Ringing in the changes

I accidentally deleted some database tables from the backend of my personal website a month or so ago, which prompted me to rebuild the thing from scratch. I had long been intending to change from Exhibition Engine to another gallery script that has some sort of an active development community, and I decided to implement a CMS while I was at it.

So without further ado, I invite you all to come look at The new improved Ruaux.net

I particularly like the Travel Map section, which integrates Google mapping with the new gallery script.

The site is using Joomla for the CMS, with a mildly modified version of one of the default templates. The gallery script is Menalto Gallery2

I would be interested to hear usability/this is broken/OMG this is teh SUXOR!!! type comments (well, maybe not the latter )

Hi Craig,

I really like your site, very clean design and great images, the Google map is great idea.

One comment, in my browser I see the central part of the site empty and all the data, like galleries or the map down in the page so I have to scroll to see it when there is a big empty area as I mentioned.

My resolution is 1025X768.

Hi Craig,

I, too, have a big empty spot in the center and have to scroll down to view galleries, etc....

that google map is cool .. how do you make that .. is it a static image you update or is it interactive so when it is updated your map on your site updates ?

Ah, praise the powers that be Microsoft...

I'm willing to bet you are both using IE6. Which is not strict standards compliant , and munges up the CSS. For the love of all that is sacred, try Firefox!

So far I have found that the site renders correctly in Firefox and Safari, but not in IE for the Macintosh. I'm currently wading my way through thousands of pages of acrimonious arguments on the web to try and find a way to convince IE to actually play nicely.

that google map is cool .. how do you make that .. is it a static image <snip>

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You must be using Firefox, good man!

The google map is generated dynamically by a module that you can install with Gallery2. When the module is in place you can define latitude/longitude for a gallery (and for that matter for individual images), this information gets added to the XML file that holds the titles, view counts etc etc. The image is generated by the Google maps server, so all the things you can do on Google maps apply here. The "map" page is actually an alternative layout for the top level of the gallery, which is why when you click on a gallery link from the map you get a slightly different layout than when you go through the "Galleries" link on the main menu.

I took the site offline for a short while to try and get some IE compliance going. It is back on line now, but IE will still not render it correctly. Sorry all you IE folks

I'm not relishing the job of chewing up and spitting out all the CSS to try and make it work

Sorry to disappoint you but now its work fine also with my IE6 B)

Very slick, Craig. Top-notch photography. I like the random images feature.

I am also using joomla as my cms and gallery, although i could not get the gallery bridge to work because of a safemode issue with my host - it was the main reason i went for the combination but months of tinkering could not solve it for me. Looks really well on your site - i am jealous.

ie6 also causes me some issues with font sizes in gallery, ie7, safari and firefox work splenidly.

have found joomla to be as stable as rock but gallery and my host regualry "fight" 9esp. when my host is having one of its regular "permissions" pogroms) - i have had so many problems with attempted upgardes that i am still using 2.0.4. - once i started to tinker with it [themes, upgrades and addon] i started to have problems - now ist running again i darenot touch it but have failed getting "checkout" to work with my theme which is another option i really wanted. make sure you back up the db regulary. i am planning a 2.11 upgrade next month to try and sort out some issues but will do it as a seperate clean install.

another nice feature will be if they can get the sitemap (joomap)addon module for gallery bridge up and running.

Why won't your site work with IE6? What happens?

After reading the fine print, of course I had to go and try it with IE. No adverse effects that I could tell.

Why does this template scrunch everything to the middle half of the page, regardless of my display resolution?

Scorpio_fish:

The CMS uses templates to draw the page, and the templates are designed to use CSS 2.0. IE6 does not have good support for CSS 2.0, and also has a bug where putting an XML declaration after the DOCTYPE declaration causes it to go into "quirks mode".

Do I sound like I know what I am talking about :ph34r: ???

So I have been able to make some changes that cause IE to render OK most of the time by editing the templates, but I can't guarantee that it'll work.

The templates are designed around "lowest common denominator" screen resolutions. According to the site statistics, 41% of my visitors view the screen at 1024x768. The template fits 768 wide nicely. I do personally use a higher resolution.