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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Its been a good year for me this year, specially towards the ends of things… and the partnership between me/Dan will be steam rolling into the new year. Just this year we’ve created Pixel2life version 2, Prodcotech version 2 AND the Pixel2life Advertising system (currently in heavy testing, check out here for BETA testing) and 2006 is looking to be even more of a treat :)
In January I start work on two projects that’ll rock anyone in the tutorial and learning related world… the first is dubbed “Pixel2life 2.5″ and will be an overhaul of the system behind Pixel2life and a mass of features for both the readers and the writers of tutorials on Pixel2life :)
The second I don’t wish to talk about yet… but you’ll be hearing about it sooner or later ;) But I can say the project is bigger than Pixel2life but is a project done 98% by me :) ps. This doesn’t mean its in competition with Pixel2life - at all.
Also, theres a re-design of this blog coming to help me blog alot more, and you’ll be seeing alot more blogging from me in the New Year… Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year to all :)
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A little general round up
Well its been a long long while, and I thought I’d update you guys that do still visit this site regularly on what’s happening, why this site isn’t being updated so much and what is actually going to be coming up in the near future. (Prepare for a very long entry)
Twod/Twodded has had the ladybug since it was introduced by Dan in Twod v2, and because of that - the bug has almost been the “Jamie Huskisson watermark” on all sites I do too. Every now and again it’s also necessary to bring things update and on the right, you can see a very small preview of what is to come from the new update of the bug mascot. The new version has been whipped up by Richard Shilling, a very talented flash vector artist whose DeviantArt page you can view here. Now, will you see me continue my work learning action script/flash through creating games involving this mascot? We’ll see…
*Start rant* A second thing I have to address is the amount of rips going around, and the serious lack of creativity I’m seeing from a lot of people lately. This isn’t aimed at the tutorial community, but the tutorial listing community or almost even the “rippers community”. We at Pixel2life are seeing a new tutorial listing almost everyday since the launch of our v2 site, and every one of them are exactly the same. 98% of these tutorial listings are started for money purposes, to get the user some money, and the rest are started purely for traffic reasons. Honestly guys, your just ruining it for the learners, if they have to go to a listing that basically accepts anything that’s submitted (because you have to whore out the love). Then clearly you should just shut down your listings and let people who have a passion about the subject guide users in the right direction. Just a short note for the people claiming to accept “nothing but quality tutorials”, try reading a few that you’ve accepted. *End rant*
On the slowness of updates side of things: I have 2-3 client jobs, a big Pixel2life related site/feature (coming soon), Pixel2life and Twodded CSS’ing and finally, 4 big assignments (that I’m actually pretty excited about working on) for college. This is also along with negotiating several layouts for Twodded projects and preparing the absolutely massive list of features for future versions of both Twodded and Pixel2life. So please do try to excuse me if I’m too busy to post on here, but I do love you guys, and the feedback from you is absolutely everything - so if you don’t like something, let me know why and I’ll look at it!
On the Twodded side of things, we recently changed the way we are dealing with our Twodded trialers. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the old Twodded trialing process I’ll go through it:
- User submits application
- User waits around 1-2 weeks for a reply from me
- User gets accepted/rejected
- User gets 2 weeks to post up a tutorial to support their application
- People bully the user into bettering their tutorial (Nicely of course)
- User gets a secret staff discussion about them and a herd of sheep decide their fate
- User gets accepted/rejected
Now, with this new trailing process it’s much more focused on the tutorials and your creativity. In the past I would literally have to suggest tens of tutorials to some people applying because they couldn’t come up with anything! The new trialing system is as follows:
- User posts up tutorial in the Twodded trial tutorials forum
- People bully the user into bettering their tutorial (Yes - still nicely)
- User gets a public vote for the public to decide whether they want the person to write for Twodded or not
- A very small staff discussion on the user’s tutorial (No sheep…)
- User gets accepted/rejected
This new process takes roughly a week, at most two, and so far we have accepted two people onto the team, and have had roughly 6-7 applicants for Twodded that have actually posted up tutorials. Before we took over 100 applications and probably saw 5 tutorials from these applicants in the 2-3 months we had the previous method implemented.
On another note in relation to Twodded, I’ve been receiving a lot of e-mails thanking me for starting a site that really does deliver when promoting quality tutorials. A lot of people that e-mail and contact me are fed up of the massive amount of sites that simply write those “1-20 liner” tutorials and want it to learn something properly, and I’d like to think Twodded delivers with this. I’d like to thank everyone who sends me these e-mails, as it really does make it worth while to create a site such as Twodded and have people say “it’s about time someone created something this good”. We are listening to your suggestions for Twodded and we’ve re-organised the menu on the site and have a few changes in the next Twodded version that’ll help you get your tutorial easier and the tutorial layout will hopefully be a lot clearer and sexier to look at - this is just the first stage of our re-building of Twodded to fit the needs of the users :)
On a pretty great note, you should be seeing the funnypicgenerator come back online within the next 6 months.. I’m saying 6 months as well, you’ll see. But this is guaranteed to be the best funny pic site you’ll ever see, as its not focused purely on “oh, here are my pics”, it says to you “here are my pics, why not share them?” and offers you various ways of doing so. I’m happy with my list of ideas for it and hopefully you will be too.
On a small note also, PEGZ won the team templating competition it was entered for. I’d like to think because of the comedy.. as we where a pretty funny team, but I’m pretty sure it was by default as no-one else did all the very small things such as Invoice template etc. to go with the created template. So to leave you with some words of wisdom…
“Default! Default! The two best words in the English language!”
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- Homer Simpson -
You there! Get me a drink..
This summer really has been a crappy summer with very little sun (yes, English weather strikes again). But its been great actually spending time with alot of my friends that i’ve not seen for most of the year, and actually relaxing rather than constantly working all month. I’m also pleased to say I had an amazing night out for my birthday, possibly the best night i’ve had out in town.
As some of you know i’ve been having some money problems over this past year or so and i’ve been looking for some work to sort those problems. From the looks of things by the end of next month, everything should be sorted out :) I’ve had 4-5 job offers for coding websites since I posted up the “new Twod” and Pixel2Life is definitely coming along great..
This year on a whole has been pivotal in the success i’m having at the moment and I can only thank Faken for the opportunity to code at Pixel2life as thats where all my success has come from and beforehand I would have just been another joe on the market with no real work to show for it…
I doubt many of you will read this but I thought i’d offer my two cents :)
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PIXEL2LIFE.COM VERSION 2 IS OFFICIALLY RELEASED!
After about 4-5 months on this project, i’m extremely proud to announce the release of Pixel2life version 2. I’ve put alot into this project so i’d love to hear your feedback :)
Here is the official announcement from Dan (aka Faken):
9 Comments »Before we begin this announcement, I would like everyone to give a HUGE round of applause to Jay, who has sacrificed MANY hours of his personal life and COMPLETELY coded this new version from the ground up! This project is his baby and the success of this launch goes to him, his dedication, and his passion for this project. I can honestly say that working with Jay continues to be the most enjoyable experience I have ever had in web design and I look forward to working with him for years to come. Remember, when expressing your gratitude, 99% of your thanks should go to Jay!
Congrats Jay, IT LIVES!
Since August 2004 we have been working on version 2 of both tutorialseek.com and pixel2life.com. We launched tutorialseek.com as a test phase a few months ago to get reactions to the new layout and the coding improvements and see how people felt. Well we received TONS of feedback, and while the coding structure and new features were praised 100%, it seems like a few weren’t too thrilled with the layout. As we continued to work and begin turning Pixel2life.com into version 2, which would share the new TS layout, I began to agree. The overall width was limiting our content areas, the templates were getting jammed up, and quite frankly I was getting sick of it. There was only one thing I could do if there was any hope I of completely scraping the project. As much as I’m sure Jay cringed, I scrapped the layout completely and re-designed it from scratch.
Well months later, the amazing coding from Tutorialseek.com version 2 has been improved even further and it now contains a never before seen layout that we feel is much more attractive and has the adequate space needed to support the massive amount of content we hope to deliver. The tabbed browsing we introduced in TS v2 that people loved is still used, but we nuked the tiny overall width, and completely changed the colors. Here’s a list of the new features and improvements this new version brings to the table:
- The need for speed! Of all the sites that are part of the P2L Studios network, Pixel2life.com was the slowest simply because of the sheer coding size and image sizes used all over the original layout. So the first thing was to pitch all the old code out and start a whole new backend from the ground up. In the end, we have a site with many new features, and half the load times!
- All new tab system navigation! Individual tabs lead you to the major sections of the site. We felt this would make the entire site MUCH easier to browse and use no matter what you are looking for.
- Less images! The site uses WAY less images so it loads fast: Twice as fast as the old pixel2life.com website!
- Random tutorials! If you’re a webmaster that has old tutorials submitted to the index and you think no one is seeing them, you’ll love this new feature! Each category view now has 5 random tutorials displayed at the bottom of each page
- BOOLEAN SEARCH! No more exact match folks!!!! We now use the full Boolean search method for search for your tutorials! That means more matches and better chances of finding exactly what you need much faster than before.
- Multiple tutorial submissions! Have 10 tutorials you want to submit for one category? Well now you can submit all 10 in one swoop instead of doing it one at a time!
- Not sure which tutorials require avatars when submitted? The new submission system has you covered with it’s required avatar system. If a tutorial category requires and avatar, the ‘No avatar’ option is no longer displayed.
- The ultimate Source Site Summary! Remember how the old webmaster page would only show the tutorials for a particular website for one category? Well now this extremely advanced tutorial source site summary page will display every tutorial for all categories AND give you valuable stats regarding your tutorials! Webmasters can now see at a glance how many tutorials they have in the system, how many are waiting for approval, how many are approved and in the queue, total categories they have tutorials in, total tutorial views, average difficulty, average rating, and total votes!
- Over 30 bugs that were causing some listing related panics are now gone.
- DOUBLE THE CATEGORIES! We’ve added TONS of new categories that have been requested to us over the last few months!
- Smart category display! When you select a category from the listing on the left, the category and sub categories will automatically move to the top of the category list, so it’s easier for you to use the sub categories without having to scroll down each time!
- New contact form that makes it easier to report issues and comments to the right people! By selecting the correct topic, the person responsible for that subject receives your email right away.
- A new complete Sitemap! Lost? Click the sitemap for a complete listing of every link on the site. The listing automatically updates with any new Categories or Sub-Categories we add to the site.
- All new approval system. When a tutorial is approved, it’s moved to the go live queue and a new tutorial is approved every 30 minutes. So your tutorial is guaranteed at least 5 hours on the main page once it’s released from the queue!
- An all new dead link system that will allow us to correct dead link issues MUCH faster!
- Detailed submission results! When you submit tutorials, the new output system will give you a detailed breakdown of your submission so you can easily correct errors when you submit.
- Over 250 pages of code have been reduced to 60! Aside from the database, this entire site is a re-code from the ground up!
- Source Site Search! This great new tool lets you search for a particular domain name, and the results will show you which tutorial categories are associated with the domains that match the query, AND whether or not those domains are active in the index or are marked as dead links and are not listed in the live index pages.
- Ever wonder what people are looking for when they come to Pixel2life.com? Well you don’t have to wonder anymore, because with our new Tutorial Search Statistics page, you can check out the top 30 search terms on Pixel2life.com, and even narrow it down by category and by either single keyword, or search phrase!
- Improved voting has been added throughout the site! You can now vote on POTW and SOTW (Pic of the Week and Site of the Week) submissions and you can only vote once per tutorial to help prevent voting abuse.
- A new and improved newsletter has been created! Sign up to our monthly newsletter and receive great monthly updates put together by our staff!
- Full page forums! The forums now use the entire width of the site, so you can post bigger images without a resize and read content a bit easier.
So that’s a general new feature list and I’m sure I’m forgetting some that Jay will correct me on pretty soon This is an effort consisting of hundreds of hours and MANY sacrifices and I can not thank Jay enough for the EXTREMELY hard work he has put into this, and continues to deliver as we work on new features for Pixel2life.com. Thank you so very much Jay… without you, none of the dream I call the P2L Network would have been this much of a reality. I personally thank you as do the thousands of people that enjoy the site each and every day.
I would also like to thank Donna for her complete re-organization of the forums and contributing TONS of imput to this project! HUGE thanks to her and the rest of the staff that have helped us throughout the site’s existance!
So that’s it folks! Go check it out and please provide us as much feedback as you can!!!
Faken
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FireFox search plugins released for Pixel2Life!
Yup its true, I just finished coding the resource center and FireFox search plugins for Pixel2Life, check the release announcement out here: http://www.pixel2life.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6411
Links to the resource center and firefox search plugins page:
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http://www.pixel2life.com/resource_center/
http://www.pixel2life.com/resource_center/firefox_tutorial_search_plugins/ -
Busy busy busy busy busy!
Well its been pretty hectic lately with over 50 applications for Twodded (about 35+ rejected btw, then further people rejected at trial stage cause they couldn’t back up their applications) and with development of Pixel2Llife new features (yes, v2 doesn’t have it all!) :o
Stickman has had a revamp and there might even be a new game to be included in my college project if i get time.. Also i’ve finished about 40% of a company website on my list, so that should be out the way soon. I’ve also had to film about an hour of footage (yes i don’t want to go out twice, and we didn’t ACTUALLY stop the recording for the entire hour…) for a video project for college, so that should be fun editing..
We are working on a couple of things for Pixel2Life at the moment, one key thing is the firefox search plugin idea previously mentioned that was going to happen for launch. The reason it didn’t happen for launch was the usual reason things don’t get released when i’m coding them, cause I stop and go “but what if it did this? and this… WOAH IF IT DID THIS!!” and I generally prefer to release quality over quantity when it comes to P2L in general. You’ll see what I mean on release anyway.
Theres also a very big thing to come out for people interested in RSS feeds for the tutorials, and especially for people who want to put them on their website, but might not know how and/or people who don’t have php/asp hosting. I’ll stop there cause cause I don’t want to be giving out heart attacks to people already overdosed on excitement.
I’d also like to note that we are still looking for applicants for Twodded, and would love to see good programmers apply (for things other than PHP/HTML/CSS obviously..) - unless you can code houses purely out of CSS, if so just apply :) We are also on the look out for a dedicated graphics artist (tutorials not neccessary) for certain images for the tutorials and layouts for projects we are developing internally.
On a final note, its my girlfriends birthday on Tuesday, and although I was there for her party on saturday I can’t be there on Tuesday, so everyone say happy birthday!
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Announcing two of the new features for Pixel2life v2
Hey, just thought i’d post to show off a tiny part of the features involved in the new v2 release for Pixel2Life this coming May 1st.
Search Statistics
Ever wanted to know whats searched on Pixel2Life and what the most regular things people search for? Now you can with an all sexy listing of a month by month view of search terms sortable by category :)
FireFox Search Intergration
(This one may or may not appear with the v2 release). Ever wanted to just type in a tutorial your looking for into your firefox search box in the top right, submit and have a list appear? Well with the firefox search intergration plugin, you can just select Pixel2Life from your search engine list, type the query in, and boom, your list of tutorials waiting for your sexy viewing :)
Of course, as you will see on release, these are just two of the massive list of additions and changes made for v2.
It’s coming along well and the only problem i’m stumbled accross is Invision Board 1.3.1’s absolutely appauling skinning system (as is with all forum software.. “Hey lets complicate things so its easier to skin..”)
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The Blogs Launch / Twod Shutdown
Here comes the launch of Twodded blogs, multiple people will be setup with a blog to share with you their work on Twodded and other stuff along the way.
You’ll see alot of different things accross these blogs, and hopefully you’ll visit often :)
Also, Twod will be taken down until the release of Twodded, which is schuelded at May 1st. Also, you may also want to note that Twodded will be a tutorials based with projects only, no funny vids, interviews or galleries (But funny pic gen/funny quote gen will remain as projects..). Although I may want to add these galleries into the blogs for people to put their own pictures up :)
Work on Pixel2life v2 is coming along very well, and I can promise you that you will LOVE the new version.
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