I’m throwing this open to an “open beta” amongs the folks who read my blog. Please comment below.
I’m most interested in structural/site issues: menu options that go to strange places, things that don’t seem to be working quite right (or at all), stuff like that.
Aesthetic notes (“Ew! Where did you get those colors?!”) are welcome, too.
Feel free to offer up favorite quotes, too, but I’d rather you hold onto those for post-go-live.
Now it can be told: WIST v2
I have at long last finished (99%) my revision to my WIST (“Wish I’d Said That!”) quotations database/site — at least to the point where I can invite visitors…
Well I’ve discovered (in trying to set up a “last administrivia” block at the top of the main page) that a bunch of Admin posts are mis-categorized (I transferred the entries in directly to the database, and some things have gotten messed up). Need to clean that up semi-manually).
The Admin stuff is cleaned up. Legacy of manual diddling around in the Categories file, solved by more diddling around (I hope).
The “last Admin post at the top of the main page” is thus now working, meaning this Open Beta post will stay there even as I add more quotes. Glee!
Added a new logo to the banner. Makes things a bit livelier, and matches the logo stuff at the CafePress store.
Added a favicon.
Using (to give them a plug) Favicon Maker.
Finished fixing the CafePress store (yes, I have a WIST store – link in the sidebar).
Hmmm. Need to order me some of that there swag.
Working on getting the Search template redone (since the default heading of the post Title is unsuited to my purpose).
Also want to, at some point, play with both the Google API for searching as well as FastSearch. But, unless I can’t figure out the search templating, I’ll go with the “normal” search first.
Okay, running into my first difficulty with this particular arrangement. Adding a new author (category) is a serious pain, largely because I have umpteen hundred categories and the MT interface really isn’t designed for that.
(MT’s suggestion: “Don’t use a lot of categories, use tags.” Except that the category description is a key part of the database.)
So …
1. Gather a group of quotes with “new” authors.
2. Add the categories via the New Entry category drop-down.
3. Open the Categories listing (which takes about 5 min.).
4. For each of the new categories, right-click-open-new-tab the category to add the description (bold name, date range, mini-bio).
It’s awkward and time-consuming … but it works. And it’s what I’m stuck with now. 🙂
WIST update
WIST v2 remains in open beta (which, at this point, consists of one person having commented on it in the previous post). My list of things to do before…
Current to-do:
– Update the Search result template to include the category (author) and a link to the All Authors page.
– Do RSS feed stuff to include author.
– Turn on MT Notifier? Not for individual posts, I wouldn’t think , but for the blog as a whole (in lieu of the mailing list). Would need to change the template, though, to *sigh* include the category/author more prominently. Or do I just use the Feedburner e-mail notification instead and leave it at that?
– Fix the Creative Commons stuff.
– Increase line spacing in author lists.
– For the static pages, use SSIs instead of MTIncludes?
– Can I create my own, simpler Category List tmpl? No clue …
I think I have the RSS feeds (Atom and RSS2) done — but it takes a looooong time for Google Reader to recycle, so I have to wait a bit.
Note to self to publicly thank Mark Carey and SmartRebuild, which breaks up Category rebuilds into 40-cat chunks (just like Entry rebuilds), which means the freaking cat rebuilds actually work to completion now (woot!) in about 5-10 minutes.
I’ve further cleaned up the Atom and RSS2 feed (though I’m expecting just Atom use, and that’s all that’s advertised on the front page). Discovered the conditional statements I was using weren’t valid (though they “compiled” in MT).
I’ve also added in and checked the Feedburner stuff — both the basic feed and the e-mail subscription. I’ll have to tweak the addresses when I go-live, but they work.
Attributed?
In putting together WIST, I realized I really needed to fill in the post title for all quotes (I believe MT actually requires it). Since I’m using the citation for the title (which was a brilliant improvisation but has caused…