Today is my birthday. It is also the first birthday of this website after I converted it to use Invision Community. This last year have been filled with ups and downs, not just in life but the entire world seem to be having trouble finding it's footings. As I move into year two of the latest incarnation of this website it is time to find that footing again, at least for this website.

When I started the conversion last year it was just another experiment. A way to try out the good old Invision Community again. Something I have done on and off since 2002 or so, but never really stuck with. What I found was that Invision Community was working very well for me now. The many years had matured Invsion Community as a product and as I got deeper into the template system it really appealed to me as it allowed me a creative freedom that not even Wordpress can match.

In this last year I have created hundreds of blogposts, hundreds of videos have been added and I have recreated my entire swedish blog again. I have built several databases such as the Awesome People section and My Projects section. I have also had a few setbacks such as loosing all graphics for some strange mishap at my hosting company and also had my account ravaged by virus due to the presence of my old Wordpress site. This has since been corrected and I am now on a new webhost and I have setup an AWS hosting for images (which also cost me dearly due to a script malfunction, but that has since been corrected).

Over all it has been a good year, filled with exploration and learning. My passion for front end development have been reignited and my passion for design has also returned. The writing comes and goes, but overall I feel good about it and i feel that it is far easier to write using Invision Community than it is to use Wordpress. It suits me better I think.

Moving forward

Last year I wrote some goals for this website in the form of short term, medium term and long term goals. These goals are still valid and while I have created the databases and I have a design that works for at the moment, I will rebuild this design again as part of the 4.5 upgrade.

Short Term Goals

My short term goals is to upgrade the site to version 4.5. With that comes some new features, but the main goal is to reset the structure and design  bit. I have played around and experimented a bit in the last year and it is time to clean that up now. So the first short term goal I have is to build a new design, recreating the current design for the 4.5 version. This includes building some new templates that I need for certain databases, but also organize the databases properly.

One of those templates I want to build is to recreate the block design I currently use for this blog. It is based from a purchased application and as much as I like it, I do not need the functionality. I also want to build a design I can understand fully and can control rather than relying on someone elses design. I also want to experiment a bit and use css grid, flexbox and maybe even currentColor, which will be superfun I think.

The second template is a listing template that I will use for things like My Education and if I decide to add a reference feature, like the CSS reference on w3schools. It will be a very simple template, but very useful for different types of listings.

Another short term goal I am working on right now is to update all the projects in My Projects and rebuild My Gallery section.

Medium Term Goals

The medium term goals will be to create the information for guest blogging and about this site.  About this site is not just for the visitors as I also need to define what this site is for myself. I also need to figure out who I build the site for so I know what to create for them. For this purpose I am starting to create sort of a personas gallery for myself, which is actually already helping me focusing the content a bit.

Guest blogging is probably not going to take off that much in year 2, but I still want to make sure it is easy to understand how to do it. Having a page and instructions on what it means to guest blog is just a first step however. I still need to build a few things to make it valuable for the guest bloggers so I can repay them for their contributions. I have create a new user group just for authors and I am considering to build a new database for them as well.

With the My Projects on it's feet I will take another look at My Roles. I realize that it is quite easy to build a CV - like structure by connecting to the My Projects database. So I will build a new template for this later this fall and combine that with acual CV's as time permit.

Long Term Goals

The long term goals for year 2 will be to create more content that is helpful. What I mean by that is that much of what I write here is mostly for me. It is news that I think is interesting and my own thoughts mostly. While that is good and fine, I also want to make sure that I add content that can help and inspire. Things like short tutorials, downloadable graphics and inspiring posts on new tools or practices is probably more useful for a visitor, so I will focus a bit extra on that in year 2. It takes a bit more time and energy, but I think it will be worth it.

I get a lot of questions on how I built this site, so I am going to write more about that. I know how hard it can be to get started with Invision Community as the information is a bit scattered, so if I can help people get started, then that would be great.

Overall the long time goal is still to provide useful information and resources to make people want to come here. The long time goal is also to use this site as a way to keep my toes wet in the front end development area and the design area primarely.

These long term goals always balance against me having fun. This site can never be a source of stress, that would defeat it's puprpose. Slow and steady progress over perfection as time permit is key. As is doing this with love, not obligation because this is a website created to satisfy my need to write and create. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Onwards to year 2 with new adventures and discoveries!

As I posted earlier I have been working on a section for people. It has been a fun experience to build this section and now I am ready to add this to the resources section. I have added a handful people that I think is amazing and I will continue doing this of course to present some of the most amazing people I know.

Building this section was fun, but also quite educational as to how Pages from Invisioncommunity works. There are a few areas where it was a bit tricky to get the fields to work the way I wanted. For example I wanted the Personality types to be in a list, but I also wanted to link the types to a website where you can read more about them. This turned out to be easier than first expected, but it took some experimenting to figure out.

The form for adding new people is still not very pretty, but I have not put any effort into changing that yet. Pages can have custom forms that you can assign to databases so I can make this much better in the future if I want. This is what I love about Pages and all other parts of the Invisioncommunity suite. It is so versatile and there is always new things to learn.

So enjoy this new section on the site where I will continuously add amazing people. Some will have interviews and some will not, but you can rest assured that there will be new people added almost weekly. For me it bring in some of the most amazing people to my site and for the people I add I will do my very best to promote them and show the world what I see in them.

As I know a lot of people this will be an endless work and I can not possibly add everyone I know due to time constraints. Me not adding you here does not mean I do not think you are amazing, only that time has not allowed me to add you here yet.  I will add you as soon as time permits however, so please just be patient.

Because you are amazing.

I have always thought that people are amazing. I love meeting people from different cultures, religions, gender and political views. What I find is that if we look past the stereotypes and generalizations you find that all people have something valuable and amazing inside them. This is something I want to bring into this site and I am building a section for just that purpose.

In my daily work I meet so many amazing people. People that not always get the attention they deserve. People who enrich this world with hard work, but also with dreams and very often with a seed of awesomeness inside them. This is something I want to nourish and hopefully make blossom. I want to help connect people with others that are amazing so they can grow and take a few more steps towards their inner potential.

It does not matter to me if you are just getting out of school or if you come from another country. It does not matter if you are changing your career or take a bold step to start your own business. If I can help you just a little, then maybe that will be enough for you to  make your dream come true and nothing could be more fulfilling than that.

This is why I am creating a section called simply "People". It is a section where I present people and give them visibility here on my site. I will interview them and link to their websites and linkedin profiles. This new section will soon show up and I have several amazing people already prepared to show you. I want to show the world who you are and why you are amazing.

Because you are amazing.

This site is built on Invision Power services and out of the box it is a very competent solution. As I dig deeper into the CMS however things quickly becomes a bit difficult. At the same time I continue to be amazed on just how powerful this system is.

When you dive into IPS then you quickly start to find areas where you need some guidance. This is when you try to figure out how to adjust a certain piece of data or how IPS template systems work. This is where things get a bit difficult because very little effort is made to support this kind of questions from IPS. They rely on the community to support each other, but unfortunately this works very poorly.

IPS used to have specific areas for each of their modules, but now that is gone and instead there is a generic area. For me who mostly need help with the CMS this is a pain because the CMS barely register as most still only use the forum. So finding the right information is difficult at best and if you ask, then you rarely get any help because so few actually know anything about the CMS. I think that 90% of all my questions are answered by OpenType, one of the few Pages experts on IPS. There are some documentation, but it is rudimentary and is more a base than actual documentation, so you really need someone to help you with the more specific areas.

Once you get through that obstacle then magic start to appear. I do not think i have used a software this powerful...ever. Just out of the box you can do pretty much anything you want. Then there are plugins and addons built by the community to further extent the capabilities. Once you start to understand how things are connected, then you almost get immobilized because there is just so much potential so it's hard to know where to start!

It is annoying ass hell sometimes, but at the same time it's just awesome when you figure out how things actually work and what you can do with it.

September is upon us and for the next 4 weeks I will focus on giving you a glimpse into who I am. That part of my site always are the least developed, so I want to make it a bit different this time around. So September will be the month of me here on the site.

Since I will be rebuild the Interview section where I met and interviewed different people I will present myself in a similar way. I will work on my projects and my education section to make sure those are up to day and the way I want them. The biggest focus will be on the About me section however and the new feature called my roles..

Since I want to give you a more in depth view of who I am it would be fun if you asked me questions about things you would like to know about me.

So don't be shy and ask me anything you want to know about me!