Popular page is up & working!- I had previously put out a cry for help to find a way to make what I visualized into reality. The lovely and talented Scot Nery took a crack at it and it looks just like the page I mocked up. It’s a great start, but it has three small issues. 1. Data entry is difficult (create a thumbnail, upload the image, find the image link, write and format the text all in html, then check the page for errors) 2. It doesn’t randomize (I might just have to give up on this, but my dream is to have 30 or more items that get randomized and only display 9 or 12 at a time) 3. If the text in the 3rd row is too short, the next 3 columns underneath it get messed up.

Hellavetica added to the site- While he was under the hood, Scot also added some code to automagically turn the headers for blog posts page names to appear in Hellavetica. In case you didn’t know, Hellavetica is my handwritten version of Helvetica. I don’t know how he did it, but it really adds to the handmade feel of the site. It might not work for everyone (or everybrowser) but it doesn’t require you to have Hellavetica installed on your computer. I was surprised to find it even worked on my iPhone.

Rollover links added to the sidebar- Naomi, the person who built the new DocPop.org, just added “pure CSS image-rotating menu thingies” to the sidebar. We had heard good some feedback about people not understanding that the words in the sidebar were clickable, so now they change color when you mouse over them.

Added more headers and icons- The rotating header and icon at the top of the site is something I plan on adding to continuously. Hopefully by this time next year, I will have a hundred DocPop.org headers and 200 corner icons. Here are two of the new ones.

Thanks to Scot and Naomi for the help improving the site. My wishlist for future site upgrades includes better formatting for the iPhone (so it doesn’t appear with all that dead space on the right), updating the links on the top of the page to also roll over, easier input for the popular page, and improving the shop’s layout.

update: I decided to add one more header that I made this morning.

Helvetica is tearing our country apart. Some people love it, others not so much. Critics say that Helvetica is overused (in fact, you’ve probably seen it on Nestle Bars, American Airlines planes, or Crayons), but I love its elegant design and nostalgic appeal.

So I created my own hand drawn version of Helvetica that I call Hellavetica. I created it using a web site called Fontify.com and a Pilot V.5 pen. Fontify is a cool service that I highly recommend. Simply print their font layout sheet, fill it in with your own handwriting, scan and upload it, and Fontify will do the rest. You’ll get a chance to see what your font will look like before you commit to buying it. Yes, it does cost money, but $9 is a small price to pay for your own font. I created a font called Doc Pop Brush a few years ago and I still use that shit. Money well spent.

On the down side, Fontify is an automated process, but it isn’t perfect. Spacing can be a bit wonky, fonts often don’t look great when enlarged, and you may want to try changing your font in photoshop a few times and checking it closely before commiting to the purchase.

For the hell of it, I posted Hellavetica and Doc Pop Brush in my store for real cheap if anyone wants to use them.