Aytemir.com » design

FTT!:10 fan-tas-tic images of 2009!

Fan-tas-tic — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:14:58 +0000

Simply a selection of 10 of the most fan-tas-tic images from fan-tas-tic.com. The site is still in alpha and there has been only a soft launch, but it working out quit well.
Once in beta the site should be full of images which can only rated as as ‘FTT!’…fan-tas-tic!

Eos Divine Protection

Red Sonja

Flight of the Dragon

Angel and Demons

Dungeons & Dragons: Legendary Boon

Budapest – Fantasy landscape

The God of Hellfire

Fusion

Purple Mage

Black God’s Kiss

Once you’re at fan-tas-tic.com don’t forget the rate the images you think it’s FTT!

Fan-tas-tic! User Generated Galleries

Fan-tas-tic — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:23:33 +0000

It took me longer than foreseen, but after a couple of different approaches there is a final alpha version of my fan-tas-tic project. Although still in a alpha stage, I think a soft launch with this post is a logical move prior to a beta version: behold FAN-TAS-TIC! User Generated Galleries.

WTF is FTT!
FTT! is actually designed and developed as a pure personal project: a fantastic image gallery, with ‘fantastic’ covering the genres science-fiction, (heroic) fantasy/sword & sorcery, gothic, horror, anime and the quality of the art self displayed at the gallery.

So…yet another gallery?
Supervisually yes…it’s nothing more than just another gallery.

However some of the features what should make FTT! really unique compared to other galleries are:
Banner blindness prove:

All sponsor/ad banners are blended in the design, so the users are ‘bothered’ as little as possible
The banner spots are randomly generated to minimize the ‘blindness’ effect
Also the single post banner is very visible, yet blended

Quality of the content:

Advanced user submission form (to be moderated by admin for ‘quality control’)
Only fan-tas-tic images are approved; no doodles here!
All images are categorized, tagged and archived and are available via the statistics
All uploads have (if available) a link to the original author and gallery and/or the source of the image

User friendly UI:

Any image can be rated (and is automatically ranked)
Also the less rated and low rated images are highlighted (randomly or via related posts)
Different kind of archives are present: monthly, yearly, per category or per uploader/submitter
Most and least rated post are relative to the current tag, category of the single post
Simple navigation (sub)menu’s showing all submenu
Statistics: Overview of the last rated images and the highest, lowest, most and least rated images

I’ve also left some additional features out, which were time consuming to implement…maybe they’ll make it in the next version

Still to do…
Although I need to work some details out and have to do a lot of code cleaning and optimization and the GUI is somewhat Spartan, the site is live and is ready to be (alpha-)tested.

Feedback?
Any constructive feedback for this alpha-version is welcome in the comments below…

A fan-tas-tic start of 2009!

Fan-tas-tic — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:50:28 +0000

As stated in my post Setting goals for 2009 I’ll try to post only about the projects I’m working on…from now on. And I have to admit it’s hard not to blog, rant or rave about anything else.
Because there is actually a lot to blog, rant and rave about. For example this blog now has reached a Pagerank of 2 in 3 months, but so did my sleeping site Uppedd.com, which never had any content at all…and this is a big mystery to me.

The first post of 2009 year is a ‘fan-tas-tic’ one. Well, actually it’s about one of my projects called ‘Fan-tas-tic’ and a although the name may suggest otherwise it’s actually a quite humble project: a ‘fan-tas-tic gallery’ powered by WordPress.

Yes, I am aware that there are already hundreds of (CSS) galleries (like these lists of examples: 36 + 74 + 115) and a lot of free WordPress themes to make your own. However they all lack some essential features for the visitors and for the administrator.
I’ll come back to these features in another post, when I’ve got the full feature list of my own gallery complete.

In the mean time you should also check out some of the galleries above for inspiration and figure out which features you think they lack and leave a comment. If I can, I might just implement it in my ‘Fan-tas-tic Gallery’ theme.

Unstandard theme now WordPress 2.7 compatible

Tschai — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 12:43:12 +0000

Like many great themes the Unstandard theme did initially lack some basic features like widgets and gravatars. I made a widgetized and gravatar-ized version and this version has been donwloaded almost 600 times from October 2008 till now. Which proves that it’s still a popular theme and a decent upgrade was necessary.

Unfortunately I am thinking of changing my blog theme, while the current one will probably no longer serve my goals set for 2009.
The good news however is that the original author of the Unstandard theme has made his theme now WordPress 2.7 compatible: I suggest you check out the demo and get this new and approved version instead!

Should you not want to upgrade WordPress, than my ”pimped’ version will still be available for reference and download.

Have fun with this great theme.

Related post(s):

The Unstandard theme: widgetized and gravatar-ized

Best of 2008 for designers: 2008+ tips, tricks, resources and inspirations!

Tschai — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:40:00 +0000

A compilation post with the best posts of 2008 was inevitable. Below you’ll find more than 2008 tips, tricks, icons, tutorials, inspirations and more design stuff. For beginners and advanced designers. Also make sure you check out the other posts on these great blogs.

So for your and my own reference here are the best posts for designers this year I’ve came across and which are worth (re)reading.

Missing any great posts that should be added to this list? Leave a link with your comment and complete the list!

The Coolest blog…with the Unstandard theme

Tschai — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:05:18 +0000

The guys (and dolls?) at WP WebHost have organized a Coolest WordPress Blog competition. And since any WordPress powered blog can contribute and there are cool prizes to be won, I thought I just join along.
WP Webhost is not being a ‘Scrooge’ and the prizes are worth the effort.

And being so humble, why do I think I actually make a chance? Actually is because I believe in the power of the Unstandard theme and the built-in coolness of it!

To actually get nominated I need the help of other Unstandard theme lovers: I need a minimum of 5 comments, which is actually harder to achieve than it seems at first site.

So if you’re also using the Unstandard theme from 5thirtyone , please leave a comment on this post if you think this blog and the Unstandard theme should make a chance with this competition.

Off course any other and even sceptic comments are, like always, also welcome.

Related post(s):

The Unstandard theme: widgetized and gravatar-ized

McCain's desperate campaign move: be cool!

Tschai — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:32:29 +0000

In an desperate attempt to stop the immense popular Presidential Candidate and rival Barack Obama the McCain campaign team has turned to a unorthodox and rather desperate move to win back votes from the tech savy people, like bloggers.

With the aid of a cool tool from the Russian neighbours of the Vice President candidate and running mate Sarah Palin, PhotoFunia the team has generated some inspirational photo’s, where John McCain is portrayed as a great leader.

The question however remains, whether these photo’s will help the McCain team.