All posts by Sean Feeney

Site Launched! – AfternoonCrash.com

Design, Pixel Precise, SeanDFeeney, , , , , , ,

Over the past few months I have been slowly but, surely been chipping away at a new idea I had. I wanted to create a website that could motivate and energize people purely based on the content provided on the website. I thought that this could be a catchy concept which, was intuitive enough that anyone could pickup and understand easily, without much thought; yet, it was unique enough so it is not just a copy of everything else on the web.

What is it about?

In order to intuitively express this concept I decided to implement different degrees of energy based on familiar concepts. I broke the site out into 3 degrees of energy: Tea, Coffee, and Energy (drinks). The tea section, is the lower of the energy intakes. It will provide content that is more intellectually stimulating or laid back mental stimulation. The energy (drink) section, is the highest caffeine intake. This section will contain action sports, some MMA fighting, etc.; content, that will be “balls to the wall” crazy. Then, you have coffee. This is a middle of the road energy intake. Here, I will have content that isn’t exactly intellectually stimulating or high impact energetic content. Instead, you will find funny, shocking, and just randomly cool, stimulating content. Additionally, I intend to incorporate news about the various beverages; so, you can stay on top of the latest news and concepts surrounding your favorite caffeinated beverage.

The Design

My aim at the design of this site is to be welcoming, innovative, and stimulating on its own. The header is busy because I feel it really expresses all the aspects of the site in one illustration. As previously mentioned, there are three sections to this site. Energy, Coffee, and Tea. This way, a user can filter the content on the site by a particular energy level and get though their afternoon crash, while sipping on their favorite caffeinated beverage. The comments engine is built using the Disqus comment system (which, you can read about here). When developing, I thought for the future. I applied a lot of CSS3 design concepts. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you use a modern browser. The latest Firefox, Chrome, or Safari are preferred. IE6 will not be supported. Have a look at Redesign: My WordPress Journey for my reasoning behind dropping IE6 support and coding with CSS3 concepts.

What are you waiting for?

… Go on over to http://AfternoonCrash.com and check it out! All feedback is welcome, and you can use my Contact Form and let me know any questions, concerns or comment you have. All feedback is more than welcome. Finally, don’t be afraid to get involved. I would love to generate a community who helps steer this site. So, go on and comment, share stories and, even submit them to me and I might just use it! 😀

It’s Time to Disqus

On the Web, , ,

Over the past month or so I have visited a few sites.  I commented on various articles and I couldn’t help but notice, they all had a pretty cool comment system. Normally, I wouldn’t have payed much attention but, I started noticing it was giving me statistics on my comments from other websites. After researching, it quickly became apparent that this comment system should be everywhere. It equally benefits the site admin and the site viewer.

The Admin’s Perspective

disqus moderate comments

The Disqus team really thought about the user and the admin with this product. Without exaggeration, I was able to apply for a Disqus account, configure the settings and install in under 10 minutes. Disqus supports the most popular blog platforms. My perspective will be from WordPress. After installing, all there was left to do was, add some styling to fit my theme a little better (not that there was much to change because the system is very clean and simple). Disqus even includes a custom styling section where you can add CSS of your choosing, with a built in preview. Unfortunately, the preview only seems to show positioning. Integration with the website is seamless. So seamless, it exports comments from your old comment system and imports it into Disqus with an automated system. Want your site to be mobile friendly? Disqus is now automatically enabled for it’s mobile version. Afraid of getting spammed? Disqus integrates with Akismet.  From comment moderation to following discussions away from your site, about your site (reactions), this system has it all.

The Commenter’s Perspective

disqus profile comments

As you go from blog to blog, you may become more and more involved in discussion. However, that discussion usually ends after you move onto the next article or you have to remember the page and go back to it. Not with Disqus. Disqus is a system that stores your comments in their system, as well as, each individual website. Don’t worry because “Disqus does not make any claims to the ownership or control of the comments.” This means that you can create a Disqus profile and then check out all of your comments from http://discus.com/username.  Here you can reply to your comment discussions to continue the discussion for all of the comments in once place, without ever having to go back to the individual websites. Even if you don’t want a profile, you can comment using your Twitter, Facebook and OpenID accounts. Disqus adds to the social by allowing other commenters to vote by “liking” your comment. This, in turn, allows comments to be sorted by popularity. Earlier, I mentioned that Disqus has an import feature. When sites import old comments it enables another useful feature. As a commenter with a Disqus profile, Disqus will search through comments from those old systems and allow you to link your old comments into this system.

Room For Improvement

Now that I have Disqus setup, I see a few issues that I would like to check out. Looking through the Knowledge Base, it feels like a glorified FAQ and is not very search friendly. I also wish there was better documentation surrounding how to properly handle your old comment system.  As previously noted, the custom code preview doesn’t show your theme and doesn’t appear to show pre-CSS3 code like -moz and -webkit.  Yeah, I know, I am nitpicking.

In Conclusion

In my opinion, this is a great product. As you can see this is an incredibly useful tool which is going to revolutionize the commenting systems available today.  There are too many features to list here and I am still digging through them all. What are you waiting for? Get over to Disqus.com and let me know what you think in the comments!