Jens Filipsson » Homepage

New design!

Jens — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:37:32 +0000

After many late nights and many hours spent, my new website design is finally done! I like it very much, and I hope you will too!

I have to apologize for the lack of updates in the advent calendar these last days, but I’ve been under a deadline with the completion of the site, since I’m planning to use it as a showcase for a job I’m applying for. Wish me luck!

About the page

New design

I wanted to have a bit more open feel to it than my old site did, and tried to remove all elements that felt unnecessary. I got rid of the sidebar, both on the pages as well as in the blog, which hopefully makes all pages less cluttered and more content focused. Instead I’m placing all complementary content in the footer of every page, and alter the content of the footers depending on which page you’re browsing.

In the blog I’ve aimed for a bit of a magazine article feel to every post, something I’ve seen around lately, and is a way of structuring everything that appeals more to me than the traditional blog layout. I think it’s easier to navigate now, and with less content cluttering the page, I hope browsing and reading will be more enjoyable.

Since I’ve changed the structure so much, it will take me a while to update all old blog posts, so I hope you can bare with me while I’m taking care of that. At least I have something to do during Christmas holidays…

I hope you will enjoy the new page as much as I do, feel free to look around and see if you can find the surprise I’ve got for you. A hint is to try the menu items!

I would love to hear what you think, so if you need a reason to try out the comment form below, that’s a good one. If you find any bugs, please tell me, it’s hard to test a website in all different web browser out there.

New design

Archive Page

Jens — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:00:29 +0000

I have finally built an archive page for all my old blog posts. Hopefully this will make it easier to get an overview of my blog and, if you’re searching for something in particular, make it easier to find it.

I used a WordPress Plugin called Smart Archives Reloaded , which is an updated version of Justin Blanton’s Smart Archives, a plugin he seems to have stopped updating.

Check out my blog archives to see the result!

Blog with your mobile phone in WordPress

WordPress Photo Galleries

Jens — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:31:23 +0000

WordPress, the platform I have built this page in, comes since a few versions back with a built in gallery feature. The problem is that it without any customization doesn’t provide a good way of gathering all your galleries in a nice way.

I began looking for better solutions, and found that the page of Matt Mullenweg, author of WordPress, revealed the perfect solution!

Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out how to make my galleries look the way Matt’s does, and after hours and hours of searching I almost gave up the idea of implementing a gallery on the page. Then, almost by accident, I found a nice guy called Steve with a site named the second phase. He had managed to build galleries just like Matts, and best of it all, he provided a guide for doing so.

I know from my own search for the answer that many people out there are interested in a solution, and I can really recommend Steve’s guide. Easy to follow and implement in your own design!

Take a look at my photo albums page for the result of my efforts!

Blog with your mobile phone in WordPress

Finally back online!

Jens — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:08:40 +0000

After lots and lots of problems with changing my old web host One.com to my new one, Loopia, I’m now finally back online again! It’s been frustrating since I haven’t been able to update my page at all, my last blog post is from 14th of June I believe. Now I’m gonna start blogging again, and I’m also doing some minor changes on the page, here and there, little by little.

[tags]Loopia, one.com[/tags]

English & Swedish!

New comment look

Jens — Sun, 04 May 2008 10:46:54 +0000

I have finally redesigned the look of the comments here on jensfilipsson.com, something I’ve been planing to do for a long while now. Here’s the result:

I have implemented Gravatar support which, if you’re registered at www.gravatar.com, adds your sweet face next to your comment. If you’re not registered, a random colorful pattern will show up instead.

Try it out for yourself! Write a comment below and tell me what you think!

[tags]Comments, Design, Homepage, WordPress[/tags]

New design

A little status report

Jens — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:02:54 +0000

Some new stuff are planned for the page. First of all, my new archive page which is already up. I’m also working on the concerts page, right now looking a bit unfinished (Well, it is!). I also want to work a little with the output of the comments. The weather in Vienna is very nice and I have lot’s of rehearsals coming up though, but I’m working on it!

I have some new concerts scheduled, and some more of them coming up soon, which is fun! It’s not easy coming to a new country, trying to make contacts and trying to get gigs, but it has turned out surprisingly well!

Now we’re heading for the sun!

[tags]homepage, status report[/tags]

Back in Sweden and Stockholm

English & Swedish!

Jens — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:52:44 +0000

I’m working very much with my page right now, and I told you before that I’m switching language to English, since I couldn’t find a good solution for writing in both languages. Well, now I found one, and right now I’m trying to get it to work here on the site. So, hopefully you can soon enjoy both Swedish and English here. Ain’t that sweet?!?

[tags]multilingual blogging[/tags]

Switching to English

Jens going international!

Jens — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 13:08:57 +0000

Yes, from this moment on my page will be in English. Since I don’t live in Sweden right now, and since I’m getting more and more international friends and contacts, it feels like a natural step to take. I first thought about having the page in both English and Swedish, but right now I can’t come up with a good solution to solve this technically. Maybe in the future, who knows?

One good side affect that I’m looking forward to is the possibility to practice my English, and I hope you can live with eventual mistakes that I’m surely gonna make once in a while!

All parts of the page is not translated yet of course, especially not the blog, which I’m sure gonna take a while to finish, but I will take it one part at a time.

I would also like to say welcome to all my English speaking friends! Hope you will have fun here!

[tags]blog, english blog, translate blog[/tags]

Switching to English

Switching to English

Jens — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:09:45 +0000

As you can read in the title of this post, I will soon switch to English here on the site. Considering my circle of friends nowadays contains pretty many non Swedish-speaking, it’s a pretty natural step to take. Of course it also gives me the possibility to reach a greater amount of people.

I have been thinking about running the site in both English and Swedish, but right now I can’t find a good solution to accomplish this in WordPress, which I’m running my site on. I have read about some stuff under progress, so maybe I will go multilingual (is that the correct term?) in the future. We’ll see!

Right now I’m working on some changes on the site, and probably I will do the switch when I launch these.

[tags]english blog, translate blog, wordpress[/tags]

English & Swedish!

Blog with your mobile phone in WordPress

Jens — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:47:24 +0000

I received a question from Nina in a comment here on the blog, asking what I’ve done to be able to send blog posts with my mobile phone. I decided to publish my answer here as well, to make it easier for someone else having the same question to get an answer! For the record, I got my starting help from Markus Hängsel, and of course he also have deserved a link! :)

Step-by-step guide:

1. First go ahead and download the plugin Postie and install it.

2. Create a new e-mail address, in my case I created a new one on my own domain.

3. Next step is to configure Postie to fetch e-mails from the e-mail address you just created and publish them on the blog. I also configured Postie to only allow e-mails sent from my mobile phone to be published, this way we prevent eventual spam e-mails from appearing on the blog.

4. Next you have to make sure that Postie at regular intervals checks the e-mail account for new e-mails by, if you have the possibility, setting up a Cron job on your server, or by using the plugin Cronless Postie, that came along when you installed Postie.
My host doesn’t allow me to use Cron jobs, so in my case I’m using Cronless Postie. You can also use a service called Easy Monitor, which is an external service that you can read more about in the Postie FAQ.

5. To use Cronless Postie, if you choose this solution, you start by activating the plugin. Then, to make Cronless Postie check your e-mail at regular intervals, we have to tell it to do so. This is easily done by, in the three wordpress feed-files wp-atom, wp-rss och wp-rss2, adding the following code just before the last ?>-tag:
do_action(‘check_postie’);

6. Then you sign up for an account at, for example, www.bloglines.com, and add your page to your subscriptions. Bloglines will then check your rss-feed about one time every hour, and at the same time tell Cronless Postie to check your e-mail. Magic!

Everyone can’t send e-mails with their mobile phone, I’m one of them, but what I can do is send mms:es to e-mail addresses, and this works just as well. I’m not saying this is the best solution, It’s the solution I came up with after googling around over this topic. If anyone has a better solution or ideas to improve this one, please tell me!

I hope this helps you get everything to work, but before you go, please let me give you a warning: Be careful with moblogging combined with beer, this could get very expensive! :)

(Here’s a link to intressant.se, hopefully this will help people finding this post easier.)

[tags]blog with your mobile phone, blogga med mobilen, cronless postie, moblogging, postie, wordpress[/tags]

WordPress Photo Galleries