theBlaine.com » Website Changes

Time for another change

theBlaine — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:04:50 +0000

Okay, I know I haven’t done much to the site for the past month. Recently I started working for a new company as their Network Administrator and I’ve been spending a lot of my spare time brushing up on Windows Server 2003 and Terminal Services. I’ve also been spending a lot of my evenings learning how to code in Ajax and jQuery so I can overhaul my Tasks Manager to be more of an web-based application instead of the simple HTML version.

Though my site has been live for maybe 3 months, I have found that I am not happy with the layout and content. Originally I wanted the website to contain some personal photos, talk about my hobbies and keep my friends and family updated with things in my life. Now that I’ve been using the site it’s not very functional for me. My plan is to finish up with rebuilding my Task Manager and then I plan on changing the entire layout of the site again to more suit my needs while still being able to keep my friends and family up-to-date.

Until then, I’m sorry for not keeping things updated and I know you’ll like the site more once I change things around again. Remember… Progress is good, but sometimes it’s slow.

theBlaine

Recent Changes to the Site

theBlaine — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:59:21 +0000

I’ve done some major back-end work on the site in the past couple of days. It wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone unless you dug into the code and the structure of the site, but it makes things easier for me from a website maintenance stand-point.

I was able to remove some JavaScript code that re sized columns by replacing the DIVs with a TABLE. Now I know some of you cringe a little since it’s a step backwards. But for those of you who have dealt with DIVs and column layouts, nothing is simpler than just using a TABLE sometimes.

I also changed the way I was loading other JavaScripts to help make each page load a little faster and now I’m loading more of the built-in libraries. Then I did some general “layout” cleaning to make the site more cross-browser compatible.

And finally, I began the structure needed for the second version of Task Manager.

Content Ready

theBlaine — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:01:00 +0000

I’ve been pretty busy in the past 2 weeks and today I was finally able to sit down and play a bit with my site. I’m creating some new content boxes that will be used on the site to contain text. Now I’ll be able to start adding more content and adding more to the site. To be quite honest, this article doesn’t really serve a purpose. I’m writing it to test out several features.

post-notifications: this will send out an email to registered users whenever new content is posted to the site
more: this tag should split the article and only display what’s above the tag when displaying the first snippet of the artcle which is used on article lists
next page: this will test if the next page tag will seperate the article into multiple pages
ago: testing date displays that have the same date as the current date, in places specified it will display an ago message (i.e. 3 hours ago)
get_time/date: make sure places calling the get_time/date function are not using the ago message if they don’t need it

This line and everything above it should be on Page 1 only.

Updated META data for SEO

theBlaine — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Tonight I modified the way my site is generating meta data. Meta data’s purpose, is to show search engines how to index my articles in their database. I won’t go into the details, but since this change is transparent to most of my visitors and the subject of meta data for Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, can be complex and detailed. So instead, I will give you a quick explanation of what I did.

The first thing I did, was to change the way my site was displaying the pages’ title. The title is what you see in the upper left hand corner of your web browser, aka the title window. It’s also the title you’ll see for each page in your taskbar.

The next thing I modified was the meta description for each page, before the description was hard-coded globally. This is a no-no when it comes to search engines, because this would cause duplicate page descriptions throughout the site. Now the meta description is based on the content of that particular page/article. Or, I can hard code the description as I’m writing the article using a custom key and value.

Finally, I changed the meta keywords from a bunch of hard-coded words targeting “Blaine,” to keywords and tags associated with the particular article.

The three of these changes will help with SEO and give me better placement in search engine results. The targeted meta data will give my pages and articles better relavance when indexing my site in search engines.

Added Background

theBlaine — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:15:32 +0000

Tonight I added a background image to all the pages. The image is a montage of some of my interests. The plan is to have a unique background image for each category to help you recognize where you are at inside the site. But for now I’m just going to use the same image for all pages.

The backbround image is taller than most pages, so you won’t see the entire background unless you are on a page that scrolls down a bit. Try here to see more of the background, this link will take you to the Latest Articles page.

Added Breadcrumbs

theBlaine — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:45:23 +0000

To help you with navigating this website I have added “Breadcrumbs”. Breadscrumbs are the text links above in the red bar that show you the path to your current location in the website. As you go deeper into the the site or into a category, the links give you an easy way to back out and find your way home.

The name “Breadcrumbs” comes from the fairy tales we all used to read as a kids. The Breadcrumbs were dropped on your way to an unfamiliar place so you can follow the trail of breadcrumbs back until you find your way home. This is a plugin that I downloaded specifically for my Wordpress site. You can download it here if you would like to install it into your Wordpress website. There are still some tweaks I would like to do to the navigation. One is displaying a category’s sub-categories before you are actually there so you can navigate deeper into the site. Similar to a street sign showing you where you can go next. Right now it only shows you where you are and how to get back home. I will work on that later, right now, I’m fine with how it is. I hope it’s helpful.

Trackbacks and RSS feeds

theBlaine — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:36:30 +0000

I turned on trackbacks which will allow me to make a reference inside of an article to another website’s article and it will notify that site admin that he’s been referenced on my site. This is, in turn, automatically generates a comment on their article with a link back to my website to help generate traffic and give credit to other authors when I reference their work.

Also, I activated RSS feeds on individual articles so you can set up a Live Bookmark to follow up on comments and responses for any of the articles.

Both the Trackback link and the RSS 2.0 link will be located just below the actual article with the meta data (date/time and category of the article).

Website To-Do List

theBlaine — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:41:21 +0000

I just started adding articles to the website and in less than an hour I am finding many things I want to change to make the site more user friendly and easier to navigate. Below is an on-going list of things I want to add/change/fix in no particular order. I will try to get to them as I go along on my on-going effort to keep things on this site fresh.

Add screenshots and samples of completed website designs and custom coding
Create ASP/PHP tutorials and make my professional work more highlighted on the site
Implement tags for pages and posts for better searching and indexing (SEO)
Rebuild the sidebar lists and expand margins and padding for longer titles 10/21/2008
Modify email subscription function for end-users
Build a page to help explain how to use the site and it’s features
Add content to the following empty categories:
- Who Is The Blaine?
- My Hobbies
- Website Development
- Blaine’s Soapbox
- Random Stuff
Reorganize categories and pages to a smoother flow 10/16/2008
Change Latest Articles to Main or Home Page, use as a notification and main menu page then move the articles into their category pages 10/16/2008
Update/modify all category descriptions to add in META DESCRIPTIONS for SEO 10/16/2008
Update/modify posts and pages to add “description” custom key value for META DESCRIPTIONS 10/16/2008
Add script navigation into the red bar in the header for sub-categories 10/16/2008
Create a way to flag notices on top of specific post/pages/categories 10/16/2008
Find a way to make Sticky Posts on top of certain categories and particular posts added plugin 7/30/2008
Fix breadcrumbs, when on multiple pages inside an archive, it breaks on page 2+ and just says “array” completed 7/28/2008
Remove background color from bottom multi-page nav (visible on top of content bg)
Add a background image to each category (and page, maybe) completed 7/26/2008
Optimize meta tags for search engine placement
Fix top menu tab highlighting with the new sub-categories completed 7/22/2008
Add more sub categories will add more as the site grows
Modify Comment links to make them more accesible completed 7/21/2008
Change posts archives with videos into a clickable links to the actual post completed 7/20/2008
Create more links in the Webpages sidebar to specific pages or posts completed 7/21/2008 will add more as the site grows
Add metadata (possibly in the blue bar) to single pages completed 7/20/2008
Add time stamp to posts on archive pages added to single pages, no need on archives 7/20/2008
Change and create new READ MORE links for posts created new text links 7/20/2008
Create a better title area for posts with background and more meta data to help separate posts completed 7/20/2008

Videos and Pics

theBlaine — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:47:02 +0000

Right now the site has a bunch of videos and pics and not much else. I’m filling up the site with the easier things first so I can give you something to look at. Soon there will be a lot more things to waste your time on while you’re here at my website, but for now you’re going to have to settle for a few videos and pictures. I’ll add more in the near future. This is just to get the site up and going.

Beta Release

theBlaine — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:05:27 +0000

This is the first test-drive on the new site. For the next few nights I’ll be ironing bugs I find as I start to kick the tires on this baby.

Here is a list of a few of the things the site can currently do:

Welcome page is complete
Articles page is ready for articles
Commenting on articles is on, you do not need to be logged in
RSS feed is working
Photo galleries using Shutter Reloaded plugin
Code syntaxing script completed for sourcecode viewing
404 email notifications
Google Adsense working
XML Sitemap setup and working
NextGen Gallery setup and tested
Website Stats running
Google Analytics setup