o9Media

I had almost forgotten that today o9Media has been around (on Wordpress) for a full year. Of course it’s been a rough year for our beloved website, nonetheless it’s made it through a year. As I acknowledged it’s existence for 365 days I sort of stumbled in the way one might stumble when forgetting about a girlfriend’s birthday until the night before. And parallel to the present that said girlfriend would receive, I’ve given you guys a picture. I can’t quite think of anything as nostalgic as o9Media today one year ago.

Please keep in mind that this picture was taken several days after the site was released and the top is a bit cut off, but it still bears the original design. To my knowledge this is the only existing shot of the original o9Media design.

Happy Birthday big guy!

Early this morning after a bit of sleep and a touch of food I went to arrogantly ogle o9Media V2. I was pretty pleased with myself. Until I noticed a serious flaw on the splash page, or lack there of. There was no way to distinguish whether or not new posts have been made on each blog without checking all three. Which, if I was a user would be quite irked about. Accordingly, I got to work immediately and pushed out what you see on the splash below: a reminisce, so to speak, of the “Recent Articles” section in the sidebar on the old blog. But, unlike the previous this one is actually useful.

Anyways, I’m off to do other things. The Blog subcategories should all be sorted out by tonight.

So, I’d really like to give everyone a ten page address on all that I’ve done over the past few weeks. Though, seeing as how I’ve slept maybe a solid 10-15 hours in the past three days that’s not gonna happen. I may write something more later. I may not. However, I do feel I need to give everyone a brief rundown of what’s been done.

The Home Page -
First off, you’ll notice the homepage. It’s not longer a barrage of articles and information and this and that. Some returning users may not like this, but I’ve found having a calm, easy, static page explaining o9Media off the bat is best for everyone (and should urge more readers). A feature that should be coming in the near future is a news-esque ticker combining all of the blogs’ RSS feeds. The blogs will be explained further below.

The Blogs -
This is by far the biggest change. Unlike any other time when I redesigned o9Media I never actually changed the way it functioned. Well, I did now. I’ve separated the old blog into three main categories; music, art, and tech. Each blog is located on it’s own subdomain with it’s own RSS feed and it’s own distinguishable design. As I’m writing this, the RSS feeds and the subcategories have not yet been implemented. (I’ll be doing that as soon as this has been published) So, bear in mind a few things may not be perfect from the start.

The Designs -
As stated above, each blog has a distinctive design. Why? Well, I figure if you’re going to have multiple sites within one site, you may as well make each distinguishable. Which is exactly what I had done.

Everything Else -
You’ll notice a lot of little changes here and there. Changes I don’t have the effort to analyze. Ergo, I’m just going to let you, the reader, the user explore the new o9Media. Bear in mind, this is some what of a soft open. There will be problems, of course, but with the database issues (which I may or may not explain later) I had to rush to get o9Media v2 up. Here it is! I’m gonna go nap for about six days.

Thoughts?

It’s about time I told you the truth: we have little gnomes that live in our database — We ignore them, they ignore us. However, we’ve recently been implementing some features (that should be available in the coming weeks) that the gnomes didn’t like very much. So, they decided to delete every category on the entire blog. I’ve repaired a bit temporarily, just enough to function. This was in no way my fault and I recommend blaming other magical, mystical sources.

I’ll try to repair more sooner than later.

I’m quite excited to announce that I have received the first o9Media T-Shirt today. The logo was printed a bit dark, but overall the T-Shirt quality itself and the actually process of printing it was fantastic. I don’t know whether or not anyone else wants one — If I get enough interested buyers I’ll try to see what I can do.

Not much else to say here other than,”Freakin’ sweet!”

(Back to work!)

Hey all, just tossin’ out a quick post about a new “feature” o9Media has: o9Media Radio. Yup, radio. It won’t be constant and there aren’t any specific broadcast times, but I’ll probably throw something over in the sidebar to let everyone know. Anyway, for the live chat when it’s broadcasting join the AOL online chat found here or over in the sidebar. Last but definitely not least: here’s the stream link. And it’s up as of 12:15 PM EST! So, take a listen, and I’ll keep everyone updated as this progresses.

EDIT — New button on the top right. (Has on off state too) What’s everyone think?

I’m going to put it blatantly, I am an asshole. There’s no other word for it. Sure, what I did was wrong, but I got some good laughs out of it, that and we didn’t have any article to publish yesterday. But, hey, every website on the face of the earth did a prank. Some of the best of the day were the CollegeHumor prank (even though it wasn’t that thorough) and the Legend of Zelda trailer.

Also, to all the staff, I changed your passwords so nobody could be shifty and get back in… So, just change it back. Sorry XD. Anyways, places to go and articles to write. The moral? Don’t trust the internet, it’s a series of shifty tubes.

Dude! What happened?!
The o9Media you had grown to love is now gone. But don’t fret! You’ll be happy to know that under this slick new design Wordpress and SMF are powering the site. Many changes have been made since you last came — Or, this could be your first time here… Who knows?

So, you just redesigned it? Big whoop.
Don’t be too sure of yourself. We’ve restructured the staff system, and recruited a writing team. In other words, we’ll be producing a lot more blogs. Hopefully, at least one every other day.

Blogs of…?
Stuff you’ve never heard about.

This interests me, why?
…Let me rephrase myself. Our staff isn’t just in charge of writing. We spend quite a bit of time finding internet gems, researching, and whatnot. We have several correspondents exploring music, the arts, and the “internetz.”

Wow, anything else I should know about?
Actually, yes. We have community forums, for the users to discuss just about anything. But really, to get the full effect of o9Media, I recommend browsing around, find what sparks your attention.

Welcome one and all to o9Media 3.0!