About

Revised: April 5, 2008

Abridged History of photogabble:

Photogabble has been about since 2004 and initially started out as an online gallery of my work to present various universities with in the hope of getting a placement. It wasn’t much to look at and only had fifty or so of my best photos presented by an exceedingly basic gallery system I devised in php. The whole setup ran off an ancient apple PowerPC from 1986 and pretty much any script I wanted to run I had to customize so it would run in less than ten seconds. Soon after starting photogabble on that ancient server I was given an relatively modern computer by a friend at school and to this day photogabble still runs on it and with only a couple modifications over the years including an hard drive upgrade, brand new raid card and memory it has proved to be as reliable as you could expect with a 98% uptime record.

Although the first version of this website focused on my photographic and design work, each initiation of the site since then has moved further and further away from that idea, into the ambiguous territory of being about everything I found interesting. The most recent reboot of the site happened in Q1 2008 and took the website back to its roots, the design which had gone stale since I abandoned it in mid 2007 has been replaced with a brand new one based upon several design aesthetics “borrowed” and “inspired” by other websites. So in essence photogabble is supposedly information, tutorials, and news on the photography scene with a little bit of personality inserted by myself and those who guest post here as well.

The man behind the site:

My name is Simon, I was born on September 11th a bit longer than two decades ago. Since then I have been immersed in to art and culture by my parents and family and become fascinated by media, culture, linguistics, and sociology. I currently study at Coventry University and am in the final leg of completing my BA Honors Degree in Communication, Culture & Media before beginning my Masters in Media and Cultural Analysis on my journey to becoming a recognised specialist within my chosen field. In my spare time I like to take my camera out and shoot some photos or organise a photo shoot with friends, in between that and work I also develop php scripts and occasionally release plugins and fixes for the wordpress blogging platform. This website is a big mixing pot of my vices and interests, feel free to wonder about and leave a message.

Site Backend:

The website is built upon the Wordpress blogging platform running on my server, which possesses a 1.11 GHz AMD Duron Processor and 504MB of Memory.

Plugins Used:

  • Akismet

    Version 2.2.1 by Matt Mullenweg

    Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

  • Assignment List

    Version 2.0 by Simon Dann

    Make to do lists.

  • Author Avatar

    Version 1 by Simon Dann

    Displays post authors gravatar

  • Blix Archive

    Version 1.0.0 by Rob Marsh, SJ

    Displays a neat monthly archive in the style ofthe Blix theme.

  • cforms

    Version 8.2 by Oliver Seidel

    cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. Please see the VERSION HISTORY for what’s new and current bugfixes.

  • Compact Archives

    Version 2.0.0 by Rob Marsh, SJ

    Displays a compact monthly archive instead of the default long list. Either display it as a block suitable for the body of a page or in a form compact enough for a sidebar.

  • Custom Smilies

    Version 1.2 by Quang Anh Do

    Personalize your posts and comments using custom smilies. Previously named Custom Smileys.

  • Fix Database

    Version 2.0 by Simon Dann

    Fixes the database I screwed up on import.

  • Flexible upload

    Version 1.13 by Antoine Choppin

    Resize picture at upload and make thumbnail creation configurable, optionally include a watermark to your uploaded images. Support Lightbox-like plugins.

  • Images

    Version 3.0 by Simon Dann

    Image Board.

  • Lightbox 2

    Version 2.5.0 by Rupert Morris

    Used to overlay images on the current page. Lightbox JS v2.2 by Lokesh Dhakar.

  • List Plugins

    Version 1.5 by Simon Dann

    Displays a customisable list of activated plugins, based upon original code by Matej Nastran within his My-Plugins, plugin. Which I have updated for 2.5.

  • MyTwitter

    Version 1.6 beta by Erundur Anwamehtar

    A simple Twitter status lister.

  • Post-Plugin Library

    Version 2.6.2.1 by Rob Marsh, SJ

    Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin.

  • Recent Posts

    Version 2.6.2.0 by Rob Marsh, SJ

    Displays a highly configurable list of the most recent posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

  • Similar Posts

    Version 2.6.2.0 by Rob Marsh, SJ

    Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. Similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags. Don’t be disturbed if it takes a few moments to complete the installation — the plugin is indexing your posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

  • SimpleTwitter

    Version 1.1 by David Wood

    A plug-in to show the last twitter tweet for a user.

  • Smarter Archives

    Version 1.0.1 by rob1n

    A unique way of displaying month links by year. Based on original code by Justin Blanton, but much enhanced. Licensed under the APL 2.0.

  • wp-cache

    Version 2.1.2 by Ricardo Galli Granada

    Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”.

  • WP-Forum

    Version 1.7.8 by Fredrik Fahlstad, Thanks to Stefan Lewandowski @ http://www.3form.net for security code.

    A forum plugin

  • Zenphotos

    Version 2.0 by Simon Dann

    Tools for including zenphoto gallery images into wordpress templates

  • ZenPress

    Version 1.0 by Simon Dann

    Zenphoto functionality added to wordpress.

Website Design:

I re-design the website about once every year on average however this is the first design I have created for my own website that I have actually published after I finished it and the content. The theme called “Poivre Piquant” is based on the colourlovers theme of the same name submitted by pyramus. I decided to attempt to create a simple yet accessible theme based upon a very simple five colour scheme. I did end up using a couple extra colours from toscana nord submitted by anycolourilike. The theme itself I have to admit is based upon and inspired by the new wordpress redesign and simplebits which you might notice in the coding style and base layout concept.