Typo: The end is nigh

Not for Typo on a whole, mind you. Just here.

I’m preparing the first sketches on the long-overdue development of my personal site and one of the major components is going to be a completely overhauled blog presentation. And, when that happens, I’ll be switching to Mephisto due to the unnecessary weight of Typo and it’s sluggishness on this shared server.

The new system will employ much AJAX and DHTML goodness. Don’t worry: not a bunch of useless crap. I’m working on the wireframes now for a novel way to look at a blog. Admittedly, there’s not a lot you can do with a blog, but I’m asking questions of myself as to how people really interact with blogs, the differences between posts like this, which are dated and time-specific, and posts for longevity. The result is I think that there should be more user control over what is on the screen at any time, and fortunately JavaScript, CSS and the DOM will let me do that to some extent (at least I hope).

First of all, allow me to make a brief announcement regarding my seemingly permanent absence from the blogosphere: I’ve been really crazy busy and had no internet connection for a bit in Indianapolis, but now I am back.

Without further ado, the news at hand:

gravitymusic.com is getting it’s third facelift! The site that is currently up is some of my oldest work that I still mention (circa 2002) and it’s soon to be gone making way for a new Ruby on Rails powered web presence.

• Flash-based MP3 player that intermittently decides not to work on XP
• Tables (eek!)
• I-Frames (EEGADS!)

• Ruby on Rails (oooh!)
• DHTML and AJAX [via prototype and moo.fx] in news and music display (oooh la la!)
• “Web 2.0”-ie graphic shite, like reflections and starburst badges and a shitload of gradients (... em, TIRED?... yeah ok, but it looks hot.)

Just see for yourself! (Warning: Spoiler alert.)

This has been an interesting day, attempting to get a fresh build of Typo 4.0.1 installed on a shared hosting account with DreamHost.

The reason for this, predominantly, was to practice deploying a Rails application on DreamHost in preparation for the launch of Witnessing Life which I’m currently spending my days (and nights) thinking about.

Without further ado, here’s the rundown of how I achieved my goal.