Orangescale Studio

Last week, we did some actions for Fashionese Daily (FD). There are some changes applied for this high-traffic website. What are they?

First, we're helping Hanzky -- hey, congratulation for the new baby! -- upgrading the server and also the forum. All processes were done without major problems. After having a discussion, Fashionese Daily came into decision to upgrade the server. It has more RAM now. After the upgrades, the website (especially the forum) run smoothly even on peak hours. Anyway, according to vBulletin forum statistics, there were 541 online users.

After upgrading the server, vBulletin also released its latest package: vBulletin 3.7.0. So, we decided to upgrade. Why? Because this release offers many great features and it will be great if we make it available for FD forum.

Even the features are there, but we made some recommendation first for FD. Just to make sure that it's safe to have them in the forum -- server-friendly is a must. And because there are many changes on the templates, we reverted the template to default template for 3.7.0 for the upgraded template. It took less than an hour to complete the whole process.

Selama hampir setahun menggunakan theme yang sama untuk cinila.com, Wordpress (blogtool yang saya gunakan) tidak berhenti berkembang. Dari perbaikan security hole, penambahan tagging system, sampai yang terbaru (Wordpress 2.5) dan yang paling dirasakan oleh pengguna Wordpress adalah perombakan design dashboard.

Jadi dengan banyaknya perkembangan dan pembaruan di Wordpress itu, cinila.com benar-benar membutuhkan theme baru yang lebih sesuai.

Theme kali ini sebenarnya sama dengan theme sebelumnya, Snail Theme, tiga kolom layout dengan dua sidebar di kanan. Yang berubah adalah pengurangan plugin untuk layout, yang kini bisa dengan mudah kita capai dengan tag baru Wordpress. Contohnya tag clouds (yang dulu saya menggunakan category clouds plugin), dan juga aside yang dengan mudah bisa dicapai dengan query_posts.

After being with Movable Type for the last three -- or longer, I think -- I decided to move to other platform. Now, my blog (not this blog!) is powered by WordPress. That's our first news. :)

Another news, Lala also made a new design for her blog. This time, her blog is using Stitches Theme. As always, a cute design.

If you follow us reading this blog, we are still helping Fashionese Daily. We are standing behind a great and busy website: Fashionese Daily. Last week, we silently upgrade its forum to the latest vBulletin. We tried to keep the process as fast as we can. And, we did it. It took for about 20 minutes to upgrade and we made sure that everything should work properly. Looks good now.

Right now, we're working on a new site. And, it's a photo-related site. I'll tell you about this later. Some works are waiting... See ya!

Last month, there is a new mass transportation model launched in Yogyakarta. It's Trans Jogja. Right now, we will not go further writing about how this i-think-good-solution works. We would like to share about how we built the website. :)

It was started because I found it hard to get the information like bus routes, fare, and other technical aspects. When this bus operated for the first time -- during the trial period -- people will try to find out about it, right? But, there was only limited information. I know, we can read newspapers and found information from the internet. I was unlucky.

So, together with our friend Yan Arief, we got an idea to build the website. The concept was simple: provide as much information as possible about Trans Jogja. Not only for us, but -- hopefully -- the information would be useful for those who use internet as the information resources. And we did it. On the early days, we struggled with some platforms to build it. At first, I was thinking about WordPress. It was good, but since we want to have more features, we finally went to Drupal.

We wanted to have the site ready as soon as we could. Providing basic information like routes, general information about the Trans Jogja mechanisms, etc. And, the most important thing was providing the updated information.

These are some initial actions we did:

• Provide information about Trans Jogja, and we kept them well-organized.
• Yan Arief created a group at Flickr.
• I configured Drupal. Adding modules and set them, tweaking theme
• Lala joined the ship and provided more information too

So far, we see more visitors came to the website. We also got positive feedbacks from website readers. And last but not least, big thanks to all people who contribute to the website and enrich the information day by day.... Anyway, Trans Jogja's website can be accessed at http://transjogja.net/

Mbak Ninit ternyata tak hanya jago nulis buku, tapi juga jago bikin kejutan.

Beberapa hari yang lalu kami merasa beruntung menerima sebuah paket pos dari Nyonya Aditya Mulya ini. Isinya kaos. Beberapa hari sebelumnya mbak Ninit memang sempat menanyakan ukuran kaos kami, kami pikir mbak Ninit akan mengirim kaos dari toko onlinenya, Zaralde.com. Tapi Zaralde.com hanya menjual kaos/clothing untuk bayi. Jadi yang kami bayangkan adalah kaos dengan tulisan lucu yang menjadi trend mark Zaralde seperti "Supercute" atau "Heartbreaker" atau "50% mommy, 50% daddy, 100% adorable" namun dengan ukuran untuk dewasa.

Jadi ketika paket kiriman dibuka, wah kejutan... ternyata kaosnya lain. Nggak kalah lucu sih tulisannya, dan uniknya kaos ini berpasangan. Ya benar sekali, kejutan lainnya kami tak hanya menerima satu tapi dua kaos sekaligus, alias sepasang. Kaos pertama dengan tulisan "Nobita" dan satunya "Shizuka".

Hahaha lucu ya? Jadi ketika sama-sama memakai kaos ini, kemana pun kita pergi orang-orang akan tahu kalau kita pasangan.

Thank you, mbak Ninit! We love it! Tambah sukses dengan Zaralde.com-nya.

Our Flickr account is about to reach its limit. Right, we're still using the free version. So far, we love it! I mean, we love the service, but we have the limit. ;) Of course, upgrading will be an option later.

For now, again, we're really happy with our Flickr account. So, if we think that we really need the Pro Account so bad, we probably will upgrade ours. Or, anyone want to send a Flickr's Pro Account gift for us? Hehehe...

Jumping into internet brought many changes in our life, including "payment experience". When we joined the crowd, running a small business and service, we -- like or not -- must deal with various payment methods. Our country -- Indonesia -- was banned by many merchants, including Paypal. So, at that time, having a Paypal was only a dream. When we heard from some friends who had Paypal accounts, we thought about when we would have it too?

When we had to do an online transaction, we tried to find solutions... many alternative solutions. We asked for help from our friends, bugging a friend to send payment for us, etc. This happened also when we had to receive payment. Luckily, we have a friend -- who we never met before in our life! -- helped us on this issue. Thank you William. Big thanks!

Once, we had a client from abroad, when when we discussion about "what kind of payment method you (we) accept?", we have some alternatives, from money transfers (moneygram) to Ikobo. We have to deal with a-little-bit-complicated situation. And.. we survived. :)

Last year, a good -- very good! -- news came: PayPal introduces new international withdrawal functionality. It's available worldwide. Yay! Finally, there was an chance to have our own Paypal account. So, here we are. We did not want to wait any longer to have our Paypal account. And we made it. We have our own Paypal account, and have it verified. Happy!

So, if you ask us about what kind of payment method we accept... we now can say: we accept Paypal. Anyway, we would like to thank for all donors who had donated for our WordPress theme called Laila. Thank you! IF -- only if -- you want to send payment/donation to us, send it to tipjar [at] orangescale.com. It's our Paypal email.

Akhir pekan lalu, Orangescale membantu migrasi forum Fashionese Daily dari aplikasi MyBulletinBoard (MyBB) ke aplikasi forum vBulletin. Proses ini sebagai tindak lanjut bahwa forum yang sebelumnya digunakan dirasa kurang memadai dengan makin berkembangnya komunitas Fashionese Daily. Oh ya, sebelumnya kami juga membantu dalam proses migrasi server hosting. Dan, kabar baiknya adalah kondisi untuk menjalankan komunitas dan blog menjadi lebih nyaman dengan berkurangnya masalah yang disebabkan oleh hal-hal teknis.

Ketika akan bermigrasi, saya coba terlebih dahulu untuk melakukan proses migrasi. Hal ini untuk melihat apakah nantinya semua bisa berjalan dengan baik atau tidak. Hampir 100% proses bisa berjalan dengan baik, kecuali pada bagian impor berkas attachment. Proses ini sekaligus kesempatan dimana saya bisa mendapatkan hal-hal baru seputar aplikasi forum. Ulir diskusi tentang proses impor ke vBulletin menjadi referensi saya. Ternyata permasalahan impor yang saya alami juga dialami oleh pengguna lain. Salah satu tantangan dalam proses migrasi ini dari sisi database yang cukup besar. Saat saya melakukan impor, ada lebih dari 160 MB berkas database MySQL, dengan statistik dasar: 136.322 entri, 1.187 topik, dan 1.961 anggota.

Saya sempat juga mendapatkan bantuan dari teman saya Yan Arief ketika mencoba melakukan impor attachment. Tapi, setelah beberapa kali mencoba ternyata fitur import vBulletin tidak dapat berjalan dengan baik. Tentu saja, kesalahan ini belum tentu 100% karena vBulletin. Saya sempat menduga kalau masalah ini juga terkait dengan efek migrasi forum yang sebelumnya. Jadi, sebelum menggunakan MyBB, forum awalnya masih menggunakan punBB.

Setelah berdiskusi dengan Hanzky sebagai pemilik Fashionese Daily, akhirnya diputuskan untuk mengarsipkan forum lama. Forum lama ini tetap bisa diakses, namun dalam status "read only". Singkatnya, proses impor selesai, dan hal pertama yang saya lakukan bersama dengan Hanzky adalah mengatur kembali forum baru ini. Dalam waktu kurang dari 24 jam, forum baru sudah dapat diakses, meskipun dengan disain yang belum senada dengan situs Fashionese Daily secara keseluruhan. Dan inilah yang menjadi prioritas saya. Dan, akhirnya disain baru forum sudah mendekati final, meskipun ada hal-hal kecil yang masih perlu disesuaikan.

Sampai dengan saat ini, semua bisa berjalan dengan baik... ;)