Joshua Davey Design

Jumping on board with the rest of the designer/developer world, I decided to take up learning Ruby on Rails. Easy enough, right? Sure, if you used to object-oriented programming. From what I’m told, Ruby is actually a great entry-level programming language because of its simple syntax, built-in methods and easy-to-read format.

However, I have never taken a programming class. All the XHTML, CSS, and PHP I know has been self-taught and has generally been a gradual learning process, looking up stuff when I need an answer or run into a problem. For better or worse, my web design method has usually been front-end-centric, ignoring or taking for granted what happens in the background. I have been become relatively well-versed in theming Wordpress and Textpattern, but have never really understood just how these applications connect, talk to, and edit database entries.

But after viewing the RoR “Creating a weblog in 15 minutes” screencast, I gave into my temptations and decided that it was high time I dive head-first into the foreign world of web development. I went ought and bought the highly-recommended Agile Web Development with Rails, and have been struggling through it for about a week.

My learning curve has been admittedly steep, as I am not only learning Rails, but also Ruby, and programming in general. I’ve found myself having to google lots of terms I probably should already know, such as “method” and “class”, two programming concepts that I’ve had a particularly hard time shoving into my skull.

That said, I have also been rather impressed with the authors of the book, because it seems well-aimed for both newbies and experienced professionals used to other programming languages. I’ve gone through the example project in the book, and I think I’m ready to start my first Rails project from scratch. The CMS modules based on RoR that I’ve seen in the wild–Radiant and Typo–have been very indicative of what Rails is capable of with a minimal amount of coding, not to mention the very-cool RoR apps from 37signals.

Where to go from here? Who knows? I guess the proverbial sky is the limit. All I know is that I’m excited about finally understanding some of what goes into a web application, and even more excited that custom web applications can be possible to build from the ground up, even by a wee designer like me!

As suggested by 43 folders, I changed my hosting over to A2 Hosting today. I ran into a few snags at first, but the support at A2 was awesome, and they helped me a ton. Thanks, everyone at A2!

If you’re reading this, I have successfully transported my feeds over to FeedBurner, using the handy Wordpress plugin that they now host called FeedSmith. Thanks.

Hot off the press, and right on the heels of the first version, we’ve released a new design for pauseculture.com, which overhauls the basic look and feel of the site, and fixes several issues with Textpattern and navigation.

The title of this post alludes to the new design finally being done. However, there are some other changes that have taken place around here that I have neglected to mention previously:

1. The name has changed. Formerly JayDee Design, this company shall henceforth be known as Joshua Davey Design. I confess the change was mostly for vain reasons: I like my name.
2. The blog has changed from “Soapbox” to “Words”. This is primarily because I want my design work to more closely related to and associated with my musings. The addresses have therefore changed as well, from /soapbox/ to /words/.
3. I have added a portfolio.

These small changes aside, the design itself is what I spent the most time on, and I must say that I’m rather proud of it. Not that its aesthetically anything to write home about, but because this site is the first time that I built a Wordpress theme from scratch. It was certainly a learning experience. Inductive learning always proves fruitful!