Old updates of a low level get deleted usually upon the next update, unless I forget about it's presence. Updates notifications of a higher level (bigger or major updates) don't get removed until after quite some time. These two entries, in the screenshot above, are outdated and of a low level so they're getting deleted.
2.4 Adding future plans
Future plans are just that, concepts I have for future articles or updates to something within the given category. These never expire and are only removed until rejected or completed. The screenshot above shows me adding a future plan for something (which happens to be this article). Some of these future plans have remained for a few years. They don't get processed, often due to negative motive. When my motive is negative, I will not do the activity. At neutral, I'll only do it if there's nothing else above neutral. Sometimes it's caused from a limitation. One great example was the one for batch converting my AVIs into animated GIFs. At the time, I had to manually open each individual BMP file and save it as GIF and it's extremely boring. The problem was that no batch converter worked properly. The most common case was that the colors were lost (and the frames were well within the limits of GIFs, not even 20% of the way there at the most extreme), it didn't work unless the program was bought (and knowing how frequently the colors were getting destroyed, it'd have been a useless purchase and a waste of money, even if it was just a dollar), the program crashed, wouldn't install, and various other things. The case of the colors not being left as is was three times more common (if I recall correctly) than any of the other issues put together. It was only until I got a script from someone (whom I thank a lot) that this was finally able to happen. Now with Gamestudio, I can automate almost all of the process opening up the possibility of 10,000-frame animated GIFs to be done in under a day (and that's an animation longer than the classic cartoons at the fastest browsers can run at (10 fps)). The only limit is hardware, mainly memory.
2.5 Final touches
Now with everything done, I edit the "last modified" time for my website as a whole. The time shown here is a bit further ahead than my computer clock shows. This is based on the time it takes to load up my FTP program and upload everything. It does not, however, include extra time spent fixing bugs I may encounter upon the testing phase, covered on the next page.
That's it, now to upload all the new and updated content then hunt for any bugs.
Introduction
Editting the headlines of the blog
Editting the dream journal
Creating images
Adding the daily blog entries
Final touchups before uploading
Uploading and testing
Footnotes:
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