Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Warning: Hillbilly IT project

At the behest of The Other McCain's geek department, Eric Reasons, I will now attempt to switch the blog to 3-column format. If the page starts looking weird for a little while, that's why. The transition should be complete by 10 a.m.

UPDATE: On schedule and under budget, the hillbilly IT project is complete! W'e're now in groovy 3-column format. I'll keep futzing around to fine-tune the look. I'm thinking I want to add a "headlines" feature on the left column. Also, while messing around with the layout, I discovered a feature to automatically include A*d*S*e*n*s*e at the end of every post, which may help increase the already vast revenue stream of blog-o-bucks. Thanks to Eric for the suggestion.

6 comments:

  1. I found out about this website from JR and changed my format on my own blog.

    some of the bigger you tube videos fit better in the margins without overlap now..

    but my redneck update was pretty much a success.

    (if you do decide to change, one thing, any widget you have, back up on Notepad. if it's lost, you can cut and past back easy enough)

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  2. Robert, why not consider a wordpress blog instead, which integrates adsense, twitter, multiple search engines, auto-DIGG/FSF posts, and just about any other plugin you can imagine?

    It's no more complex than Blogger and management is easier. You can even auto-transfer all you blogger posts automatically to a new wordpress blog. Besides, it's time you had your own domain. You're well worth it.

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  3. Nicely done! The page looks great. You're too kind, thanking me for just passing on a few links.

    Wordpress is great, and you can suck your whole existing blog into it, but you really need to drop a few bucks a year to get anything but minimal functionality out of Wordpress.

    Custom CSS is $15/year. Linking your domain name to your Wordpress blog is $10/year (Blogger's is free, if you have a domain name). Peanuts to be sure, but who has any peanuts left these days. :-)

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  4. Not true, Eric. There are thousands of FREE WordPress templates out there that are as sophisticated as you want to get, morphing a blog into an info/news/blog portal even. And if you want more, you can even suscribe to designer sites and download uber-slick templates. Unzip, upload via FTP, select in Settings > Themes. Bam! You're done.

    Also, WordPress is open source like Linux, meaning, it's free as in beer (and the code is free as in 'freedom'). Only cost is hosting a domain. GoDaddy.com can do it for about $5/year.

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  5. Zaine-

    Well, I certainly won't start a brawl over blog engines, as I love them both (blogger for me, wordpress for work), but just so our comments don't throw any potential new bloggers off course...

    Blogger we're all familiar with here, it's pretty flexible, it integrates nicely with google analytics, and can run javascript in widgets for free. Nifty.

    Wordpress.org, is the Open Source software platform for blogging. To use it, you need a domain name and a web host. GoDaddy can do this for $5/month (not year. $5 a year will get you a domain name, but no server to run the software on). You'll need to know a little PHP (not much, but some), a little MySQL (just enough to configure it), and you'll need to know how to work the config files for the wordpress.org software. This gives you maximum flexibility in your blog, and is great, but some folks just want to blog, not run a web server.

    Wordpress.com (as opposed to .org) runs a limited form of the open source wordpress.org software, on Wordpress.com's servers. It is free to use, and you have an amazing number of templates to choose from, but you can't get at the CSS code without ponying up the cash. Likewise, you need to pay for them to accept the CNAME redirect from the DNS server of your domain's registrar, something Blogger does for free. See here for more details about wordpress.com's offerings.

    Sorry about the nit-picking detail, but the whole Wordpress.com vs Wordpress.org thing can be confusing to some folks bothering to read out comments down here.

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  6. OK, I hate to be a negative nancy, but I liked the old format better. Sorry, but it just looked cleaner. I know, I know, it's my OCD kicking in.

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