Sneak peek! – alexsandor.org – I hope it works well.

Thank you all for your kind words. I am attempting to keep it un-cluttered and “peaceful”. However, most the kudos go to Sándor (I will relay the message) and to Arcsin for his original theme which I hacked up or “Sándorized” for this site. Not to forget the creators of WordPress.

Within the weeks to come I will have the paintings names and sizes there as well. Most are a meter to a meter and a half in size and the sheeer impact of viewing them in person gets lost on your screen. (That’s the web.) I will also be switching the slideshow music to Franz Liszt.

Many of the paintings displayed there are scans of old pictures that are very skewed and dull. Took me a while to alter the perspective and clean them up. The rain here and conflicting schedules have prevented me from taking many pictures of those works so, had to rely on photos as “placeholders”. I will replace those as time progresses. I prefer natural light for photos of his paintings of nature. (For obvious reasons.)

I have found many aesthetic limitations in keeping it cross browser. I am still struggling with that. I can’t stand having to scroll up and down to take it all in. In order to avoid using browser & user system detection re-directs I had to add some extra text and links for those with less capable graphics logic, memory, connections or older browsers. I used the Exclude Pages from Navigation plug in to house “less resource intense” gallery scripts and linked directly to them as an option to users in attempt to make Alex Sándors works viewable to everyone.

I will be adding Marilyn Monroe in the “You & Me” area today or tomorrow along with others I snapped a couple days ago. There is about 30 more coming after that. (After I fix a couple tube amps which is how I attempt to pay my bills. 😉 Sure isn’t web design! Web stuff is just my “hobby”.) There will be a voice clip of Sándor as well. Once you “hear” his wonderful personality (he is a “people person”) you will be able to relate to his paintings little better. (Another emotion that gets lost in the web viewing of his works.)

Sándor is struggling financially (as most of us). Most of the works you see there may be purchased. On request, he will even re-paint any that have been already sold unless they are one of ones. (One of a kind (1 of 1) pieces which are requested by investors.) He will also paint his interpretation of a photo you send him. Many people have sent him pictures of their families for him to paint as gifts to their parents. Shipping is very inexpensive.

Please contact via the site should you desire to own one of these paintings. They really are affordable compared to what a gallery charges. He refuses to work with galleries anymore due to their massive markup which makes his paintings un-afffordable to us “regular folk”.

Thanks again to everyone for your visits and kind words. I will do my best to keep the site worthy of housing the works of Peter Alexander Sándor.

Jim

(and Alex Sándor says “bye bye then“)

No changes desired except for header graphic.
Like I always say, why fix it if it isn’t broken!
I didn’t mod the WordPress script either.
I usually hack up the login screen. Also some core scripts when I want to integrate another script like Zencart. Which was a learning curve and a half to say the least.

That said, I did have to change the stylesheet a bit to get the site to look the same as the original Hobbit Theme to incorporate my mods, navigation and search box changes. There were issues with nextgen & plugins breaking the theme as well or causing alignment issues. I modded the header and the navigation css to suit. Also the content section. Then, when I tested with IE6 and Firefox, oh man, more mods to my mods. 😉 (still broken in IE6.) Took me about an hour. Then two days to prep the paintings images.

When I saw the theme originally, I thought it was perfect for Sandor!
That theme was one of the easiest I have modded though thanks to the efforts of the original designer. Most of the css is original with some previously mentioned minor changes to original classes and about ten new classes. Also changed a couple sections in the other template files. Then I did my own header graphics. If it were not for the gallery format, searchbox and plugins, you could just replace the header graphic and be gone in 60 seconds. Bam!

Even when I do totally re-write the css and make new graphics, I still link to the original creator on the site. There resides the original inspiration. Good karma.

The site is a good example of what anyone can do with WordPress. The Hobbit Theme would work right out of the box for most folks. Someone can have a WordPress site installed and looking real nice in less than five minutes. Can’t beat it! I would find it very difficult to charge anyone for something this easy, so I don’t. Although I have written quite a few themes from scratch for WordPress, Coppermine, 4images, Phpws, oscommerce, Zencart and others over the years, all I do now are “freebies” so, I like to use ready made themes as much as possible for obvious reasons.

I am a PERL guy at heart. I struggle a bit with php since I have only been writing custom php scripts and modding existing ones for about six years. The website stuff is just for fun. And it is! (as well as a skill expanding experience). It is nice to help those who actually need help too. I do place AdSense search boxes on every site though. That, along with along with the hosting packages I offer from time to time, help pay the hosting/isp bills so I can play here.

Thanks to everyone again for the great comments. Sandor is pleased to hear people are liking his paintings. I will be adding more as time permits. For now, I must go dive back into line 11,903 of my latest, (actually commissioned) PERL script. (Yes, will be broken into subs! SHEBANG!) MORE COFFEE PLEASE!

Have a great day everyone! Pay it forward!

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Play through TUBES!
(But let me replace the caps and adjust the bias first!)
Real techs don’t let friends buy name brand computers!