Progress never stands still and neither do I. I’ve been hard at work cleaning some things up from the initial release and also adding some new features. Collectively, there’s enough there that I feel I comfortable dubbing it a new release of the blog, so I now present:
Legends of the Falls – Version 2.1 –
I’ll use this page to document the new stuff that’s in now the blog – both the behind the scenes housekeeping and the new features that I’ve added. I’ll start with the not so visible housekeeping stuff that’s not immediately apparent.
WordPress 2.2 –
The underlying software that drives the blog is called WordPress and the WordPress guys recently came out with a new release of their software dubbed WordPress 2.2. I’ve upgraded our blog so it now runs on the 2.2 software. There’s not much to 2.2 that’s visible to the end users but there are some features that are helpful to me as an administrator.
Unfortunately, the biggest one arrives too late for me to take advantage of it. WordPress 2.2 has a new Blogger import feature that handles comments when a blog is converted from Google’s Blogger. If you remember we left the comments behind when we moved to the our Blog. I can’t just go back and rerun the migration either because I’d also have to redo all the categorization work that I did. Had I known this release was going to have the new import feature I would have waited to move the Blog.
Pictures –
One behind the scenes activity that I hope that you didn’t notice involves all the pictures on the site. You might remember that when we moved over I noted that all the old images remained behind on Gary’s server and there was the possibility that they could disappear if Gary were to pull the plug on Guffaw.com. My original plan was to not transfer them since I figured it would be quite labor intensive.
However, I was able to come up with a scheme that, with Gary’s help, proved to very much reduce the amount of effort involved. About a month ago I actually transferred all the photos over to my server (actually, I should say most since one or two didn’t make the move correctly and I haven’t fixed them yet) and I have since revised our posts to point to the photos on our server, so our images are now safe.
Archives –
Perhaps the biggest functional addition that I made was an addition to the archives capability that should improve our ability to navigate around the website. I’ve added an Archives page that captures on one page every post that has been made to the blog. Those posts are listed by their titles and organized by the month that they were made. That should help you find a post if you can remember the title of it but just can’t seem to find it using categories or the search capability. It’s also handy to just sit down and scan the list to bring back a memory or two. Click here to see the Archives page.
There are two ways to get to the Archives page. The most obvious is a link called “archives” in the blog header that will jump you right to the page. The other is a link called “Archived Posts” that’s included in the Info Pages section of the sidebar (BTW – that’s another change that I made – I shortened Informational Pages to Info Pages so the would only take up one line in the sidebar listing).
Print Capability
Another nice addition is the capability to print a post and its comments. If you ever tried to print out a post from the Blog you wouldn’t have been very happy. What you would get would be pretty messy. So I’ve added a print function at the bottom of every post. Clicking on it will give you a preview of what your printed output will look like along with a “Click here to print” button that will actually send the post to your printer. Note that comments are included along with the post. Click here to see an example of how a printed post will look.
Birthday Countdown –
If you’ve been on the Blog in the past couple of days you may have noticed the return of an old favorite (at least it was one of Marilyn’s favorite features of the old blog), the Birthday Countdown. Once again the sidebar contains a countdown to the number of days remaining until each of our birthdays.
Sidebar Greeting –
Another feature of the old Blog returns. The birthday and holiday greeting that used to pop up whenever one of those key dates arrived. At least I think the feature has returned (for the technically inclined, it’s now a server side php script which makes it more secure but also makes it more difficult for me to test – previously you would see a greeting based on the time and date on the computer that you were using to view the Blog and I could just change the date on my machine to test it – now the greeting is based on the server’s time which I can’t just go in and change it).
Over the next couple of days, I’m going to print out some dummy messages as both a test of the feature and so that people can actually see it in action (Dawn gets to be the lucky recipient of the first real message when her birthday arrives in a couple of weeks). I’ve toned down the message a little using a font that’s already part of the blog theme and displaying the message in a more aesthetic green color than the bright red I used on the old blog (Editor’s note – I already changed it back to red).
Users Online –
I’ve also added what might appear to be a completely worthless sidebar feature called Users Online. What you should see there is your user name along with anyone else who might happen to be on the blog at the same time. Because we get so little traffic 99% of the time the only thing that you will see is your name. If you click on the User Online link in the sidebar you will be taken to a report that will shows the current users online along with what the most ever was (a number that currently sits at a whopping 2).
There is a method to my madness for this feature however. I have long term plans to eventually turn it into a mini instant messenger feature. Eventually, when and if you get on there and see another one of us on the board you will be able to start up a chat session in a box in the sidebar. That’s for future development though and I’m not exactly sure when I’ll implement it.
You Don’t Say? –
Lastly, this feature presents a random quote or tidbit in the sidebar. It’s an attempt to provide at least a little content even when no one has added anything new to the blog. I’ve pulled together about 300 pieces of humorous trivia from a bunch of different sources, so they should keep you entertained for a while. Much of the info is golf related but there are some others. Refreshing your page should present you with something different (plus you should get a couple of new pictures to look at in the Random Photos section too).
Again I hope my efforts were fruitful and add to everyone’s enjoyment of the blog.
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