JeffCroft.com

05.02.2007 // 19 Comments // News Center Django internships, Ellington jobs, an LJWorld.com redesign, and a short film review

Comments

1. 001 // Dustin // 05.02.2007 // 4:39 PM

   sudo get me a coffee !

2. 002 // Adam // 05.02.2007 // 5:40 PM

   Nice work on the LJ design. I am curious - the site seems to be lacking in advertising compared to most newspapers sites. Why?

   I have also way busy redesigning sites for our group of newspapers (about 15). I still have to deal with our older CMS, so this has certainly been a good lesson in CSS hackery.

   Man, that internship sounds like an awesome opportunity. I have been working with ASP.NET for the last few years, but have been looking for a chance to check out Django. And I would kill (not really) to learn more about Ellington. have been asked to work on a CMS rewrite for our paper, and it is amazingly intimidating.

   I am a one-man team here, so I don’t get the benefit of learning from a senior coworker’s experience. It’s just me and Google.

3. 003 // Jeff Croft // 05.02.2007 // 6:12 PM

   I am curious - the site seems to be lacking in advertising compared to most newspapers sites. Why?

   I don’t want to speak for our advertising gurus, because I don’t know all the reason they decide the things they do, but my feeling is this: They understand that it’s all cyclical. By keeping our readers happy, we keep people on the site, which is better for advertisers, which sells more ads.

   Also, I think they believe: More ads isn’t better. Better ads is better. We’d rather have one or two great, seductive, sexy spots per page than 15 small flashing ads competing with one another. One or two nice big ads are much more likely to be noticed and clicked than one of 15 tiny ones. I’m sure it sometimes takes some explaining for advertisers to understand this, but it almost always works out better for them in the long run.

   I still have to deal with our older CMS, so this has certainly been a good lesson in CSS hackery.

   That is the frustration with most of the publishing systems out there for designers, no doubt. I thank the open source Gods every day that I get to work with a system that places absolutely zero limitations or restrictions on what I can and can’t do with markup and CSS. I know it’s not the norm, even though it should be.

   …have been asked to work on a CMS rewrite for our paper, and it is amazingly intimidating.

   Yeah, it’s a funny thing, in a way. Some of our potential Ellington clients come to us and you can tell they have the impression that they could write their own CMS in lieu of paying for Ellington — especially if they’ve checked out Django or other framework that make CMS construction super easy.

   But what they usually don’t understand at the outset is all the real-world “gotchas” about news publishing systems. There are so many little things — new things still come up at least monthly, even for us — that you can’t account for until they happen to you. They will happen to you, but there’s no way you could have predicted them. The nice thing about Ellington is that it’s got a few years worth of fixes for those “gotchas” already under its belt. You could build you own, but you wouldn’t get that “that problem has already been solved” feeling you get with Ellington.

   I am a one-man team here, so I don’t get the benefit of learning from a senior coworker’s experience. It’s just me and Google.

   Well, you could have worse partners than Google. :)

4. 004 // Scott McCracken // 05.02.2007 // 6:21 PM

   I’m thrilled with the sites your team has designed on top of the aforementioned CSS framework—they are all clean, visually interesting, well balanced and amazingly legible.

   I work for a company that handles thousands of sites across the country and have been slowly trying to piece together a similar framework. The most limiting factor is that we give our clients a WYSIWYG editor that I have no control over. Trying to align content to a baseline grid when you’re not sure if your “about us” section is going to be in a semantic <p>’s or a nested soup of <strong><b> and <blink> is overly frustrating.

   We’re currently working on creating an in-house solution, but it will be a while before that is ready. In the meantime, nice work to everyone involved in these redesigns. I look forward to hearing more about the framework.

5. 005 // Nathan Borror // 05.02.2007 // 6:34 PM

   It was definitely a trip :) On to the next!

6. 006 // Bret // 05.02.2007 // 8:21 PM

   I just noticed “links in this entry” for the first time. How amazingly useful.

7. 007 // Oliver // 05.03.2007 // 12:50 AM

   Wow — that internship sounds brilliant! Being from the UK, I’m not so sure I understand the concept of ‘internships’ in the US sense, so I’ve got a couple of questions…

   • How old would the applicant need to be?
   • And, would one have to be at uni?

   Cheers.

8. 008 // Noel Hurtley // 05.03.2007 // 2:10 AM

   I love the LJWorld redesign. Fantasic as usual from Mr. Borror.

9. 009 // petr // 05.03.2007 // 5:41 AM

   Helvetica is nice film about nice typeface. I saw it a month ago here in Prague on Febio Fest.

10. 010 // Jacob Kaplan-Moss // 05.03.2007 // 10:45 AM

    Oliver: no, interns do not have to be students (although we expect many applicants will be). Same thing for age: we expect most people will be on the young side, but there aren’t any limitations (legally can’t be, I think).

    If you’re asking about yourself in particular, note that it might be difficult for a non-student from the UK to get a visa to work here; the US government fucking sucks when it comes to tech. visas.

11. 011 // Grant Blakeman // 05.03.2007 // 11:42 AM

    I know I said this on your “Bookmarks” post regarding the redesign, but I can’t contain myself: It’s phenomenal. It makes me weep for the likes of my local, dailycamera.com…

12. 012 // Jeff Croft // 05.03.2007 // 11:49 AM

    Thanks, Grant!

    I gotta say, though — your local paper online isn’t half as bad as some of them out there. The Scripps papers are definitely better than most! You should probably actually be thankful. :)

13. 013 // Eric Puidokas // 05.03.2007 // 3:06 PM

    “Also, I think they believe: More ads isn’t better. Better ads is better.”

    Think you could have them go talk to every other ad exec in the industry? I wish everyone thought this way.

14. 014 // Oliver // 05.03.2007 // 3:14 PM

    Jacob: Thanks for responding — yeah, I was referring to myself; I would love the oppotunity to be considered for this internship.

    That stuff with the visas is a bit of a sh*t… out if interest, do you know if you’ll be doing this again in future years? Thanks.

15. 015 // Mike Robinson // 05.10.2007 // 11:50 AM

    This is your Editorial department speaking …

    -> “reigns” are for kings

    -> “reins” are for horses

    :-)

16. 016 // Brad Fults // 05.14.2007 // 12:37 AM

    I dig the redesign and the job opportunities…now if only I could convince my better half that living in Kansas is somehow fun and exciting…

    Anyway, what’s up with the www2. prefix on the domains for both jeffcroft.com and ljworld.com? It kinda makes me want to scream or smash something.

17. 017 // Jeff Croft // 05.14.2007 // 1:18 AM

    @Brad:

    Each www2 hostname has it’s own story. :) For jeffcroft.com, I set up my domain name and DNS at Dreamhost, but later moved my site to WebFaction. Dreamhost won’t let you point www.domainname.com and just domainname.com to someone else’s webserver, so I was forced to pick a different hostname. Hence, www2. When I get a chance, I’ll probably move the DNS to WebFaction as well and lose the www2.

    For ljworld.com, the www2 was added way back in the early days of what became Django and Ellington. The guys had the ljworld.com site going on a different architecture, but as they started building Python apps, they did so on another box — www2. So, for the longest time, some parts of ljworld.com were on www2 while others were on the original box. With the redesign, we’ve finally moved completely away from the original box. In theory, we can now lose the www2. I’m not sure when someone will get around to actually dropping it, but it shouldn’t be long.

    I assure you, I hate the www2’s as much as you do. But, they are (or at least, were) a necessary evil for a little bit. Hopefully they’ll go away soon.

18. 018 // Actimel Francisco // 05.23.2007 // 12:25 AM

    “I dig the redesign and the job opportunities…now if only I could convince my better half that living in Kansas is somehow fun and exciting…”

    Very very nice LJWorld re-design and cool idea about digging that :)

19. 019 // Tyler Clark // 05.29.2007 // 6:54 PM

    Hey Jeff,

    I was confused by the DNS with Dreamhost comment. I use them for ALL my clients (~100) and I’m able to point things anywhere, regardless of subdomain, etc.

    You have to “add a domain”, then go into DNS and make all your subdomains for that domain. In your case, create a “www” A record, and a standard A record, and then go back to the manage domains and click delete under web hosting. Then and only then, can you control ANY A record, etc.

    BTW, I use to work for the New York Times RMG doing web design and development for a few papers down there (Florida). They were always bringing up Lawrence.com and others. Too bad they used a lame CMS system that was sooo bad I ended up quiting because it took too long and the end results were always rigged up. I could never put anything into my portfolio! Anyways, awesome work and I wish I could get my hands on the Ellington! Do you accept food stamps!? :)

    • Tyler

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