Lately, I’ve done some thinking on how to make the blog layout a bit better. I know most people don’t like having to scroll down the page just to absorb all the info. That goes hand-in-hand with my ever-growing Sidebar. The categories were slowly growing, as were the monthy archives and links. I felt I had to do something!

So, I made a new page! The Archives and Links page is now open for viewing. The hardest part of it was trying to find out the WordPress codecs to use. The Archive template in the theme I’m using doesn’t allow for a sidebar or the tabled layout; I had to modify the template by hand to get how I wanted it to be.

Gotta go, will write tonight and tomorrow!

Here I go again, mucking around with Perl scripts!

I made a new contact page. The reason is two-fold. One, if spambots happen on any of the pages and look at the header.php file, they’ll see my email and possibly make a meal out of it. So far it hasn’t happened (to the best of my knowledge) yet, but as some people have said, an ounce of prevention cures a pound of headaches. Two, I also have my Instant Messenger handles for AIM, Yahoo and Google on there as well. What can I say? I’m a regular chat-whore!

The only problem with the page is editing. I can’t edit it without having to redo the submit button. For some odd reason, the HTML code for the submit button keeps breaking the edit page for WordPress. If anyone knows what I may be doing wrong or if there’s an easier way to implement a HTML form in a WP page, please let me know immediately.

Another small problem is that I was trying to figure out how to change the background and text of the success page that the Perl script spits out after using the Submit button. I want it to look like a natural extension of the blog, but all I can do now is leave it at the default white page with black text. Again, if anyone reading this has experience with Perl, please help me figure this out.

Thanks, and cheers!

Technorati Tags: Esoterik, Perl, HTML forms, WordPress, Email forms, Messenger

It’s not every day I win an award for a website…

… especially one that breaks most of today’s web standards! I keep on waiting for someone to say, “Oh my, Chris… use of frames is just too Web 1.0! And those Javascript rollovers just have to go!” (envision typical flamboyant designer talking with limp-wrist)

Technorati Tags: Esoterik, Web Design, Frames, Javascript, Award, Bird Club, ASCS

Well, kind of…

If one looks really carefully at the nav bar in this page’s header, they will see a “Webcam” tab. I’ve finally succeeded in tying a feed from my iSight camera to a blog page! Click on it, when I announce a pending or active webcam livecast, and have fun.

I will most likely make entries for special occasions and I will give advance notice of a pending broadcast. I may even make a switch in the sidebar to let everyone know if the webcam is on or not. I haven’t gotten that far yet, but I at least got the connection, firewall and router issues sorted out. I even had a friend in Germany view it to be sure it worked fine (thanks, Christian!). Oh… the switch I was just thinking of; all I have to do is post the notice on Twitter and it will show on the sidebar widget. Wow! It really IS good for something!

I’ll see you all around… wait, no… I hope you all will see me around sometime!

Cheers!

Major thumbs up and high-fives go out to Rirath of TwiddleGeek.com for blogging about Lightbox!

If you want to know what Lightbox is, click any of the images below:

There are clickable links inside the image’s right and left sides to go forward or backward through images. You can also press ‘N’ for Next, ‘P’ for Previous and ‘C’ to Close the window!

Now if you run a blog on the WordPress platform, and you would love to implement what you just saw, visit this page for the plug-in: http://zeo.unic.net.my/notes/lightbox-js-version-20/. There are other details on this page, http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/, on how to use the plug-in to its fullest potential. This is a great addition to my Photo Gallery, if I must be so praising. I just tested it out on my 2006 Christmas Gifts entry and it looked sweet!

I did some tweaking to the Photo Gallery, and I’m pleased to announce that it is now Lightbox-integrated as well. I’m not going to do this with the Art Gallery, since the integration effectively nixes all comments. That’s the only downside to the hack.

Cheers!

Technorati Tags: Lightbox, Lightbox JS, WordPress, Zenphoto, TwiddleGeek, Rirath, Huddletogether