Actually, it surprised me that Sitepoint, a wonderful design resource, ran a poll yesterday to see whether RSS is “mainstream”. It also promoted the poll heavily on Twitter which Sitepoint says “headed to mainstream”.

Both Sitepoint actions facinated me.  Sitepoint is a site for web designers and developers.  I would think, for their audience, RSS would be mainstream.

Most of my sites have nothing to do with the Internet other than the fact they’re web pages.  When offered, I’ve had few RSS takers to any of my blogs.   Even the one with thousands of email subscribers has only a handful of RSS subscribers.  I thought that told me RSS isn’t mainstream.

Anyway, so far the RSS poll is interesting.  If you’ve got a min, pop over and vote so you can take a peek at the results.

Sitepoint’s promo of the poll on Twitter however is a whole ‘nuther ball a’ beezewax.  Their current giveaway of a $30 pdf ebook on CSS to gain Twitter followers though I don’t see a “follow me on” link on their site yet makes me Wonder too :)

For most blogs, without some fancy footwork, categories are the structure of the blog if not the whole site. In most templates, your categories will make up a clickable list of links somewhere on your pages. It probably will be in your sidebar. In the old days of web design, I think we called that a sub-menu.

For WordPress, that category list ends up being an important menu. If you write on a lot of topics, it can be the primary way peope will find your stuff. Obviously, you might consider your category names carefully.

In WordPress, you do have control over how many of your categories display in the listing on your pages. However, this would conceivably make them invisible. I can’t see that there would be anything to be gained by not making your posts readable on your blog.

Common sense says I don’t want a long list of categories. I don’t want people have to read an extra page to find all those posts I wrote about vestal virgins ;)

I also read somewhere while I was researching categories that you shouldn’t include your posts in more than one category as it would result in “duplicate pages”. Of course, that would be a bad thing because it upsets the search engines.

I’m going to have to research that further though as it doesn’t really make sense to me. If each of these posts is snippet of text in a database, how could linking to that data result in duplicate pages? Even if it were multiple links it would still only be one little chunk of text right?

Sheesh, correct me if I’m wrong here, will ya? Maybe I still don’t get it.

WordPress says tags are free form words that you put in a comma separated list under your post.

So basically they’re keywords like you should have in the header text of your posts but it’s no doubt easier putting them on the page? O.K., I’m in.

My personal Native American hero is Sitting Bull.  Even today, I think some of his words speak the truth, as in his famous quote about the people who were conquering his:

This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path”.
Sitting Bull

He said much more about the war with America, his people and the people who were to come.  You can find many Sitting Bull quotes that are relevant today here.

I believe that I am 1/16th, or possibly 1/8th, Yankton Lakota Sioux.  My heritage has been clouded by years of misinformation but I am hopeful with new DNA technology and patience I can find my real roots.

This also serves as an example of a post concepted of a need to share some quotes that kind of blew me away when I read them :)

Wonder what I know after 45 days of WordPress blogging?

I know that:

• it’s insane to jump into a live website “whole hog” without any advance planning.  Yes, Virginia, even a blog;
• a WordPress blog is a “Cadillac” of OpenSource software. Wonderful good looks and a smooth ride, but high maintenance; and
• real blogging, with intent, is an interesting pursuit.

If this is the only course you are interested in at Lynda.com, save your money. For similar reasons that the Blogger.com class didn’t quite make it, this video course didn’t either.

Digital cameras are not a subject you can make a film about years ago or really months ago and have people really “educated” by it today.

That being said, I am pretty much green to digital photography so I learned some things. I at least learned enough to have some idea of what they’re talking about in my camera instruction book and a little of when to use different features that are on my camera.

I learned you could take pictures from a moving vehicle and posted my first video on YouTube :)  The pictures looked a lot better on my computer so I suppose I need to take a class in movie making too.

I learned enough to be sure that the subject interests me and to sign up for another class. I’ve got 2 weeks on my month trial subscription yet. I think that’s plenty of time to take Digital Photography Principals from Taz Tally. You know who he is?

You can make an HTML link that not only links to your page, but also takes the person viewing the link to a certain spot on your page.  Even if that spot is below the fold.

For instance, if I want to say something about how new I am at Twitter and I also want to give anyone interested another little glimpse into my web life, I can post the word “green” with a link to one of my sites that defines that word the way I mean it.

After I got done twurling it, the link ended up being: http://twurl.nl/b7lswy.

By putting the following code in my page defining “green”, I was able to link to a particular place in the web page, not just the page.

<a name=”green”>GREEN</a> – Inexperienced, brand new.  The term is often applied to personnel.  Also applies to being new at any thing else.  Worry if your mechanic says “I’m pretty green at this but your motor needs a rebuild”.

By adding a “#“, or pound sign, and the defined name, i.e,”green” (without the quotes), to the url for the page, like so:

http://www.welcometothefair.com/lingo.html#green

I can send people right to the spot on the page I want them to see.

Maybe I should have put an Adsense block right above it?

Blog Header Before Functions Moved

It was a pretty simple matter to delete the functions from the header.php file in the Theme Editor section of the Design Tab.  Reinserting the functions into the sidebar was a little trickier in this theme as there are actually 3 files for the sidebar.  I also had to edit the main style sheet to make the functions display as I wanted them to.

While I was doing all this, I added an email subscribe because many of you are probably old people like me and don’t really think RSS feeds are all that great either.  I use them if I can’t subscribe via email but I’d rather get everything I need in my inbox :)

I’d also been experimenting lately with the number of posts I displayed on the front page of this blog.  I started with 10 and that made an awfully long page as I get pretty long-winded in some of my posts.  Then I changed it to 4 posts and visitors only got a smattering of all the things I write about here.  I didn’t like that either.

I knew I could switch to using all excerpts of my posts but I didn’t think that was so cool to have to click to read every single post on the page.  I knew there had to be a solution to print some posts in their entirety and make the rest shorter so, off to Google.

First I found some code that purported to do this and probably worked with some version.  But after 3 hours of messing with my blog on my local machine, it was back to Google.

Should have looked at one of my favorite sites, Daily Blog Tips, first.  Sure enough, they had just the plugin that I wanted.

So whadda ya think of the new look?

Since I’m already head over heels with Molly Holzschlag, does that mean I’m widening my horizons as I grow older? Actually, I’m becoming asexual as I grow older which is a whole, long and ugly other story that, thankfully doesn’t belong here, lol.

Getting back to Garrick (isn’t he a cutie?), what a great presenter of video training!  Mmm, that voice, especially when he chuckles.  Well, you just have to be there.

I did get fairly bored in class because not only does Garrick teach how to use Dreamweaver 8, he gives a lot of the fundamentals of web design.  And, even not paying attention, I learn’t some things I should have know’d a long time ago :)

These videos covered all of the basics of Dreamweaver 8 and a lot of things that really aren’t so basic.

I came away from this video class hooked on Dreamweaver.  Not for the design interface so much, I still have to fight myself not to spend all my time in coding view, but for the synchronization between files and even web servers.

This one class ended up being worth what it cost me to take classes for a whole month on Lynda.com. I only signed up for one month at the basic level.  I’m already covered for most of this month but I’m betting I’ll be signing up for a yearly plan to save a couple dinero before my “rent” expires.

Think I saw a coupon online somewhere that’ll save me enough that the “premium” classes won’t cost much more than the “regular” version. Naah, whadda I need with Exercises?  I’ve got enough exercises right here in my ‘puter to keep me busy for the rest of my life.

Reminds me, I forgot to tell you about the Digital Photography Principles class that was worth this month’s subscription fee all by itself, too.  Back at ya soon.

The email I showed her was from a friend in an email group I belong to, “Ideas by Post”.  I plan to tell you more about “Ideas by Post” in a separate post.

Anyway, I’d asked my buddy group to do the same thing I’d just asked her to do, review this blog.  I read somewhere that a blogging beginner should do that :)

When I showed my local gal pal my blog, I think I impressed her. Even so, she had a couple of good ideas.  She said I should add my picture and make the type bigger.  The sweetheart even said wished she had a computer so she could read it regularly.  She really is a great friend.

My IBP buddy, on the other hand, was maybe even a bit brutal^* in his page long criticism of my site. Among the things he told me were “it’s not a blog . . . it’s a diary” and “you need to concentrate some time on learning to write headlines”. He advised me to “restructure it for a shorter more concise presentation” and “find a direction”.

My friend from the IBP group is a professional writer and a creative force behind the Freelance Writing Organization – International. He’s also remodeling an old house, btdt. He’s a busy, busy man.

Just the fact he gave me his input should tell you how good a friend of mine he’s become on our little email group.

So, neither of my friends are my enemies but they don’t see the same picture of my web blog that I do either.  I see a blog that’s about becoming a web designer, step by tiny step with lots of adventures and meanderings along the way.  They see what probably is really here.

You can read all of the professional blogging advice I got (and my reply “In Self Defense”)  by joining the Ideas by Post bunch at Yahoo Groups.  Then, you can ask our many experts just about anything you need to know and get a straight answer.

*“. . . do you mean to regale us with stories of what it is like to be you on the net?” (O.K. I thought that was kinda mean but, yep, I do.)

RecentX is a program that keeps track of all of your recently closed files, imagine that.   I had expected a video game that lets you kill your exhusband 19 different ways but I downloaded it anyway.

It’s great for me.  Has tabs for Files, Folders, Programs and Websites and just records what you close and when.

Yes, I know I already can keep track of most of that to some extent but not like this.  I now have a nice iconic bar tucked away in the corner of my screen that gets me back where I was fast.

There are some big changes coming, if not in the U.S., then at least in my life.  I just ordered my first laptop computer.  (No sh*t from the Mac fans or real geek types, o.k.?  It’s what I can afford.)

No more being chained to a desk in my office. Ah, life is going to be so sweet.  Of course, my bailout’s paying for it, right?