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Archive for the ‘Site news’ Category
Thursday, October 30th, 2008 |
You might notice things looking a bit strange around here - but don’t worry! It’s all part of (yet another) massive tannerhelland.com redesign.
Why another redesign, you ask? With the release of my new book Teal, the time was ripe to finally unify the visual appearance of this site, including new backgrounds, header, layout, etc. This time things will be a bit more on the bold red side (as opposed to pastel blues and greens), so if you see some clashing colors over the next week, fear not - things will eventually be back to normal.
“Eventually.” 
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Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 |
My apologies to anyone who has hit a 404 (broken link) on this site in the last 72 hours. I recently fixed a problem I’ve been working on for some time (many thanks to my host company’s technical support, who were surprisingly useful!) and this site is now successfully associated with www.tannerhelland.com. Of course, I didn’t anticipate that with this fix would come a host of problems related to absolute links in WordPress posts.
You know - the old story of fixing one problem and causing two in the process. In this case, I fixed one problem and caused 500. Oops.
I’ve temporarily solved the problem by reproducing all linked files in a temporary directory that mirrors the old absolute links, and in time I’ll get around to solving this properly. But all links should now be functional - and if they’re not, please let me know. I hate 404’s.
Sorry for the trouble!
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Friday, August 1st, 2008 |
As you can see, the site’s gone through a pretty expansive overhaul this weekend. Not only has the appearance been heavily remodeled but the backend is also much cleaner, smarter, and better equipped for increased traffic and SEO. I’m quite proud of the changes!
Like what you see? Hate what you see? Lemme know! This week I should be back to posting content, and sorry that I didn’t get much up last week - but plowing through someone else’s CSS can be a nightmare…
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Thursday, July 17th, 2008 |
It’s taken quite some time, but I’ve finally managed to get all of the music from the old site (T.H.I.S. 1.0) onto this server. Glad to have that done!
As you can see, blog entries have been created for each song and they are also nicely categorized by style/genre in the “Categories” list to your right. I’m a little worried that the transition might have broken some links - I’ve tried my best to keep things accurate, but if you catch a song link that’s broken please let me know.
Beyond that, please enjoy the music! I’m getting eager to post some cool new piano pieces as well as some sheet music for my existing piano numbers. I’m also preparing a series of articles on some of my favorite Final Fantasy games, which oughta be controversial enough to draw in some new traffic and create some good discussion, hehe.
So stay tuned!
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Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 |
It never fails - I get 90% of the way through a project then decide to do everything differently. T.H.I.S. 2.0 is no exception. 
For those who know me, this won’t come as much of a surprise, but I am constantly hampered by the fact that there is just not enough time in the day. I am a man of hobbies - I can’t really remember the last time I sat home bored, and even if days were 50 hours long it still wouldn’t be enough time for me to work on all the things I have ideas for.
As such, I’ve found that I have far too many projects going on simultaneously. This leads to none of them being done very well - as a case in point, T.H.I.S. I love music. I listen to a lot of it, I write a lot of it. But how much of that ends up online? Almost none. I have a great many new songs chillin’ on my hard drive, never being listened to by anyone but me and my lovely wife. It’s tragic. But amidst getting a family blog up and running (www.thehellands.com), working full-time, spending time with my wife, getting a music site transferred to a new server, setting up an all-new programming site and writing a full-length novel, I find myself stretched a wee bit thin.
I don’t mind this; in fact, I prefer it, if anything. The main problem is that I have too much to share and no uniform, streamlined way of doing it. So T.H.I.S. 2.0 is about to change.
T.H.I.S. is going to become a single, solitary blog for everything I work on. It’ll combine programming, music, writing, and all my many other expertises (assumed or legitimate) into one massive, glorious site. This will enable me to post to it regularly regardless of what genre I find myself working on at a given moment. Posts will be more frequent because they won’t be tied into a specific area, and updating the site will be fun instead of a painful duty every X number of months. I think the change will be positive.
Unfortunately for me, this requires the merging of several disparate sites and databases - which should merge easily in theory, but “in theory communism works. In theory, Marge.” (Great Simpsons episode.) I also have to redo some site logos and overall design elements before this completes, so content updates will be placed momentarily on hold while I sort this merger out.
But fear not! I’ve been on the web for years and I’m certainly not leaving anytime soon. I just hope this merging of the blogs/sites is the magic update-promoting elixir I’ve been searching for…
Let me hope, anyway.
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Friday, June 13th, 2008 |
…and about time, too. After many many years of happy hosting via Tripod.com’s free hosting service, the time has come to give T.H.I.S. Programming a REAL home - here, at theHellands.com. I’ll be slowly migrating over all my classic VB programming examples, as well as posting all the tips and tricks I’ve gathered over these 10 years of VB programming. Comments and suggestions are always welcome, and use RSS to track my scattered updates over the next several weeks!
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Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 |
Well, it’s official: THIS 2.0 is live! As you can see, it’s quite a bit different than THIS 1.0.
Here’s why.
Kroc Camen - a long-time friend, master programmer, and web designer - built me THIS 1.0 from scratch. This was no small feat; back in the day, custom-built sites that allowed voting and commenting were few and far between. Kroc did all the design for the site and even included a huge admin interface where I could upload songs and their descriptions and the site would take care of the rest. It was absolutely brilliant.
But since the day THIS 1.0 launched, a lot has changed. Web 2.0 is well on its way here and there are all kinds of open-source projects that allow for easy site design and maintenance. My new career - writing - has replaced the need for THIS to be commercial-themed, and instead I wanted a music site that was low-key and casual, like my music composition would be from here on out.
Also, Kroc is now busy running a full-time computer repair business and I can’t pester him daily to update THIS as I see fit. I bet he won’t miss my 2:00am request updates! But seriously, I couldn’t be more grateful for the brilliant site that THIS was (and continues to be, at least until this new site is fully up-and-running). All of you should go to the old site (www.tannerhelland.com) and send Kroc a thank-you e-mail for his brilliant work.
My hope is that the new format of THIS will be more conducive to my scattered and sporadic postings. By using a standard blogging engine I’ll be able to not only upload music, but also sheet music, streaming media, and whatever else I can dream up. Plus, the removal of a voting feature (which only got abused by bots anyway) places the site more in keeping with my new plans for THIS: to be a showcase for SHARING music, not buying music. I think the change will be superb.
As with any blog, feel free to comment on anything and everything you find here. I’m going to leave the old THIS site up until it’s time to renew the domain name, and in the meantime I’ll gradually work on transferring songs over to this new server. It’ll be time-consuming and tedious so I make no promises for any kind of completion time frame.
But, eventually, everything will be found here, along with lots more.
In other news, I’ve started work on a full soundtrack for the podiobook version of my first novel. This soundtrack will include remixes of some of THIS’s greatest hits, along with some very good new pieces. As soon as I finish my final draft of the novel, I’m going to be putting a lot more time and energy into this new soundtrack. It oughta be good, so be sure to stay tuned!
Many thanks to my kind fans and followers. I wish I could update the site more often, but until I’m able to get this writing thing off the ground, it could be a little while. But have faith! More will be forthcoming!
As a final tribute to THIS 1.0, here’s the stats for the site as of today, June 4th, 2008:
Number of songs: 40 (or roughly 3-4 albums worth, all free!)
Number of unique visitors: 17,167
Number of free song downloads: 4,375
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