Published in Web Development on Monday, August 23rd, 2004
Mail getting thru redux and some other blog related blithering...
So perhaps I over-simplified, however I still think that something should be done to make this stuff work better. It seems that on-site e-mail forms are the way to go - I wonder why we don't all use them.
Moving forward, Maximizing Ham by Craig Cook of the Focul curve Weblog goes into much better details the problems involved with this, umm, problem.
While the script here could use a good re-organization, writing new stuff can be more fun than cleaning old stuff, so this week I'm hoping to add a new feature.
When we were dreaming up our blog late last year we envisioned a quick link blog on the home page that was to be called 'Ephemeral' with the older links moved to the 'Eternal' section (how original, I know). The group of us were supposed to post our favorite links there; we all thought that this would be a great way to share with each other and our readers. Alas, it didn't happen.
Time to create something though, because I, like many bloggers, am finding more and more things that I want to write brief posts about.
So, at some point this week we'll be launching something that will be very similar to Dave's Dailies over at mezzoblue. I'm not sure if we'll provide a feed for this. Something tells me that a Friday "this weeks links" post with a wrap up would be a good way to get them out in a feed, but keep some unique 'site-only' content for a few days. A.K.A. something to bring people to the site.
I'm not yet sure how this will be integrated into the home page, however a reshuffling may occur; keep yer eyes peeled! On thing that I would like to hear about from our readers is this: Would it be okay to remove the 'four most recent posts' from the home page, or should they stay? Any feedback or ideas appreciated.
Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:
I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.
The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.
Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..
Comments and Feedback
Hmmmm....how would you then organize the homepage. I'd say...make them stay. They are the most useful things there, at least in my opinion.
I'd vote more for removal of Recent Comments. Not that important, if you ask me!
Looking forward to whatever you are coming up with Mike.
Mike -- I'd have to agree with the idea to get rid of the recent comments if you have to axe something. I'd at least argue that the four most recent comments is more useful than that list of comments. Just my opinion/preference...
On second thought -- another idea -- let the user decide to show and hide sections based on a persistent cookie. They can choose what they want to see in that area...
Looking forward to the Link Blog -- hope you are able to find new and interesting things that nobody else has...
Hello Minz and Derek, thanks both for the suggestions.
- Me too; I suppose then that I should actually get busy and do something!
Me too Derek, I'm going to strive to post original stuff. The reason that I haven't posted much in the way of links in the past is that I am sure most visitors here have seen them all already...
Its the reason my side bar links are so sparse as well... Anything I would usually put there comes from someone else's Quicklinks/Linkblog! Having said that, I suppose it doesn't hurt to post things that have been seen elsewhere. I just checked and there are actually quite a few requests in my log files for my links feed. Perhaps I need to get some new stuff in there! ;)
And it appears I should have created paragraphs around that text, as there isn't the appropriate line-height in the CSS on "just text". Yeesh. Sorry mate...
No troubles, I have the power to sort that out ;-]