Elucidation Art

SOTM & Lucid Fanart

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If you’ve read my last post you probably voted to see what I could change elucidation-art’s name to, and with a bit of change here and there and waiting to see what you guys think I’ve gone and bought the new domain name Lucidfanart.com and .co.uk I will be setting this up when I change the to the new layout which I am slowly getting there with. I just need to finish the Gallery, and change the logo to the new one and I can set it live… but finishing the gallery may take a bit of time lol.

Firstly I want to apologise to the Site of the Month about how late I am this month, and introduce this months Site of the Month: Staring @ The Sun! view further down for a bit more info on why I’ve chosen Staring @ the Sun for Vision of the Month.

Along with a brand new Site of the Month I also have some brand new affiliates and I’ve also updated a few so check them out.

  • Para-Bellum
  • lasttear
  • icy afterlife
Febuary 2011 Staring @ the SunReason: I’ve been secretly lurking on Staring @ the Sun since her I saw her Pillars of the Earth Layout.. Not only was it beautiful and easy to navigate around she then changed the layout to the STUNNING…

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I would also like to thank Sasha over at Shotgun Opera for making me site of the month and for the beautiful award she’s made me.

Elucidation Art

Elucidation Domain Question?

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Hi Everyone, been kind of a slow month by the looks of things, but I’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff with my new layout. I’m almost done with the site changes I just need to work on the gallery now. So soon!! I can’t wait the new site has new cute features but is pretty much the same but better. I would also like to make a note of my new hostees!!! yay I have hostees!! lol.

Surrender Your Soul is the fanart portfolio of Christine, she has some great work on her site that you should check out and OhSnap! Designs which is the layout portfolio of Sara where you can purchase layout designs or fully coded layouts.

  • Surrender Your Soul
  • Oh Snap!

and I have some brand spanking new affiliates too! check them all out amazing artwork

  • Inside Us All
  • dangerousfreakshow
  • No Promises

Ok now the update is done I wanted to ask you all a question.

I’ve been thinking for a long time now that Elucidation Art is not a very good domain name. I love the name when I first thought of it I looked though the dictionary to try and find a word that would describe a tutorial that sounded sophisticated and unique and well Elucidation ticks both those boxes as far as I’m concerned however… its a long name and even I when I type quickly muddled the letters around and I’ve been typing the name for the past 8 years I’ve figured out. I’ve been reading a bit into SEO and ways to improve my work and my sites, and all the resources say that the domain name should reflect the site. Well when I first created the site I did but that was WAY back when and I was with staghosting which has long since died anyway my point is I think its time I updated Elucidation with a new name that would better suite the users.

I have spoken with both my hostees they agree that if I want to change the name they are happy for me to do it. I think I will miss the name Elucidation and will probably always call it it but, with the reasearch I’ve done in to the keywords and global searches no one would ever find elucidation naturally, I rely heavily on all my wonderful affiliates to provide me links back to my site and its not really fair on my hostees as they will have the same problems becuase I thought the name was cute when I was 16.

So my question is do you think I should change the domain name and the name of the site or do you think I should stick with it?

I’ve got a few names I’ve been thinking about which I’ve put into the poll below. please vote and any comments add to the comments below I can’t wait to hear what you guys think? I’ve been playing with the idea of getting network of domains with the same keyword of fuse together as my other domains have it in it twilightfuse.com and deefuse.co.uk so it would be cool if I could get fuse in it somewhere but I also don’t want to lose Elucidation I know I’m being stupid but lucid is a nice shortened version… but I’m stuck…. I need help. Also all the SEO things I’ve been reading suggest putting your keyfeature in the domain name and I would have to say mine is fanart… but I’m not a big fan of sticking this in… makes the site look a little spammish but it would really help the hostees???

[poll id=”3″]

Elucidation Art

Happy New Year 2011

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A brand new year!!! I hope everyone had a fantastic 2010 and have an even better 2011, my year is already looking up, when I woke up this morning and read my emails on my phone I found that the amazing FioNat has made me site of the month, thank you so much for your kind words and the wonderful award!

And as it is a new year it is also a new month which means a brand new site of the month. I’ve wanted to award SayJay’s Radiance site of the month for ages however she’s been unable to update her site but she’s back and updated her site, and its even bigger and better than before so this month for the new year Radiance is the new site of the month.

January 2011 Radiance

check out the full reason why on my visions page

I am working hard on my new layout, but there are a lot of bugs I want to fix so it may take me some time, but I’ve got it functioning on my test sever, all the markup is done I just need to fix all the bugs and then code the gallery which is my biggest job as I want to completely upgrade the original script from ZenPhoto and made it custom to suit my needs. this also means not a lot of artwork last month but I have done two new pieces both for Buffy Forums challenges check them out on my side bar.

Happy New Year

Elucidation Art

Merry Christmas 2010

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Just a quick message to all my readers, affiliates, and friends to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year and I hope you get everything you wished for, I’ve been round and sent everyone a photo but if you haven’t got it click on the image and pick a copy up.

and thank you all for your wonderful gifts I’ve updated my gifts section.

Elucidation Art

24 days left to go!

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Oooo… we are getting so close to Christmas!! I can’t wait!!! but I already got what I wanted… SNOW!!! Okay there were quite a few exclamation marks there I’ll calm down lol. Once again this month has gone by so quickly, I haven’t done much artwork, been really busy at work and getting back has been taken longer so had less time to work on my own stuff but I have got a few updates, such as new affiliates, and a seek peek at a new layout I’ve been working on.

  • waking dream
  • fated to pretend
  • knighted in power
  • Hiccup of Reality
  • Satellite Hearts

December 2010 Apple CinnamonSo that’s the Affiliates, and now onto the SOTM! I’ve been addicted to this site for the past month, each layout change has been better than the last but the latest layout is completely amazing!

Reason: I have recently affiliated with Apple Cinnamon [dot] net and I have to say I am very impressed with her artwork, and her design skills. Not only does Kiera produce fantastic artwork but she has real skills when it comes… [read more]

Like I said above I’ve been working on a new layout I think its going to take a while to get it up, becuase I want to work out all the kinks that are in this layout, and I want to blend the gallery in a bit better than it is right now. So coming soon … I also want to mention this design is subject to change so although its only a sneek peek it may look different in the end 😉

Sneek peek at new layout

PHP, Tutorials

PHP Includes

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The poll on the footer of my site keeps rising for HTML/CSS tutorials… and although this isn’t a HTML or CSS tutorial it should help a lot of people out who are still only using HTML and CSS. I speak to you all about the heavenly PHP includes. You don’t really need to know anything about PHP to use these they are VERY VERY simple!

Description: “The include() statement includes and evaluates the specified file.” PHP Manual

This basically means putting one file into another; it’s sort of like using iframes but without the horrible scrollbar.

The most common use for PHP includes are layouts. In almost all layouts you have a basic design that doesn’t change when you go between pages (it is always best have consistency within a site it helps the user navigate, and also provides a branding for your website).

So say you have a website with 10 pages in it… well that’s 10 page you need to write the (copy and paste) the layout onto! That’s 10 pages way to much! It’s much easier to write it out once and then within the pages use this PHP script to call the one layout.

All you need to know is this tiny piece of code:

<?php include_once ("includes/FILENAME.php")?>

Not much is it! Lol there are two ways of using the PHP includes

  • Include_once : this basically means no matter how many times the snippet is written out on the page it will only display the content once and any other reference to it will be ignored (this is mainly used for loops as a failsafe but it is good practice to get into and it saves any mistakes in case you accidentally write it again.
  • Include : well it’s the opposite of include_once this allows you to include the file in as many times as you like, I can’t think of a reason anyone would want to, unless you’re calling equations etc and you need to input the same data in more than once but for layouts and minor PHP I would always use include_once

Below is an image that will help you to cut up your page into includes, and remember to never nest any of your tags that is a sure way to break your site.

Document before includes
Side note: it is always a good idea not to include the body tags or HTML tags within the include just in case something happens to the include say someone stops your page from loading properly or PHP on your sever crashes you will not end up with an blank page your unique content will still be visible for users to see and search engines to scan.

Document After includes have been applied

If you need any help with this please comment below and I will try my best to help you out.

Elucidation Art

SOTM Nov – Daydreaming

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A new month already, time is just going by so quickly, although I am happy I got quite a few posts out last month probably my most productive month so far. xD I have already updated you guys on my new affiliates in my update yesterday but please check them out, and don’t forget to pick up the Halloween gift in yesterdays post. I would also like to thank Monica, Lauren and Jenn for the holiday gifts that are now up in my awards section I have also updated all my gifts stating which is for what season and from whom.

November 2010 Daydreaming

Reason: I have been a HUGE fan of Jenni over at Daydreaming for a very long time now, I remember her site when she first started it up, it was amazing then and it has bloomed into this GIGANTIC media/art/goodies centre, I use Daydreaming for a lot of my images, and I also… [read more]