Thursday, April 12, 2007

Layouts

      I spent all evening converting the blog to the new widget "Layouts" template only to change it all back. The Layouts template lost a couple of things that I liked, in particular showing who the commenters are on each post and showing the last ten posts. I find widgets hard to work with. Of course, HTML is no walk in the park, either, but I'm used to that code. I'll have to get some books on widgets and get up to speed. I saved the new template so I can always go back to it when I can figure out how to fix the parts that annoy me. I appreciate Gloria letting me use Wry Words to experiment on.
      I only wanted the new Layout to fix a problem with labels (topics) on the current template. If a label has more than 20 entries, when you click on it, it takes you to a page that only shows the latest 20 entries with no links to show you the rest of the posts. The Misc. label already has 23 posts in it -- soon to be 24 after this post -- and Murder by Dewey Decimal will quickly have only 20, too. Also, I have to go into the template to update the number of posts on each label every time that number changes. The new Layouts templates don't have the 20 post restriction and automatically keep count of the posts.
      There are some cool widgets out there to add to blogs, but frankly, none of them really fit with the theme of 51313 Harbor Street. Newsfeed? No, Harbor Street is not a place to read about the latest gossip in the headlines. Tagboard? No. There are plenty of IM services out there if anyone wants to chat to another commenter. And I don't like not being able to moderate commenters. I'm not, contrary to rumors, always on this blog. So there aren't any widgets that I just have to have. Yet.
      Oh well. Maybe Blogger will get those two annoyances fixed. I suspect that Blogger will eventually "help" all of us using the classic templates to convert to the widgets. But that's a problem for another time.
      I've just about decided to create a separate blog for Murder by Dewey Decimal. I'll post excerpts here, and then in the few blog, post them in the correct order for someone who wants to read it in order from the beginning. What do you think? I could also use it to send people to purchase the self-published version if they don't want to wait for the posts.
      Well, it's getting late so I'm going to call it it night. By the way, Stargate: SG1 returns tomorrow night! Wahoo! Don't call me between 7 and 10 tomorrow night. I won't answer.
      Have a great day tomorrow!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You never answer anyway! Ok last time I called you didn't answer. Sign me up for book please and let me know how much. When will this happen? I have the weekend free to read it. I do accept Sat. mail.
Roen

Anonymous said...

I've played around with the template on mine, but I'm not versed enough in HTML to do what I want, apparently. I want to have less border and more white area for posts, but can't figure out what to change.

I would love the other site for MBDD. (It wouldn't cut into the sale of the self-published version?)

SBB said...

Roen, you called me once! On my cell phone even which I hardly ever carry. Call me on my regular phone, lov, and I'll answer, except not tonight! I don't know when the book will be published. I have to finish re-typing it in! But this summer for sure.

FF, do you have the widget template or the classic templates? I don't know if it would cut into the sales or not. I hadn't thought about that. Maybe I'll just post the first three or four chapters there. I'll have to think about it.