Under Construction Redux
Posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 1:48 pm under Web.Tags: social-web, web-development

View my “Be Right Back” page
Enough of this blank “Be Right Back” pages we usually throw together when we need to do website updates. It is time for a nicer, more web 2.0 savvy under construction. Next time I do an update to WordPress, I’ll be replacing my index.php file with this one, and then switch back when all is ready to go.
Here’s what I have:
1. Links to my other web sites and web services.
2. Flickr gallery via the flickr.com’s Make a Badge tool
3. Twitter updates via twitter.com’s Make a Badge tool
4. Last.fm gallery via Jeroen’s Last.fm Records standalone version which grabs images from amazon.com. I actually copied the whole script and included it in the PHP file so that it is not dependent in other files. I also disabled album art caching since this page is really going to be up for a few minutes. If you are going to use it for longer, then you should consider enabling caching the images. Consult the original script for more info on this.
To do this yourself:
1. Download my “Be Right Back”. Note, PHP 5 is required for the Last.fm portion to work.
2. Open it in a file editor and change the following items:
- The page title
- The site links should point to your of course
- The Flickr user number in the Flickr javascript link. It might be best to create your own Flickr badge, grab the javascript and replace this one.
- The Twitter username in the javascript url.
- The last.fm username in the PHP code, right after $lfm->username.
- The footer info.




May 9th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Nice work! Same idea I had of not just doing the standard blank “back soon”-page; when I did the current Twisted Intellect…
Good idea of bringing in the Last.fm-stats, though. I might steal that one! ;)
May 10th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Thanks for sharing another one of your great ideas (and code), Melvin!
Not that I’m capable of re-designing it (yet) in a unique way…
Jun 18th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Excellent post Melvin !
I love yout idea and your work :D
Juste a word about your php file : on the lines 114 & 121 I think it’s “Twitter” and not “Flickr” the good things, but it’s not blocking to work good.
Bye !
JC.
Jul 2nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
you could always use the maintenance mode plugin too - and put this page up instead of their lame placeholder. Maintenance mode lets admins view the wordpress page but keeps everyone else locked out.