I just had more or less 4 days of downtime for the website. I just switched from an old host who was having trouble keeping my website online and it caused a lot of headaches (I seem to have really bad luck with hosts). I’ve moved to a host who prides itself on customer service so we’ll have to hope that the website floats!
It’s been weeks. Months even. But the new website is finally live.
It’s been quite a transformation. My old host had circuit breakers on my site that turned off a bunch of pages when the site got too busy. As the search for a new host started it turned turned into an even bigger pipe dream of updating the site from an old, old WordPress theme to something quite modern. And here we are, fully up to date, the fat trimmed, and all the games and content live and well.
When I first created my website I intended for it to be a portfolio. Slowly this site turned into a video game site, loading up with ads and completely geared towards displaying games and earning your pageviews. I realized after a couple years that I was not happy about that and that I would want my work displayed somewhere nice without ads or a ton of branding. I decided to start slimming things down, and I ended up with the site seen here:
I was pretty happy with this design for quite a while, it was the longest lasting design out of the many I made. But it was buggy at times and even worse there were a ton of missing features. The WordPress template the site was built on didn’t upgrade well with new versions of WordPress and within a couple years it started to age. With the final breaking of the website from the traffic I decided to try my hand again at web design, work off of a new template, and get the site design to where I wanted it. I managed to find a template that really fit my vision for the site and after a lot of overhaul the site was ready, and here it is!
A few features have been added to the site. For one, I can upload content quickly now instead of editing static pages like a madman. The clutter is gone and the strange thick-framed panes are sexy and slim. The new designs loads much quicker and should be mobile-compatible on most browsers. There’s finally there’s a proper place for my photography, and with that, the semi-soft launch of my photography portfolio, helloaphant.com! And even neater, the website is all one giant page! It’s all pretty crazy.
That said there is still plenty to be done. For starters the animation section has not been put up. For another I miss that top banner game, so I’ll have to figure out something to do about that. And finally there’s a few final touches to be done, but honestly I’ve been far too impatient to get it live and I have an entire backlog of updates (and game uploads) to make! And now that I look at it the game icons are all different sizes, weird.
Input is appreciated on the new site, I hope you enjoy it! And for those who show up all the time, welcome back. Its very nice to have you back.
Hi everyone,
So my website got a lot of traffic and ended up triggering some circuit-breakers for my hosting. I am in the process of figuring out how to reset these circuit breakers. Until then, the content of the site will not be working. I apologize for this inconvenience; I’m working out a solution that will help me get this thing back up and running.
Cheers! John
Lots of website changes today.
jmtb02.com has been 728 pixels wide nearly since the beginning. But due to the ever-increasing width of Flash games the site has expanded to nearly 900px wide. When I first started making games everyone was making them around 550px wide (the default for Flash). But now that things keep getting wider and wider (the most recent was 800px wide!) the site needed to change with it. It also means I’ll have to type a lot more to make it seem like I’m writing more.
Games since January have (finally) been posted! Timemu, Exit Path, This is the Only Level 2, and others can be found in the Game Section. Finally got something rolling.
For the forums, I think we need to start fresh. Not a bad thing (it means we can finally not have a five-year old forum) but it’s disheartening when things break and post counts get nuked. I am currently working on a rewrite of the forum architecture so people can post stuff about… things.
And here’s a picture of Muffin, just for kicks.
In a recent poll on the website users voted for an ostrich. I’m sort of giving you that.
It’s an emu. You might not tell the difference, in which case you can call it an ostrich (it wouldn’t be offended either way). Emus are way more fun I think.
In other news:
• I switched to Verizon and got a Palm Pre Plus. It’s a nice little phone, I think it fits me pretty well.
• I can’t figure out what the hell is wrong with the forums on my site. Will investigate more though.
• I had a tooth chip out of my mouth, pretty awesome huh? On a piece of sour licorice too!
More emu updates approaching soon.
