January 30, 2005
Update: Why is migrating domain names such a pain in the ass? Basically most ISP’s are slow to respond when possibly taking business away from them. Anyway, snooch.org.uk and markboulton.co.uk are on the migration path, so expect imminent downtime (probably a holding page from Easily.co.uk) and then some more downtime for the nameservers to change.
It’s only when the domains have been fully migrated can I set up the MySQL databases as they now run off a different server on Dreamhost (who create a subdomain for your database instead of ‘localhost’, hopefully this won’t cause any problems with EE).
So, please bear with me. I expect domain downtime to be a day or so.
Due to a change of host (thanks to everyone who commented on the last post. And the winner was… drum roll… Dreamhost), this site is going to probably be down, or something like that, for a day or so in the next few days whilst I try and get expression engine up and working etc.
Thanks for your patience.
January 27, 2005
I’ve been using Bargainhost as a hosting provider for a couple of years now. Their Standard package includes PHP, 5 MySQL databases, 100Mb of space, 3GB of traffic a month and other stuff such as subdomains etc. All for ?51 a year.
I’ve got a couple of projects coming up which, as they’re being built with Expression Engine, require a similar server setup. So, my question is to you, which provider would you recommend that has a similar, or better, spec for the money (or less)?
January 21, 2005
In less than an hour i’ll be getting in my car, with my wife, and off to visit friends in London. Really looking forward to it. It’ll be just over three years since i’ve been to London properly after living there for a few years, so visiting old haunts will be nice.
Another note. I’m chuffed to bits that i’ve finally made it into the CSS Vault. Thanks go to Mark for the submission.
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January 13, 2005
Since the launch of this redesign a few weeks ago I’ve had quite a lot of emails asking how I built it using Expression Engine. A large proportion of these emails have been from designers who see, and want, the benefits of a low-cost, flexible content management system for their own portfolio websites. Hopefully I can answer some of the specifics here.
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January 11, 2005
Finally after months of wondering if it was worth it (yes, yes, I know it’s only ten bucks) i’ve finally subscribed to four issues of DIF. I’ve got to say, so far i’m very impressed.
The content is good and very well positioned to appeal to seasoned industry veterans and novices alike. But, yes there is a but…
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January 06, 2005
Just a quick mention before I post a few things up later today. Plastic Pilots have awarded markboulton.co.uk with a three star award (out of 3!) rating for the new design of this site. Big thanks to them.
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December 31, 2004
So, here we have it. Version 5.5 of this site. More of a Reversion than a Redesign. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, MovableType was beginning to be difficult to use because of the Spam problems (which they seem to have now fixed) and the increasing problem of stretching the intended useage of MT - ie. to run a portfolio (I know this is possible, as I did it before, it’s just not as easy as i’d like). I moved to using Expression Engine as the software to power the site.
Read on for more about the design ethos behind this site. Why do a redesign and what I discovered about web standards, css, expression engine and mac IE 5.5 on the way.
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December 13, 2004
Without the eggs or chips. Rubbish. MT Blacklist is just not working well for me. I came in this morning to over 800 comments on the system, true Blacklist caught about 700 of these but still the hit on the server can’t be good.
Life with EE is looking good so far, although I haven’t delved too much into it yet. I discovered some problems with posting comments behind our firewall in work, which is a bit odd.
There’s going to be a new look here at markboulton.co.uk, probably in the new year, once I get EE up and running. It’s going to be a lighter, fresher design and with ditching MT i’m able to go XHTML Strict with the code. It also looks like i’ll be saving about 20% in page weight as well with the new design. The portfolio section has been reworked which such make it a bit more usable. It’s also taking advantage of EE’s excellent category management system with category specific pages now, which are lacking at the moment.
I’ll be posting more about EE as I go along.
I'm a graphic designer from near Cardiff in the UK. I've been a designer for over ten years now and primarily work on the web. I'm still partial to a bit of print every now and then though. I used to work for