Further Tweaks
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Another day another few changes. Added a Google search box to the right sidebar. This allows a visitor to search the entire web or just this website. Searching for a term on this site doesn't work yet as I haven't told Google to index the pages contained within. I need to look at adding proper metafilter tags to the head of the template to facilitate search robots.
Also changed the adverts which are displayed on the main page. I've switched from text ad units to a text link unit. Much smaller and discreet and more in keeping with the index page's design. I need to look at creating channels (as Google call them) to track the performance of the different types of Adsense adverts applied to this site (and my other sites).
Also changed the adverts which are displayed on the main page. I've switched from text ad units to a text link unit. Much smaller and discreet and more in keeping with the index page's design. I need to look at creating channels (as Google call them) to track the performance of the different types of Adsense adverts applied to this site (and my other sites).
Blogger Hack
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Yeah baby, this post is to prove that I've successfully applied a blogger hack to create expandable post summaries. Just click on the "Read more..." link to see how it works.
Read more...
There you go, this text was hidden from you on the main page. It's quite elegant in it's result but it's a bit of a hack to implement the way I wanted. You can see the two span classes (.fullpost and .readmore) in the style sheet, they're relatively easy to understand. Wrap the text you want to hide on the main page within the "fullpost" tag (add the code to you post template).
Unfortunately in Blogger's implementation the "Read more..." text would be seen in all posts whether you wanted to hide a long post or not. This implementation means you place the "Read more..." link into the actual post text. The obvious disadvantage of this method is you need to hard code the direct link to the permanent post page.
Read more...
There you go, this text was hidden from you on the main page. It's quite elegant in it's result but it's a bit of a hack to implement the way I wanted. You can see the two span classes (.fullpost and .readmore) in the style sheet, they're relatively easy to understand. Wrap the text you want to hide on the main page within the "fullpost" tag (add the code to you post template).
Unfortunately in Blogger's implementation the "Read more..." text would be seen in all posts whether you wanted to hide a long post or not. This implementation means you place the "Read more..." link into the actual post text. The obvious disadvantage of this method is you need to hard code the direct link to the permanent post page.
Tweaks
Still working "hard" on the new template but as it's the graphics in Adobe Photoshop I don't want to post any of it just yet (I keep switching between loving and hating the design).
A few tweaks to report though. I've changed the colour of a link from the default blue to something different. I just don't particularly like blue links.
Also added some more Google Adsense text adverts to the individual post pages. They measure 468x60 pixels so I had to modify the classes narrowcolumn and widecolumn width from 450 to 468 pixels. It doesn't seem to have broken anything related to the layout so that's OK then. You can see them when you open a direct link to a post (click the post title or comment link to view).
A few tweaks to report though. I've changed the colour of a link from the default blue to something different. I just don't particularly like blue links.
Also added some more Google Adsense text adverts to the individual post pages. They measure 468x60 pixels so I had to modify the classes narrowcolumn and widecolumn width from 450 to 468 pixels. It doesn't seem to have broken anything related to the layout so that's OK then. You can see them when you open a direct link to a post (click the post title or comment link to view).
Firefox Extension
Monday, May 02, 2005
You'll obviously be using Firefox as your main browser for website development, and if not why not? Aardvark is a fantastic extension that allows you to see the structure of any web page just by moving your mouse over the different page elements.a useful tool for web development that shows the elemental structure of a page and allows modifications to it using various keystrokes.
Makes drilling down through layers of CSS declarations very simple to help understand how a page is constructed and to better view the parent/child relationship of the cascading elements. Essential download for anybody designing a website.
