C7 Designs - The HeadSpace of Chris Gandolfo

Final clustrfck logos

Chris — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:15:23 +0000

Just thought I would share the final logos for the clustrfck.net site. I’ve been working on the site design as well as what content/platform I’m going to run. If you have ideas, post them below.

Clustrfck.net Logo Ideas

Chris — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:17:21 +0000

I’ve been playing with some logo concepts for clustrfck.net, a domain I picked up recently. I think if you look at the concepts (click the thumbnail image for full-size) you can see where I am going with the concept. Raw, edgy, eroded, grungy, graffiti style is what I have been playing with. Leave a comment below as to which one you like or if you don’t like any of them submit your own by hosting it on your site and linking to it. Who knows, if I like it I might even pay you for it!

An Open Letter to the Idiot Who Stole My Sirius Radio

Chris — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:55:44 +0000

You are a tool. Not just a tool, but a fucking tool.You spent your time and energy to break into my car to take the one thing I can render obsolete with a simple phone call. Yeah, you’re an idiot. You didn’t think about how I might call Sirius and simply have the radio canceled, thereby making it a very effective paperweight.

The customer service folks at Sirius are great by the way. They credited my account for 2 months of my subscription because I will be without their service for a week. You are rockstars!

You weren’t smart enough to take the CDs in plain sight or to rip apart my dash for my Pioneer CD player (one of the best decks I have ever owned). Those items alone are worth a few hundred bucks. Maybe you’re not a Korn or a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan and ripping out that dash… jeez that could get messy and you could get dirty. So you’re a sissy tool. Oh wait! A fucking, sissy tool!

However you are dumb enough to rifle through my center console and dig out the change I keep there. I really hope that thirty-seven cents does wonders for your income. If you happen to become a multimillionaire from wise investing (or insider trading) maybe you could come back and leave me a little something other than anger, frustration and heartburn. Even if I hadn’t canceled the radio you failed to take the two things that make the radio useful - the antenna and the remote.

Yep, a fucking dumb sissy tool.

Enjoy your new paperweight.

Chris

Domains For Sale

Chris — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 08:29:49 +0000

Buying domains is my crack. I’m addicted to buying domains. However, I have come to realize I will never use many of them, so I am selling some of them. They are listed below with their expiration date. If you would like to buy one just email me. I’m not looking to make a buck on these so I will let them go for any reasonable offer.

CYBRGRAPHICS.COM - 1/19/2009
CYBRSTUDIO.COM - 1/19/2009
HYBRIDDESIGNER.COM - 3/14/2008
NVNSO.COM - 7/13/2008
RENOWEBSTUDIO.COM - 3/08/2008
SEOBLACKLIST.COM - 11/01/2008

On a side note I picked up clustrfuck.com and really want to do something with it, but haven’t quite come up with anything yet. If you have ideas leave a comment below.

Enough with the “Best of 2007″ blog posts

Chris — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:33:14 +0000

Ok, it’s stretching into the end of January and yet people are still posting their “Best of 2007″ lists. I’m pretty sure we can stop this ridiculous behavior at any point. I believe one of the fundamentals of blogging is timing. Posting a “Best of 2007″ list 3 weeks after we have rung in the new year is poor timing.

New Year, New Look

Chris — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:24:22 +0000

As I come screaming into 2008, after having completely vaporized 2007, I figured it would be a good time to redesign and relaunch C7 Designs. When I set about on a new design I knew this would be more than a reskinning this time.

For the past 3 years this site has been built on the Smarty template structure and a flat-file system. When I decided to take my development skills to the next level this was a perfect way to go. It allowed me to dip my toes in PHP while separating my content, structure and style. It fit perfectly with how I was already building sites with pure structural xhtml and presentational css. It allowed me to redesign the site several times over while only needing to change the template(s) and the style sheet while the content remained safe and protected in its PHP files. However, I knew this wouldn’t last me forever. I knew I needed to find an open source content management system (CMS) for my own use as well as to offer my clients the ability to update their own sites.

My Love Hate Relationship with Content Management Systems

I have spent many hours implementing a variety of CMS’s from ModX to Silverstripe and TypoLight. Each one had their benefits and their downfalls. I really like ModX, but it’s user interface (UI) is far too complicated for the average computer user and suffers from some fairly rudimentary usability problems. Silverstripe looks fantastic and offers a simplified UI while providing some very robust modules including a blog module and ecommerce module. The problem with it has always been its stability. After it completely wiped out a client website for no reason I dropped it. TypoLight has some SEO problems that the administrator can not override. SEO is a critical aspect of modern web solutions.

My New, Old Love

After Silverstripe wiped out my client’s website I went back to evaluating Wordpress as a content management solution. Spurred mostly by this post on Web Designer Wall I rediscovered what a great CMS Wordpress could be. Thanks to the open source community it has become very robust in the last couple years and has been extended well beyond a blog publishing tool. So I rebuilt the Wing and A Prayer Dance Company website using many of the tips from the Web Designer Wall tutorial.

It worked out so well I decided to use the same technology for my own site. So, here you have the new C7 Designs - completely rebuilt from the ground up.