November 19th, 2007

I fill up my cats’ bowls every other day. They’ve got big bowls. Also, their names are Starbuck and Apollo, which makes me an extremely cool dude.

I took down the content on Hindrances.com last night. The forums will remain on Hindrances’ server for now, because I don’t feel like going to the trouble to transfer them over to TMABB.com. If you’re subscribed to the RSS feed on Hindrances, you’re gonna want to switch over to Tmabb’s feed.

So it turns out, I did indeed come up with another lesson learned after I finished last week’s newsie:

5) Remember several months ago when I announced that the book would be released on December 3rd? Yeah, probably shouldn’t have said that. Danged optimism. Believe me, I want this thing to be done very badly, and I’m close. All that’s left is the cover, but I want to make sure I do a really super-crazy-good job on it, so I’m not going to rush just to cut my release date back. Anyway, what have I learned? Don’t announce the release date until you’ve got a proof (from the printers!) in your hands.

Now that TMABB.com Relaunch Time is getting close, I have no choice but to set the book aside for a couple weekends so I can get to work on the new site. I don’t expect this particular design to take very long, and the first bullet on my List of Things That I’m Keeping In Mind explains why:

1) I’m keeping the same color scheme. I was thinking at first that I would do something a little darker with a bit more contrast, but that was before I realized that I’ve had the current design throughout the entire time that I’ve been taking the comic seriously. There’s a bit of a brand recognition in these burgundy-and-Irish-creme bubbles now. However, the nice thing about that is, I don’t have to design any new graphics, which will save me a lot of time (although I am converting everything to GIF, because I’m tired of how much browsers mistreat PNGs and I don’t feel like gamma-stripping every single PNG on the site).

2) The comic pane, though, needs a little more emphasis, so the background on that will be white, instead of Irish creme.

3) More of the comic needs to be above the fold, which, in web design terms at least, means above the point where the reader needs to start scrolling (in newsprint, above the fold has a more literal meaning - above the middle of the page, where the paper gets folded for delivery). I’ve accomplished that.

4) Also above the fold, a nice, big leaderboard ad. I’ve got it placed in the upper-right, where most people will at least see it subconsciously, even if they don’t process it consciously. That way, the ads are getting exposure without being intrusive. Common practice, I know, but there’s a lot of psychology involved in that placement. You’d be surprised.

5) A real logo is needed. That’s done. I was already using it for the book. Another thing is, I like how Kris at Starslip has a super-quick description of the comic in his site’s logo. I’m going to do something similar for TMABB.com’s logo (not for the book’s title logo, though). I figure, it’s not easy to figure out what the comic is about when you first get here, so this should help make new readers stick.

6) Less stuff. The new design will be a lot less busy, with a great deal more emphasis on the comic and a little less emphasis on the news blog. You’ll definitely see both, but the comic is going to punch you in the face with its mighty fist of attention, and then it will gently guide your eyes to the news.

As far as layout is concerned, that’s pretty much what I’ve got on my mind. In terms of the backend stuff, though, there’s also these:

7) I need a bit more optimization in the way I have my PHP includes laid out. The way it is right now is almost perfect. It just needs a little refactoring to make the code more readable.

8) Time permitting, I’d like to update my homebrew comic archive system to use a database to store comic information instead of plain text files. This would allow me to find next/previous comics much faster. You probably won’t notice it, but if the comic starts bringing in a large enough amount of traffic, it’ll be a boon to my processor quota.

9) Ideally, and also time permitting, I want to get said homebrew comic archive system to the point where I can distribute it to other comic artists. I’ve looked at the various other archiving systems available on the net, and the only one that even comes close to mainstream usability is Comicpress, but that usability comes at the expense of customizability. I could certainly do the upcoming design in it, but it would take me weeks to sift through Comicpress’s massive CSS file to figure out how. I’d like to create something with Comicpress’s ease of use, but with my system’s versatility.

10) I don’t really expect time to permit, though. Maybe I can crank some of that stuff out while I’m off from Job during the week of Exmass through New Years. Bare minimum, though, I want to at least code it up so that the correct chapter link is listed for each comic. That’s a trivial matter; I’ve already got my plan of attack in mind. It’ll be four new LOCs (Lines of Code), tops.

Non-coder/scripter/programmers in the audience probably don’t care about any of that stuff, but these are the sorts of things that haunt my dreams. That and the ghost of my conjoined twin.

Did you notice my use of the word “Job” (capitalized) in bullet 10? I’ve gotten into the habit of defining “Work” and “Job” like so:

Your Job is what you do to raise money to finance your real Work.

I like to use Job the same way Work is used, by which I mean, as both a noun and a verb. In my case, I have a Job as a software engineer. The pay where I Job is fantastic, and the position is so cushy I could almost call it hedonistic. It’s mind-numblingly boring, though, and I would love to quit it some day. Fortunately, I have my Work, i.e. Taco Man and Burrito Boy, to look forward to when I get home.

My long-term goal with my Work is to be able to make enough money to start dropping a couple hours a week at my Job. I was thinking I might talk about money-making ideas next week, but I’m not ready to discuss that just yet. We’ll see what else I come up with.

CURRENT MOOD: Labels