Another busy, busy week. I’ve been teaching CSS to Web editors yesterday and today, and will be heading to NYC to teach more Web editors Thursday and Friday. In addition, I’ve been getting  people on board for my SXSW Online Comics panel. So far I have Richard Bruning of DC Comics, Ron Richards of iFanboy.com, and artist Lee Marrs, plus I’ve got a few possible surprise guests. We’ll see.

Now for the project update.

Yuri’s Night Site and 2009 Party Site

The new Yuri's Night Web site design (click to see full size version).

If you’ve been following me for a while,  you know that I’ve been doing the Web site for Yuri’s Night: The World Space Party for the last 4 years. The 2008 Web site was a huge success, but took a lot of time to build and maintain.

This year I have some big plans for the site, including using WordPress as my CMS, adding more community and social-networking features, using Zazzle.com for products, and a bunch of other features. The good news is that most of these features are off the shelf, so the site should be, if anything, easier to build and maintain.

The biggest change, though, will be that I’m setting up a permanant year round Yuri’s Night Web presence, and a separate party specific site for 2009. This will let us put all the evergreen and management content in one place, and have the party Web site really focus just on the parties.

The design for the main site is done, I’ve installed WordPress and cut the chrome. Now I just have to find the time to build the pages this week! Then, to work on the 2009 party site which will be up and running for the new year.

Wanna’ help? I’m looking for designers, filmmakers, and musicians willing to give their time to help build illustrations and downloads for the sites including desktop wallpapers, buddy icons, site badges, site widgets, posters, signs, flyers, music, videos and anything else your creative little minds can think of for the site.

If you are interested in helping, contact me at jason at brighteyemedia•com.

Tags: Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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Wow, I’ve been busy the last several weeks! Besides entertaining the in-laws for Thanksgiving, a presentation on Web fonts to Refresh DC, and of course my full-time job at AOL redesigning Pixcetera and teaching classes on CSS, I’m working on and finishing a few side projects. Over the next few days to warm up for a good nights writing on my new book, I’ll blog a bit about what I’m up to. Tonight! Sci-fi!

Blake’s 7 Web Site

Blake's 7 Web Site

Last Winter I was at The LA Doctor Who convention (yes, I’m a huge Doctor Who fan) and met Andrew Mark Sewell who is rebooting another one of my favorite Brit Sci-fi shows, Blake’s 7. If you are not familiar with the story, it was a great and epic space opera that I have little doubt was part of the inspiration for the awesome FireFly series. We got to talking, and I agreed to do the site.

Eight months and a lot of work later, I’m proud to announce the launch of the new Blake’s 7 Web site! There are still some details to iron out, but it’s ready to promote both the exiting audio adventures and the planned animated and live action series.

I decided to use WordPress as the CMS, something I’m doing a lot of these days, added a great flash based slide scroller called Featurific (thanks to Rich Christianson for all of his help), and then did a lot of work laying transparent PNGs with CSS. The overall effect has a lot of overlapping images and gradients seamlessly merging together.

As always, constructive criticism is appreciated.

Tags: Culture, Science, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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