Blog Enhancements

Gadgets - New Category For My Blog

Shandy — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 12:26:00 GMT

OK, I admit it; I like gadgets. About 8 years ago I had a bit of a reputation as gadget person as I was the only one of my circle of friends to have a personal pager, mobile phone and computer network in my house. I've let things slip since then. The pager is back in the UK, the computer network too.

However, in the last 6 months I'm back on track. I have digitial cameras, a camcorder, Smartphone, tablet PC, and a variety of computer perhiperals, MP3 player ..

So I thought I'd add a Gadgets category to my blog so all my gadgety posts could be collected together :)

Problem Posting Blog Entries With IMG Tags Using .Text Web Admin Feature

Shandy — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 21:12:00 GMT

I've rarely posted graphics to my blog as I've always seemed to struggle to get the graphics displayed for one reason or another. Anyway, this evening I sat down and worked out what was going on.

When I embed a graphic into a blog post I go to the gallery where I have uploaded the image to. In my previous post this was the Photos gallery. I then click on the image I want to include in my blog post. The example in my previous post was 3 Laptops. I then click on the Original Image link. I can then copy and paste the address of the image and place it into the SRC attribute of an IMG tag (I just replace the o_ prefic with t_ which gives a thumbnail image rather than the full blown original).

So far so good. If I am using the web browser Admin feature I can even switch between HTML and Design mode and see the image is displayed correctly. However, as soon as I post the blog entry something goes wrong and the link gets changed. In the previous post example http://blogs.vbcity.com//images/blogs_vbcity_com/shandy/62/t_3%20Laptops.jpg gets changed to //images/blogs_vbcity_com/shandy/62/t_3%20Laptops.jpg. The // at the beginning of this link is incorrect. there should only be a single /. So I have to re-edit the entry again, take out one of the / characters so that the link becomes /images/blogs_vbcity_com/shandy/62/t_3%20Laptops.jpg, re-post the entry and it appears correct.

Is it just me who has this problem or is it a bug in the .TEXT script?

Unwanted Pingback/Trackback Entries In The Feedback Section Of My Blog

Shandy — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 18:40:00 GMT

Since the beginning of June I have noticed a lot of Pingback/Trackbacks have appeared in the Feedback area of my blog. My understanding is that these are simply links on another web page to one of my blog web pages. I have always had the odd one or two but suddenly I was getting 20 or 30 a day and all from on-line betting web sites. I have no idea why they are appearing or what purpose they serve. See las vegas slot machine for an example of one such link. Needless to say there is no link to my blog on the web page in question. If anyone has any ideas why they appear let me know! They are a nuisance because they clog up the feedback section of my blog where I can view the latest comments and ping/track backs to see who is linking to my blog.

.TEXT Keywords Feature

Shandy — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 14:15:00 GMT

A useful feature I recently discovered in .TEXT is the Keywords feature. This feature can be found in the Options, Keywords part of the Administrator part of a .TEXT blog. This feature allows you to associate a word with a HTML anchor tag and have the keyword replaced with the anchor tag when your blog entry is posted. An example of this is the .TEXT word. When I typed this blog entry I typed the first sentence as:

A useful feature I recently discovered in .TEXT is the Keywords feature.

As I have registered .TEXT as a keyword with an associated URL http://scottwater.com/blog, title The blog of Scott Water. The creator of .TEXT and text .TEXT, the first sentence is actually posted in this blog entry as:

A useful feature I recently discovered in
<A title="The blog of Scott Water. The creator of .TEXT"
   href="http://scottwater.com/blog" 
   target="_blank">.TEXT>
</A>
is the <I><B>Keywords</B></I> feature.

I find this is a real time saver for common links I tend to use over and over again like vbCity and MVP ! You can also specify if you want the anchor link to open in a new window or if you want just the first or all occurrences of the keyword in the blog entry to be replaced by the associated anchor tag.

Blogs Skins And A Few Minor Additions To My Blog Site

Shandy — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 03:36:00 GMT

I had a look through the different skins that are available for my blog. I found two or three I quite liked but in the end decided to stay with the default vbCity one. I must be getting old as I don't seem to like change as much as I once did ;-)

Anyway I did add a couple of items to my blog today:

A Microsoft MVP Logo image at the top left of my blog.

A link to the Blog Herald. This looks an interesting news site containing purely news associated with blogging. I shall keep an eye on this and see what its like.

I was going to upload a picture of myself to my blog too but the lead that attaches my digital camera to my PC appears to have gone walkabout so I'll try and sort that out at a later date.

Creating A CSS For My Blog

Shandy — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:56:00 GMT

Well I have spent the last 24 hours designing a CSS for this blog. It's been a long time since I did any really involved HTML/CSS/Javascript work (probably 5 years or so) so it was hard going. I've emailed the CSS file off to Serge, so hopefully he will be able to post it up on the site for me fairly soon. The biggest issue I had was trying to use CSS to replace tables. This whole subject really appears to be akin to rocket science. I found the support on the web patchy at best. I know the latest recommendations at the W3C are not to use tables for layout unless the table makes sense when linearized but I think they need to do a bit of work on finding an easier alternative!

BTW, the next person who witters on about how marvellous the Firefox web browser is will get a piece of my mind. It is some way behind IE when it comes to rendering CSS. Admittedly IE needs some fixes to get around a few issues but the fixes are available. I still have an issue in Firefox I cannot resolve :(

Blogmap Link Added To My Blog

Shandy — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 21:51:00 GMT

Thanks to Manzi I was made aware of Blogmap and have added a link on the left hand side of my blog. I think it is an excellent idea as it gives any reader an instant graphical representation of where the blogger is blogging from.

Anti SPAM Measures For My Blog

Shandy — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 17:11:00 GMT

I see Serge has implemented a Spam Blocking mechanism for all the vbCity Blogs. See Comment spam battle - Captcha control implemented on blogs.vbcity.com. Hopefully this will help combat the ignorant SPAM postings without inconveniencing posters too much.

I have tested it out by replying to Serge's post and my comment has gone in successfully.

As I said to Serge the downside is when I need some extra viagra or feel the need for a bit of on-line poker I shall have to rely on Google rather than a quick look at SPAM comments in my own blog. But that is a small price to pay :-D