Colophon
Eadweard Muybridge, “#675 Sow trotting”
Palenburg, OH – November 30th, 2006. Welcome! Porkopolis examines the infiltration of the pig into human affairs and the resulting porcine influence on human culture.
Porkopolis.org is now ten (10) years old. Posted today, is v4.0 of the design and content, code–named “single–minded bestiary.”
The v4.0 design prescript: simple is better… form dictates content and content defines experience. After several years of the short strides, long ears syndrome, this redesign makes content updates and management more efficient.
So here is a more pig/user–friendly site version — even the Lorem ipsum — farm fresh, a bit closer to web standards and all this with cloven appendages.
— Daniel E. Schultz, Editor and Swineherd
Bestiary
A bestiary, or bestiarum vocabulum is a compendium of beasts. Such collections were first made popular in the Middle Ages as illuminated volumes that described various real or imaginary animals, birds and mythological creatures.
Stories and pictures within the bestiary provided each creature’s natural history in an allegorical format as well as an interpretation of the moral significance or lesson each animal was thought to embody.
Porkopolis.org is a modern version of such a collection, single–minded because it only discusses pigs. And its moral lesson: “Sometimes, the path of enlightenment leads through the pig pen…”
Little pig, big pig, root hog or die.
Porkopolis is written in XHTML, HTML, CSS and also uses a few simple JavaScripts. It is what it is… I have only one version of the site so every browser gets the same code. Your browser–of–choice must decide what to do with it. Hint: the Firefox and Opera browsers seem to make the best decisions.
Same pigs, different circus
Porkopolis v4.0 is a total re–design of the layout and a total re–write of the code behind it. Almost all of the original information was re–formatted and put back and much new information continues to be added.
There is quality content here, as well as a lot of content that has no particular or obvious purpose, save that it was fun to create. Quality is subjective, and sometimes illusory. I hope everyone finds something interesting.
Validation
Update: 6/15/07 - Goodbye Yahoo®/Geocities! Porkopolis has moved to a delightful new web host, BlueHost.com that is a pleasure to work with. Now all my site pages validate at the W3C Markup Validation Service — http://jigsaw.w3.org/css–validator for CSS and at http://validator.w3.org/ for HTML v4.01 and XHTML v1.0.
In order to track visitors and perform other web voodoo, my previous site host, Yahoo!®Geocities, added some code and scripting after the closing ‘</html>’ tag of every page visited. As a result, all my pages failed validation when sent from the Yahoo®/Geocities servers to the W3C. My new host performs no voodo. Now Porkopolis validates right from the W3C web site.
Epicurious, Pig?
Porkopolis.org is created and maintained on a Win XP PC using TopStyle, Photoshop, IrfranView, Homesite, WeBuilder, HTML Tidy and Notepad. The current host is BlueHost.com.
Much of my research has been made possible by the great expertise of the librarians and staff of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County, especially the folks at the Poland Branch.
Pilgrims and sages
I have been inspired by and adapted the ideas from the web designs, tutorials and publications of many intelligent and generous professionals. Their print and web resources have enabled me to build my vision — a pig web site with information arranged in alternate streaks of fat and lean.
I consider these folks some of the fittest hogs at the trough. Because of them, the web is less a Paris and more a Porkopolis. What works here is because of their guidance. What fails is because I lost my way in the haymows during the hog days of summer.
Thank you: Jeffrey Zeldman, Jesse James Garrett, Steve Krug, Molly E. Holzschlag, Eric Meyer, Håkon Wium Lie, Rachel Andrew, Lynda Weinman, Jennifer Niederst Robbins and the folks at A List Apart and htmldog.com.
Images
I have attempted to insure that sources of original copyrighted images have been contacted. I am grateful to all those who have responded to my requests to reproduce versions of their material.
Copyrighted material should be credited here. Please notify me of any omissions. Some modification or editing of copyrighted images may have occurred in order to accommodate size or design requirements. This is usually noted as “adapted from” in the credits.
