Nils Haack / Opticalvalve.com

Well, what could I say? The main reason for this site is my pictures. Photography is my hobby for roughly three years by now. But what are your best pics worth when you don't show them? Right. And this is why I made this site the first place. 

Broadcast my pictures to a broader audience. I know, there is Flickr or Deviantart and many other places. In some I participate. But you know... when dozends of pictures are submitted each second... you are covered by a pile of other artists. So why not have an own page?

I always needed some sort of an accessible brain extension online. Topics that are somehow interesting but are currently not required or only required for a short time. Links that I might need occasionaly or things I stumbled upon. Well, yes, there is such thing as social bookmark and blogging tools like del.icio.us or mySpace and Facebook . But in the very end, I would end up with too many things.

Technical Information

This site is running on CMS made simple. A PHP and mySQL driven CMS that is rather simple to modify and to extend. Even for people less experienced with programming, a lot of things can be adapted to fit own needs. For those interested in the details, check out the info below.

Templates

Sorry, at the moment there is no possibility to download the plug-ins and templates I made. I want to offer them but first I want to test them a bit as the site grows. Clean up the HTML and CSS. Well, create a nice package that would be adaptable and as solid as it gets.

Content Management System

As said before, I use the open source CMS "CMS made simple" or (CMSms in short). There are quite a few ready to use modules and plug-ins available in the projects developer section. If you decide for CMSms and you want to get up a functional site quickly, stay with those modules that are more mature and from current dates.

It isn't much a mainstream CMS such as Typo3 or Drupal (amongst others). But I have seen a few CMS from the backend and editorial perspective and must say, that you can relatively quickly let the people work with it. Many CMS require too much thinking for publishing.

see: http://www.cmsmadesimple.org

Additional Modules Used

There are basic templates and CSS comming with CMSms but a lot of the modules and plug-ins available don't (ok... most have templates but no CSS for the basic install styling). So even if you don't want to program anything and just plug-and-play your CMS - there is at least some CSS you have to do for many modules/plug-ins.

Comments - Simply to use module that by being placed into a page or template takes care of everything. Just define the existing template to your needs (if required) and you have a submit form and list of comments attached to the pages.

see: http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/comments/

Captcha - Nowadays, unfortunatly you can not just put some forms online. Sooner or later they'll come. These nasty spam robots and spider. Looking for unprotected forms to pump there ads into. I guess for this site is sufficient. It is a little nasty for the user but it works out and does its job.

see: http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/captcha/

Additional Plug-ins

Tell-a-friend - A simple tag that places a small form into your page. Since it is just a "one-file plug-in", it is pretty simple to modify if needed. Like the comments module it works nicely together with the captcha module.

see: http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/tellafriend/

Recently Updated - A tag that displays a specified number of most recently published pages of the site.

see: http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/Share_your_tags_here

Own Modifications and Extensions

Search - Search now also outputs content abstract with highlighted searchword

Inheritance - A set tags that allow to access content of other pages. The good thing is that you can now just add a page and other pages will automatically get abstracts or teasers from a content element. A great way to reduce maintenance time. These tags deliver most of the blog and gallery functionality.

RSS-feeds - A tag that will generate RSS feeds from given site branches. Automatically identifies page structure for category association.

"Not-CMSms-connected" Goodies

Semacode Capability - You might have noticed these squared black and white graphics across the site opticalvalve.com... These are semacodes. If you have a little software installed on your mobile (Barcode reader - standard with new Nokias) you can use it to point your mobiles cam at the code and ... zip... you have, in this sites case, the URL of the specific page on your mobile.

The basic idea is to use these codes at spots I take pictures. So when people get there and see the codes, they can download the image I took there onto their mobile.

see: http://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2007-06/12-php_semacode_encoder

Pull-Down elements - The javascript sliding the tell-a-friend or comments box is from DynamicDrive.com (AnimatedCollapse)

see: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/