Today I updated the photos on the website and added reception photos. You may notice a different order, or some pictures that weren't there before or are now missing. This is due to some backend changes and rating I am doing on the entire photo collection. There are now more than 1000 photos from the wedding and honeymoon. There will be additional changes in the coming days as i continue to tweak my photo collection. My entire collection is over 8500 strong now and needs some serious pruning.

It's live.... The work is done and the site is posted. Some of you have had a chance to see the beta site go through a few changes, most of you haven't seen the site at all. I think this new site will be far better than the old one. Drop me a line and let me know what you think. Shortly you will start to see more posts about he wedding as Tracy and I move into gear to prepare for the wedding. So I guess EternalMagic v2.0 came just in time.

The site has gone through a few more changes, but not many. I decided to change the home page from this journal to one of a picture of Tracy and myself. I just like the way that looks better. You go to the site and boom, you know you are at the right place. I have also added more information for those traveling from outside of Dallas. I have more information to obtain, plus add in links to their respective sites as well as links to maps or directions to at least the wedding and the primary hotel.

We do have some final decisions to make on things such as: menu for wedding, menu for rehearsal dinner, blocking rooms, finding a preacher and a few other odds and ends; but not like those are major issues or anything. The good news is we still have several months.

It is all coming together though and looking very good. I am actually very pleased with how the site is looking and operates. I know it won't be a high travel site, but it will be an important one if only for a few short months.

Just a few more changes before I put the 2.0 site up live at www.kellysworld.net/eternalmagic. I just need to make sure the site is clean and the links all work as they are supposed to. So far everyone that has taken a look at it has liked the layout and the ease of use. It isn't as complicated as the 1.0 site, but that is more of a plus I think. It is more sophisticated as it fully supports CSS in the proper way instead of the the hacked up way I was doing it with 1.0.
I still have more content to create, maps to get on-line as well as links to driving directions for those that might need it.

Tracy has been biting at my heels to get me to update Eternal Magic. The problem has been that I have switched to a new web development tool and that tool won't edit the site. I have a tool that will, but doesn't do it extremely well; plus the site actually uses two different systems for update. The first being traditional web development and the other being a site maintained by Blogger. Across both I am using the same CSS, but I didn't write the CSS and more importantly I didn't the website to update the sidebar automatically. The menus weren't dynamic either. Basically, what all this means is that Eternal Magic 1.0 was a real pain to edit.

The new site will be light years easier to maintain, but for the time being I have lost some functionality. Much of it I can probably re-claim, but I will have to learn how to do them in the new editing environment. To make the situation worse, much of what I did was based totally on trial and error. I really have no desire to go through that process again.

The look of this site will probably go through several changes, as Kelly's World recently has done, before Tracy and I find a look we like. I may attempt to edit some of the templates, but that requires cutting into the CSS again and my skills in that area are not very good. So by the time you are reading this the site may have already changed again. As of right now I haven't even changed the site over to the Eternal Magic sub-domain of Kelly's World. Once I do, i will blow away Eternal Magic 1.0 and be happy to be maintain an easier version of the site.

This site seems to continue evolve and change. For example, tonight Tracy came into the media room and said that the guest book system on the website just wasn't working very well. I knew she was right, I hadn't been happy with the code since day one, but it did seem to work and didn't require too much special customization or configuration. I looked over it tonight though and it was painfully clear that it just wasn't up to the task and wasn't very well written code.

So I did a quick search and luckily, in little time at all, find some code that I thought would work. There was very minor configuration to make, actually less than what I had to do with the previous system and once I got the code working and accepting entries, some customization to make it look as though it truly fits the site.

So tonight I unveil the latest change to the site, the New and Improved Guest Book tool. I did go through and manually capture those old comments that I could understand and re-entered them into the new system so they wouldn't be lost to time.

For those that haven't signed the guest book, please do. For those that did sign the guest book, then you might want to check that it stayed and that when I transcribed the entry I did so correctly.

Okay, the site is making more and more strides. I was able to locate a small script that provides me with a simple guest book feature for the site. This way when the site goes live our family and friends can sign the guest book and tell us what they are thinking, or just wish us good luck. It took me a while to configure it to look good on my site and lay it on another page, but it the finished product isn't bad. It blends right into the site.

I also added photos today. The photos I added are select photos from the past year of Tracy and I dating. They range from the first photo of us together taken at Champps Americana to a picture taken of us just recently at Jessica's birthday party. The albums work quite well and that is another program I downloaded free.

In addition to those two new items, I have also beefed up the text on most of the pages and tried to get more symmetry between pages so that jumping from one to the next doesn't make people sea-sick.

That leaves me with the possibility of using the flash programs I have to create a few fun intros for the site, plus I want to make changes to the KellysWorld Times site. Those changes would both be in style, but I also want to change that site to better match the reality that "KellysWorld" has become, with Tracy and Courtney added to the world. Right now you wouldn't know that I am a "family man" now. I want to try and change that before Thanksgiving.

Today was an incredibly special day. The day was special for the simple reason that I picked up the ring that I will give to Tracy when I propose. The ring that Jim and Sharon gave to me. The ring that had been my grandmother's ring and her mother's ring before her. When the jeweler showed it to me I was stunned. I had no idea how pretty it would look when completed. The ring was already wonderful and now with the extra diamonds and a brand new sine the ring looks brand new. (Photo to be added soon)

Tracy and I had looked at faux antique rings, but this is a real antique with real family value, as well as commercial value. While I can't say without a shadow of a doubt that Tracy won't be overjoyed with the ring itself, I am still secure she will be. Of course she is just wanting me to pop the question and even though I have the ring, I am not quite ready to do so. Not because I don't want to ask, in fact I really want to; but the time isn't right yet. I want to finish designing the web site, decide how I will propose and possibly arrange a get-together with some friends and family.

While I may not be ready to propose, I do want to make sure I have everything prepared. I have the ring of course, but the next step for me was asking Paul (Tracy's step-dad since she was a child) for Tracy's hand in marriage. I don't know if it is still a "live" tradition, but I felt it important to do so and called Paul and Gay this morning to arrange to meet with them. I didn't tell them why, but just said I needed to stop by and show them something.

After I picked up the ring I immediately headed over to their house in The Colony. Of course they had a very good idea why I was coming over and didn't waste anytime getting to the point. In fact I had a hard time asking Paul what I wanted to ask him, he just kept saying "show me the ring!, Show me the Ring!" He eventually calmed down long enough for me to get out "May I have your daughter's..." "YES! NOW SHOW ME THE RING!" Apparently lack of patience is a family trait. So I showed Paul and Gay the ring, and they were quite surprised. Especially surprised when I told them how old the ring was, they said they never would have guessed; but after looking at it again they realized how different the ring really is to what you see today.

So, I have the ring. CHECK! I have asked for her hand in marriage. CHECK! I just need to finish this site (nearly complete), plan the proposal and probably plan a small get-together. After that, I will hand over the reigns of power for our wedding to Tracy and do as instructed.

Tonight I have made some progress with the Eternal Magic site. Something I wanted to was have image galleries specific to the wedding process appear on the new site, but appear in pop-up windows that I could control the size of and that would only be filled with the photos I wanted. I wasn't have much luck with what I was doing. Frontpage has a built-in script that does this but it doesn't work well with non internet explorer browsers. I didn't want to hand code each page for photos either as I have done in the past for KellysWorld. Luckily I stumbled upon a great paring of free program and some free javascript code.

The first find was Web Album Generator by Ornj.net. This software takes any photos you have, generates thumbnail views and larger images and then wraps them up in a very nice style sheet with some excellent coding. All I have to do is upload the folder it creates and point to the index file. I tried it and it worked great, but I didn't quite like the viewing results in a regular webpage. I wanted something that seemed more dynamic, that flowed better. The best way to do that was to have a page that opened without all the buttons and whistles, just the photos. For that I needed a pop-up window; and I found just the perfect javascript.

The javascript turned out to be so good that I can use it for multiple links on a page and I even used it for the photo of Tracy and I that currently exists on every page. That photo now opens in a 800x600 window and since the photo is 800x600 it fills it up perfectly with no dead space.

Doesn't seem like something to get all giddy about, but it makes the site look and act more professional, like I actually know what I am doing. Of course the secret is, I'm just using dumb luck and a bit of code "copying."

Just wanted to mention that I have made some new changes to the site, actually added in the basics for the future pages. I have been trying to think of the information that people will want to know, beyond the basics. This site, for many, will be their first introduction to either Tracy or myself. Plus friends and family will come to this site to learn about the wedding, when it will be and when all of the various events will be held.

Tracy and I have only begun to discuss the planning of the wedding and not much in the way of decisions have been made; however, before year's end we should have a date selected and know many of the big picture items. This site will help to advertise what those decisions will be.

The design of the site, while simple, seems to work. I have been trying to figure out the very basics of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as that is what the code for this site is written in. CSS, for those of you who don't know, is HTML but it is a newer way of writing HTML. The idea is that you set the "style" for your site early on and then just call on the different types of elements in the site helping to ensure that a header on one page, looks like the headers on all the other pages. It isn't complicated, but it is different enough as to create some problems.

All and all though, I think the site is looking pretty good. More changes to come for sure, and while this isn't exactly what I had envisioned, it looks good and one thing about websites... they don't have to be static.

While I don't know exactly when I will propose, it will obviously be soon and I need to have this site looking good by the time I do. Much of what I need to do I have done. The site isn't perfect and I still need to speak to Justin about creating the sub-domain I want of eternalmagic.kellysworld.net, but for now the web address I have is working for the purposes of testing everything.

The look I have now, while tweaking will probably go on, will probably remain for a short while. I still want to do my own graphic, including a photo of the engagement ring. I have in my head a basic idea of what it will look like, but I don't know if my skills are up to the task yet; or if the time will present itself.

The site looks good though, and while most of the links are functionally, they don't really add anything yet as we haven't set-up the registries and I am not 100% sure where we will set them up or what we will do in that regard. I'm sure we will register in one or two places at least and those links should be on the site. The rest of the links just show what my plan for the structure will be and I hope to eventually replace those buttons with flash buttons.

For the time being though, the site is coming right along.

These posts will not be seen for a short time yet. I just today set-up this new "blog" or website of personal views. My original blog is KellysWorld Times . This new blog is currently residing deep inside KellysWorld, but my plan is to eventually promote it to its own true sub-domain, just like KellysWorld Times has kwtimes.kellysworld.net. From there I will be able to create an entire environment. At this point I don't know exactly what that will be. My thoughts right now are to include this section as the main page, or index page and then have pages for the family, the wedding party, the family and of course the bride and bride-groom.

I don't know how much of this will be done by the time I propose to Tracy and this site won't officially go live, "be announced" until I do. I will show the site, probably, to a few friends to get some feedback but won't advertise it on my own blog, website or to my family in general until such time as the engagement is official. Until then many things are subject to change.

In the meantime though I can report my goings on as I prepare for the engagement and the wedding. I can't really do that on my regular blog site as Tracy reads it all the time. So for now, my readership will be few.

So... Here Goes!