MF inquired about including a set of video files on the Thomson site. Turns out that Greg had prepared these videos last spring. I have been unable to figure out how to include media files in the development CMS, and emailed MF about it. She sent me back documentation, which I haven't had a chance to read yet. She also reported that similar work done in the past required a lot of manual intervention by the sys-admin
January 30, 2009
Based on reports from MF, I checked various domain names:
1) I went to these two URLS:
http://mysterescanadiens.ca
http://www.mysterescanadiens.ca
If I do nothing on that page for a little while, it automatically loads the page:
http://www.mysterescanadiens.ca/mysteries/indexfr.html
which is the same page as
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/mysteries/indexfr.html
So, those domain names appear to be working properly.
2) The URL www.cybermysteres.ca automatically redirects to the page http://www.mysteryquests.ca/indexen.html but the URL box does not change. This is weird and must be something that the ISP is doing.
First, the URL www.cybermysteres.ca should point to http://www.cybermysteres.ca/indexfr.html. Second, if you type in the URL http://www.cybermysteres.ca/indexfr.html, you get a "page not found" error. What you should see is the page you see if you use the URL http://www.mysteryquests.ca/indexfr.html
The URL http://www.mysteryquests.ca/ automatically redirects to the page http://www.mysteryquests.ca/indexen.html, which is sensible behaviour. On that page, the link on Français links to http://www.mysteryquests.ca/indexfr.html and that works. I created a link on FR, which links to http://www.cybermysteres.ca/indexfr.html and that link fails.
Got contact info for hosting company from MF, and notice that actually getting tech support is not easy. Will give it a shot next week.
Left early. The G&T is creeping up again, though...
The principals haven't sent in many images yet, so I'm still ransacking my own photos. I've done seven or eight, which should do for now, but we'll need to add in more which are not natural landscapes when they're supplied. We need more buildings and urban content.
Also blogging something Stew and I discovered, which is handy for Website menus. When you have a long word in a caption, and you'd like it to wrap nicely, you can insert a soft hyphen character (­) at an appropriate point in the word. Normally it's invisible, but the browser will wrap the word there if necessary, and supply a visible hyphen. Very elegant. Even works on IE7.
January 29, 2009
Migrated some changes from the dev site to the main site on MK's instructions.
Working with some of my own and some of JR's images, I've designed a bottom left footer which rotates through images. I processed three images in the GIMP today, getting better at cutting out objects, removing sky, applying gradient masks to backgrounds, etc. This is fairly basic stuff, but these are skills I didn't actually have before. It's time-consuming stuff, but I think it's worth mastering, since we have no current hope of a graphics person being available.
Long hours working on trying to build VMs. So far only partial success.
January 28, 2009
Working late, waiting for interminable VM processes to conclude (unsuccessfully). Grr.
Lots of difficulty getting a VM built in VirtualBox. The process that's got us some of the way there has been:
- Move the GHO files to a shared folder (shared in VirtualBox)
- Boot to a BartPE disk with Ghost
- Map the shared folder to a drive
- Restore from that shared folder to the drive in Ghost
However, although the drive seems to have been created correctly, the results are not bootable. I can log on to the Windows install on the drive (and I now have two other ones, due to trying to recover the original using an XP disk), but I still can't seem to boot it. I'm going to keep hacking at this, but we may have to go through the whole process again, with more thought going into it. It's possible I should have restored to a disk rather than a partition. I'll try that tomorrow.
Updated the accommodation, hotel, and events information based on info from J and J. Also built the basics of the RegOnline form sequence. I have the basic event sorted out, with three optional "agenda items" (supplementary events), all with GST, and there are two levels of registration for the main event. Still awaiting info on the final costs, and on how to set the payee that will be on the cheques. Also, the forms will need to be styled to match the main site, once I've finished the main site.