Saturday, November 24, 2012

Moving right along...

I guess I didn't post again last weekend, but here I am this weekend! I've spent hours and hours on the website and I think it shows! It's really coming together now.

If you check out the Pioneer Families page, you'll see a list of names. Each one of those names will eventually have their own story posted. For now I have three that are live links and I hope you enjoy them all.

Today I added a great feature that lets you email that specific page to a friend or even post it on Facebook or Twitter. It's in the upper right hand corner of every page, under the link to this blog. :-)

I've got more and more photos copyrighted and posted into slideshows. You can see them all on the Galeria de Fotos page of the website, or you can find them scattered throughout the many pages where they relate to the story.

Tomorrow is a big day for the project. There will be an article in the Statesman Journal! I hope you all read it and then come check out the website!

Stay tuned.....

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Another weekend

Hello folks!

It's 4:18pm on a Saturday, and again I have been engulfed in web design since 11:00 am! So far so good... I have mainly tackled the Pioneer Families page and I think it looks pretty good! I got the page(s) for one individual family done as well, and it sure is going to take a lot of work before all of it's finished!

I just got done watermarking and copyrighting all of the pictures taken at the Pioneer Family Reunion that you folks had in 2003 with Miguel. There were 109 photos and that certainly took a while. I got them uploaded to a website for slideshow purposes, but I don't exactly know where I'm going to put it yet! Oh wait... I just had a great idea. :-)

Be sure to check out all the new changes here.

I'm sure I'll be posting more tomorrow!


Monday, November 12, 2012

Neverending Weekend!


...is it over yet??

Well here we are, 9:00 pm on Monday night. I only had to work until 1:00 pm today (yes, I have a day job!) and spent the rest of the day doing---you guessed it---web design. Holy cow, folks, I got a lot accomplished this weekend!

If you point your browser to the Cultura page you will see another menu available to you. There is the main page with a lovely article written by Miguel, and then there are links to things such as FaithMusicSlideshows, and Maintaining Our Identity.

The slideshow program I used before isn't working out. I submitted a support ticket and they told me I'm not allowed to embed a slideshow the way I want to. So... plan B C D E F G. (Did I mention I have invested several hours into figuring out this slideshow issue? Ugh!)

Well... Thanks to Flickr I now have working slideshows! They are pretty great, too! And there are awesome privacy settings that would make Miguel's heart smile. :-)

Updated pages include.... most of them. Go check it out! I'm sure I'll be doing more website work throughout the week, but I imagine the bulk of the progress will come next weekend.

See you then!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Long Productive Saturday

It's 6:24pm right now. I have been busy designing this website since 11am today! I am still going to do more on it for the rest of the evening, but I wanted to take a little break, finally get around to my "morning" coffee, and update our readers on my progress.

I added a visitor counter to the main menu page. It will be interesting to see how many hits we get. Check it out here!

I have researched various slideshow technologies available through Adobe applications as well as internet applications. I found a great one that I could get to work when viewed through my own files (opening it into a browser window from my own files to look at it... I hope that makes sense) but could not get it to work when I uploaded it to the internet. I read through countless online support forums and it looks as though I'm not the only person with this problem. After a couple hours of trying to figure that out, I found Smilebox. It allows me to make some great slideshows, but they don't play inside the web pages I've built. It'll do for now, but I refuse to give up on the great stuff available through the Adobe Creative Suite. You can see the Smilebox slideshow I created for the "Galeria de Fotos" here. Please let me know if you have any problems with it!

I have also added a copyright and watermark to every photo we've got displayed on the Galeria de Fotos and the Cultura pages. This copyright is actually Miguel Salinas's shadow. I have a copyright symbol "©" placed on the shadow and I am using the whole thing as a watermark. It might be fun to go view the slideshow in the galeria and see if you can spot the watermarks!

The shadow I used:


I'm sure you have seen the amazing photograph used on the Welcome page at www.texmexorusa.org. That is actually located at the Salinas residence. Miguel staged the photo with a lot of different artifacts and other items that have meaning to the entire project. Today I added numbers on the photograph (not on the front page, though) and Miguel is going to write up an explanation for each item. A link will be added when that is ready and you can all enjoy knowing what it's all about!



OK, it's back to work for me... Maybe I should eat something, too. Hmm... By the end of the night I will have a slideshow posted on the Cultura page and possibly a lot more of Miguel's amazing photographs published with watermark/copyright on the website. Be sure to check it out!!!

:-)

11/10 Update

Hello to our readers!

This is Monica again. I am working diligently on your website, have no fear! A lot will be accomplished this weekend, so be sure to check back often. It's texmexorusa.org if you forgot! :-)

Please be sure you are typing the address (texmexorusa.org) in the address bar of your browser window. If you look above this blog you should see it. If you were to, say, type it into a search engine's search field you may not get where you were planning to go! Feel free to comment here if you are experiencing trouble finding the website.

Have a great weekend!