jsleeper.org maintanance
Tonight I had the intention of playing with the CSS files for this website, because I want to change the coloring and the fonts (the layout will stay the same). Before that, though, there were a couple of other things I wanted to take care of.
First off, my gallery. The software that I have installed for this is called Gallery, and it integrates into my Wordpress site using a plugin called Wordpress Gallery2 (WPG2). Both the plugin and Gallery itself were old versions, so I’ve been wanting to upgrade those. Tonight was the night for this to happen, but not until after problems on the server that this website lives meaning a help desk call and a server reboot. I finally got it done, hopefully I’ll be able to tweak Gallery some more to get some better performance out of it (mostly with the random picture on my index page).
Secondly, I’m now re-routing my main RSS feed through Feedburner, which they tout to be the most incredible thing since sliced bread for routing your website’s feeds through. There’s even a Wordpress plugin for it - originally titled Wordpress FeedBurner Plugin. After an hour or so of playing with my .htaccess files (it’s usually one, but since my site is set up the way it is it’s different for me) I finally got it working, so now the feeds (look at bottom of site for the links to the feeds) go through FeedBurner. It’s only the feed for my posts, not the comments feeds. The only real advantage that I see for this so far is that I can track the number of people reading my site through the feeds, and what type of software they are using. Interesting, but not life-changing.
Third, I’m going to start putting Technorati tags on all of my posts. It might generate a little more traffic on the site, but what I’m most interested in is seeing who’s writing about the same kind of stuff that I am. Not wanting to have to go through the pain of putting in the links on every post, I figured there was an easier way. Turns out that I was right. It also turns out that there is a WordPress plugin for it (I really love WordPress). It’s called SimpleTags, it allows me to easily put tags on the bottom of posts. We’ll see how that goes.
A few days ago I also did a few changes to the site. I cleaned up the sidebar, first removing the web design links. Secondly I removed the Meta stuff and added most of it to the new footer, which is the content displayed at the bottom of the page. Since the upcoming version of Internet Explorer is going to use the same icon that Firefox uses to denote whether an RSS feed is available for the site you are on, people are starting to use that icon for their links to their feeds. I did. I’m glad it’s orange, I like orange. Lastly, I removed the archives links and put up a new page for monthly archives, the link can be found up top.
Now that was very boring to write, and will probably be more boring for most people to read, if they even understand a lot of the lingo that I used. Why, then, did I write it? The purpose of my site is so that people can get in contact with me, people can read about my inner thoughts, and also I want to add to the community on the internet - Christian community, Web Design community, and my own circle of ‘real-life’ friends and family. In order to do this correctly time must be taken to make sure things are in order, that they work correctly. It’s the same as in music, if you play badly or if you record with shabby equipment, people aren’t going to listen to you. On the internet if you have a bad site people aren’t going to read it. I’m not saying that everyone needs to be programmers but I did see a Xanga site today that had a photograph as the background image - I couldn’t even read the text! The first thing I did was write it off as a bad site - it could have been the most brilliant writing. Too bad nobody will/can read it.
[tags]wordpress, gallery, wp-gallery, wpg2, feedburner, wordpress feedburner plugin, technorati, simpletags, rss, weblogs, blogs[/tags]
well, well, well. someone was a busy boy last night. joe, you amaze me. not just because you can do all this stuff but because you think about it, weight the advantages and disadvantages, and then open yourself up to people for questions and advice on similar things. that is admirable, at least.
i am interested in the technorati plug-in as i am now entering them by hand each post. consumes too much time, methinks. can we look into making this change on my site? yes, folks…joe still does a lot of back end work to make my site look so hott!
i am also interested (although it is boring for you to write) in making the archives a link instead of on the sidebar. perhaps we could try this at some point.
whatever the case…keep up the good work. you truly are blessed and it is awesome to see how you share it and use it!
drew.
do your comments not support HTML? i tried to make ‘my site’ in paragraph two a link to my site but it didn’t show up. oh well.
it’s a link, just not underlined for some reason. i must have mistakingly changed that when working on the footer. i guess i’ll have a look at it later tonight.
fixed… the .commentlist class was configured to no text-decoration for links. after changing it back to default it underlined people’s names if they have a site and the time (since that’s a link too). i then made it so that the links in .commentmetadata and .commentlist li cite a had no text decoration and it works properly now…
got that
I don’t understand any of what you wrote about, or what Drew replied about, but I guess that’s ok. I’m going out to the studio. Love you anyway. Bye.
Is there a way to add the technorati tags without them being visible? Just to have the there for people to find you through Technorati?
i could be wrong here. however, if you get rid of the visible tags…how would people know (once getting to technorati) what similar tags to look for? it would be like going to the dictionary without knowing which word to look up. howeve, if you are only using technorati to tag your blog and not worry with people knowing what those tags were…well, that is a different story. however, i think the plug-in is designed only for visible tags. although, if you were to alter the plug-in and take out the ‘Tech….no, i don’t think that would work either. take it from here, joe!
(sorry, justin. i tried.)
drew - some people only want the tags to be in their blog entries so that when their blog software pings technorati their entry is placed into the database of whatever tags they entered into their entry. they do not care about people going to technorati from their site, they care about people coming to their site from technorati. justin and i both fall into this category. one way (which justin and i both did today) to hide the tags is to place them onto the entry but put the paragraph into a css class which defines display: none; - this effectively puts the tag onto the entry but nobody reading the site will see them. for example this post has tags in it, you just can’t see them unless you view the page without the style sheet (in firefox go to view –> page style –> no style).
one of the important things to consider when tagging blog entries is that you want to only put relevant tags in, tags that people might search for or are watching on a continuus basis. it’s got to be logical for it to be worthwhile. if a post doesn’t warrent tags to be placed in them (such as the one i posted today about my sister) then don’t put any there. it’ll end up either not being seen by anyone anyway, or it’ll just waste their time and put a distaste in their mouth about you and your site.
why did you scold me? well, maybe i am just feeling defensive. i put in my comment you could handle the question. i realized (only after i started commenting) that my knowledge didn’t really answer justin’s question.
now that i have seen it in your site….i think i want to make this change too. you guys are clever. too bad i am the loser around here. oh well.
drew.
oh, thanks for the tip on relevant tags. i thought if i tagged the word “of” or “joe sleeper” that someone would be interested and come to my site. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!
and I always thought tag was a game silly me.