Change of plans for tomorrow, my good friends and clients at Legend Aircraft called me today to see if we could shoot some new Legends they have ready for delivery. So, I'm heading east at O'Dark Thirty for some sunrise light over beautiful East Texas.
In my opinion something like Squarespace or Wix are good solutions for someone reasonably savvy - for a few reasons. First the design template is resistant to user-caused entropy, so your website is likely to continue to look good into the future.
Second you get a hosting platform and a CMS (Content Management System) for the one bill and from the same supplier, so if there are issues there will be no finger pointing between suppliers. Performance is solid as well.
Finally most clients underestimate the need for ongoing support and maintenance, but in the Squarespace environment almost everything is strapped down tight, so your need to do any system administration is minimal to negligible.
So a locked-down feature-set with minimal customisation options on a combined hosting/CMS platform brings many benefits, *provided* that the functionality you need matches up with the Squarespace feature-set. I recently was going to help a friend with a Squarespace solution but lack of built-in membership features meant looking elsewhere.
Next up would be something like a nice theme on top of Wordpress, using the specific plugins that are needed to round out your feature set. But here you need to start devoting time to a bunch of little issues like updating plugins, deleting log files, optimizing databases, dealing with security problems and liaising with the hosting company, the theme designer and the plugin vendors to deal with lots of small issues that will crop up. This becomes a big time waster and you end up getting bogged down just keeping your website running smoothly. Media Temple offer managed Wordpress hosting and are a good choice in this space.
And going to a more complex custom solution will cost exponentially more dollars for something that will look no better than one of Squarespace's nice designs, and will suck dollars every month in support and maintenance via the company that builds your site. That is a major commitment that is only necessary if you have quite complex functionality that cannot be delivered in one of the lower tiers (described above).
NightOwl Cat wrote:
Not quite sure when it will happen, but there's another trip to Massachusetts in the future for me. Arrangements have yet to be made, though I know the burial will be at the Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne, down on the Cape. She's now with her husband, and two of her sons. Rest in peace.
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Under the heading, "It's a matter of time..." I have it on good authority that a UPS 767 filed a report documenting a very near miss with a drone at 1500' on approach to Houston. That's only 1100' over FAA altitude limit, not to mention flying a drone in airspace that only the NSA could get approval for. Man, there's some mentally challenged folks out the among us.
One of Murphy's laws: "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious"
Wrei wrote:
Mr. Wilson, do you think all the crazies live in DC? I have it on good authority (personal history) there are a lot of crazies in Houston...I often wonder if 200 miles is far enough away.
Wrei wrote:
Yes, we made it home the 1st of May. It was a great trip. Lot of world left to see!
We have been hosting some old high school buds over the last couple of years. They leave the farm rethinking their retirement home. Something about 5 hour talks on the front porch...
Another view of the A-12. Most of the airframe is not painted so it's fascinating to see the titanium structure. I took a bunch of high-res shots just to see the different panels and lines.
More goofing around at breakfast with the diminutive Fuji X-T2 and the XF35mmF1.4 R lens (50mm equivalent). A fun and easy to carry setup that carries plenty of horsepower for image-making.
The back lot tour of Warner Bros studios in Hollywood is also well worth seeing. Here is Sandra Bullock's suit from the movie Gravity in the WB museum.
Did you notice that the writing is backwards on one part of the WB space suit, but not on the patch? I wonder if that is for some kind of movie shooting reason/trickery?
Cheers,
Steve.
Edit: Just noticed that the NASA suits are the same. Maybe I am missing some obvious reason for that...?
steveverrall wrote:
Perhaps those switches are adjusted by the wearer of the suit, while looking in a mirror....Oh well - whatever - back to work...
Yep, they wear a mirror on their wrist so they can read the dials.
When I worked for Boeing, they offered me a job as a QE for the EVA suit or the new (post Challenger) Crew Escape Suit (same as the SR-71). I chose the Crew Escape Suit.
Haha! We did have a NASA T-38 split a deer with the nose gear, then quarter it with the main gear at Ellington one night. The guys who took the meat home were awakened early in the wee hours telling them to return the evidence of the accident. OOPs!
Thanks for that concise analysis, I appreciate you! That's the way I'm headed. I know it's going to take some time on my part, but in reality, I haven't touched my website in several years and I could literally shoot 24/7 if I wanted to, so I guess I'm not losing work because of an outdated site. I'd just like to have my site represent another component in a very professional face for my company, it's more a personal thing than a serious business need at this point.
