anomalouspress.org

I’m very excited about a website that I just built and I wanted to share some of the interesting new techniques and technologies that I’m using on anomalouspress.org

First of all, this is the first serious web development (hand-coding a site from scratch) I’ve done in almost 10 years so a lot has changed since then. This is my first real exploration of the possibilities of CSS and I’m very excited. I recently discovered that Google is offering an API for accessing fonts via JavaScript and stylesheet. This is tremendous because it opens up many possibilities for typography in websites.

I’m also programming the site in the PHP programming language which allows me to easily include single header, footer and content files as well as pass variables between my files such as which link should be visible or which section of code I should load based on some information that the user gives me. PHP makes these things very easy to do.

I am using some of the social features of the web right now so we are using a sharethis icon as well as Facebook and twitter icons so that there are various ways for users to connect with the information we are putting on line.

We are using the pay with a tweet service, which is a fantastic free tool that lets you direct users to their twitter or Facebook accounts to mention or indicate they like you, to get access to something further on your site. We are using this to pay for the download of an MP3 or PDF of the full version of anomalous # 1. The user clicks on the link to download the MP3 or PDF and it directs them to the pay with a tweet website which then allows them to login to Twitter or Facebook and share the prepackaged information that we’ve included (something from the journal) that posts immediately to their Facebook or twitter feed and directs them back to our website. At that point I have a PHP script detecting which download they are looking for and then I display a page where they can either download the MP3 or PDF (or kindle or ebook) of the issue. This is a great way for users to pay for something that has value without actually trying to deal with the transaction of money on the web.

All in all a great experience!