This Is Developments
One of the good things about this new design is it’s slightly more anonymous than the last one, which has it’s advantages.
One of the things about the old site on blogger is that you could either put your name and phtograph in (which looks like “Hey everyone! My site!!! Come and listen to what I have to say! Hey look at me!”), or have a handle and an obscure picture, which looks like you’ve got something to hide. I opted to have my picture on it, which I was never totall and an obscure picture, which looks like you’ve got something to hide. I opted to have my picture on it, which I was never wild about because I already see my face a lot throughout the course of an ordinary day.
I will get together an About page explaining why I have this site, who I am and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but in the meantime, enjoy.
I’ve been making some changes here and there to the template. Thanks to the inspirational greatness of meish.org for pointing me to babystep guides about how to change templates and other Wordpress stuff. I’ve been building this site along the lines of how I read blogs and it goes thus:
Category Pages
I never use them on other sites. Also, so many sections in this site cross over, so I can’t put them into different sections. Also the categories themselves are pretty weak: Music, Jokes, Thoughts, Thought, Writing. My interests aren’t diverse enough to have categories. Category pages are out, which involves stripping that code from all the pages where they appear.
Recent Posts
Why didn’t this template come with this by default? It is conceivable that people who come here don’t stop by every day, so I download a Plug-in and sprinkle a little HTML pixie dust and hey presto, top eight recent comments.
Edit Buttons
My proofing is pretty awful, so things go up on this site with all kinds of errors in them. It’s only when I read them back that I go “That makes no sense”. Even then, that’s no guarantee it will. Having Edit text at the bottom of this page is a countermeasure to publishing style, which can be either willy or nilly, and frequently both. The only thing is, I’m not sure if they appear to everyone or just me. Can someone please get in touch and let me know.
Header Art
This is on the top of my list. I’ve cropped images, I’ve created masks. I have done the tutorials. Can I set the transparency and merge the layers? I can not.
Links
This is a tricky one. Do I link to every site I visit? Some bloggers do that, so their homepage is filled with links of things of interest to them only. I don’t want to see that. If I could care any less I would be caring backwards. Personal favourite sites are what your browser settings are for. Two words guys: Bookmarks. What? OK, one word. Or a hyphen. So I link to things that I think that the readers of this site will want to visit and I’ll link to my favourite bands elsewhere.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
If you had furtled with the template while you were on blogger, you could have removed the panel from the top of the sidebar which displays name, photo etc. Obviously, this information is of little use to you now.
Category Pages: I never use them either. I still assign posts to categories, though this is mainly for my own benefit.
Edit Buttons: These only appear to you when you are logged in. I agree, they are very nice to have.
Header Art: Transparency can be annoying. Make sure that you use Firefox for testing - the PNG support in IE is notoriously bad.
Links: My personal approach is to have a rolling list of links - recently found stuff that I find interesting. I use del.icio.us and a plugin to display this in my sidebar.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Brilliant - thanks Pete. I MIGHT catagorise my own stuff keep the catagories offline.
The Recently Found Interesting is a cracking idea which I will use.
Good news about the Edit button too. Thanks for all the help.
June 12th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Sometimes seeing this stuff makes me wish I had a real blog. Or something to say on it.
June 13th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Ed - You should cos you do - or are you a secret blogger?
June 13th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
I got nuthin’. Really!
June 15th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Categories: personally I dig ‘em. Don’t use them often, but do sometimes. Also I find reading the little “filed under:” bits often amusing in itself.
Wordpress tips: so can you share? (I don’t immediately see any on meish.org)
June 15th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Oh wait, colour me stupid. I just found Meg’s Wordpress category. Righto.
June 19th, 2006 at 5:24 am
Love categories for my own blog. Not for those I visit.
When I meet potential employers who want to see my work, I can send them the link to my blog/category/casting or blog/category/writing to let ‘em find some one-stop-shopping of items newsworthy, work samples, etc.
Quite useful from that POV.
And for “Sum of All Years,” or “Photos” for visitors who like to keep up with such things.
Ack. That reminds me… time to do another year in my sum! Ack!