Fighting the internet

I’m in the process of finally uploading and updating my design portfolio.

I’m doing it in a way I’ve never done before - that is, I’m working with modx to create a sort of framework for the entire page. It’s a CMS (content management system), which put very simply means that once I have the system up and running, to update it should be no more difficult than writing an e-mail and attaching a picture, or blogging. 

Unfortunately, it is a hell of a lot to learn, so I’m getting there slowly.

I’ve looked at multiple CMS platforms and while there are simpler ones like Joomla, but it seems this is the most easy to customize in whatever way I want.

So in addition to the general design problems of getting everything to look good in as many browsers as possible, there’s the problem of getting to grips with this new system. And on top of that, I’m trying to learn and implement some jquery effects, which are basically like javascript but different. And then there’s the php stuff, and the fact that my mysql server apparently isn’t very versatile and limits what I can use.

Wäääääääh. Been at it three days now pretty much nonstop, except for the one day of break I allowed myself in the weekend. I keep learning and going until I notice my brain is going numb and nothing makes sense anymore.

This is a frustrating process for me because I know there are so many thousands of people out there who have absolutely no problems with this stuff and who would probably just point and laugh if they saw me struggling to make even a simple gallery page.

The most irritating thing is that if I weren’t insisting on doing this in modx, if I were just building a normal html page, I wouldn’t be getting so many grey hairs. But I want to learn it, so I might as well do it now.

Perhaps when I’ve learned, I’ll make a few tutorials for the things I’ve had the most problems finding help with to spare others a bit of my brain-ache.