Monday, March 7, 2011
New Website With Blogs
I'm seriously looking into changing the format of this blog into something richer and more useful. The idea will be to have different sections that do different things, one of which might or might not be a blog. So I started looking into Wordpress (Blogger isn't relevant). So far as I can see, however, doing this the right way will require more technical skill than I've got. So if there's anyone out there who lives in my vicinity, and has experience in setting up a website using Wordpress, and wishes to announce themselves to me, it's yaacov dot lozowick at yahoo dot com. Until I change that, too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Please don't make it slower. So many amateur blogs are cluttered and slow.
OT
"tranlating jihad" has transcribed and translated all of Qaradawi's Cairo speech as far as the audio allowed
http://translating-jihad.blogspot.com/2011/03/exclusive-transcript-of-qaradawis.html
--------
Yaacov
I think your website is perfect the way it is, even though I don't like that colour ;-).
There is a German word "verschlimmbessern" and as an example of that I've just gotten my second iPod shuffle, greatly improved they say, BS I say, the old one was perfect and with the new one I've already spent hours trying to figure out how I can render unoperational all that extra gimmicky "comfort" that forces me to use the thing how they want me to use it instead of how I want to use it. Therefore Beware!
Talk to Martin at Solomonia. He seems to have done a nice job with his recent revamp. Wordpress isn't that much more difficult than Blogger to use, just takes some getting used to.
A link displayed on the front page to a big post on angoing issue like why Jerusalem can't be divided, for example, would be great. Issues like that, which are still current right now aren't done much justice by the blog format.
Victor,
but commenting at Solomonia has now become a pain as he uses IntenseDebate with all the XSS hoops one has to jump through if one uses NoScript for protection.
I use IntenseDebate too :) it's more feature rich than blogger's comment system. It allows you to make edits to your comment after its posted, to fix spelling, etc. Give me an example of a Wordpress comment system that you like.
For the kind of blog he wanted, I think Martin did a nice job with the revamp. I'm not sure that's what Yaacov is looking for, from his brief description; or maybe he himself hasn't figured out what he wants yet. The main issue with Wordpress is finding a stable, solid, but flexible template, and then finding someone familiar with Wordpress programming to configure it for you (you can expect to pay $100-500 for custom graphic mods).
Yaakov, if you don't want to waste a lot of time, just go with a blog at wordpress.com. I have a self-hosted Wordpress installation at martinkramer.org/sandbox, but I keep a backup at martinkramer.wordpress.com, and it looks just fine.
Well folks, here's the direction:
I'm thinking of setting up a website which I might call "Yaacov's workshop" or something, on which I'd like to bring together various aspect of my professional life.
1. A website where I advertise myself as a tour guide (which I may go back doing after a brief hiatus of 25 years). This section would include info about what I offer and contact details, and would also be driven by Google advertizing to it, but it would also have a place where I'd describe tours I've given or taken, with pictures, stories about places, updates about research pertaining to what tourists might see such as archeological news, and so on, and at which visitors could of course comment.
2. A website where I share a research-and-book-writing project. At the moment I'm in the early stages of research towards writing a book about Jerusalem. University professors bounce ideas off their students; I'd like to try bouncing them off whoever visits the website and has an opinion. I"m not certain how it would work, and I haven't heard of anyone else doing this, but it would probably have sections where I'd tell about books I"m reading (the public can read them too), about research I"m doing (the public can hear about it only thru me), and about theses I'm developing (the public can shoot me down, or add perspective).
3. Perhaps a section where the existing blog continues, in some form, tho probably reduced since I'm growing tired of it.
4. Perhaps a section I might call "discussions", where I may occasionally present some idea to be dissected by readers. Conversely, this section might offer some registered readers the option to post thoughts of their own, so as to create a community and generate discussions in it. (The Daily Kos sort of does that, tho I've got something somewhat different in mind).
5. Other sections which I'll think of as I go.
The whole thing will probably have to be supported by my twitter account, and by my Facebook account which doesn't yet exist.
So that's where I'm at. Any comments?
Wordpress can do some of this, in terms of offering multiple static pages, in addition to a blog component. But this is definitely not a simple wordpress project. You're talking a lot of customization. What's more, the Wordpress community has it's own developers, who build and customize features, themes and widgets for the community. Just asking any programmer to get involved may not work out so well, because they're not familiar with all the available widgets and features.
The group discussions area sound more like a forum, but forums get very messy and require a lot of oversight. Unless you're interested in creating sort of a online magazine, where you could solicit dissenting opinions and publish them concurrently, let's say.
Bottom line, to do everything you're asking, Wordpress is not enough. You need something like Joomla with a Wordpress plugin.
With Joomla, you'll be able to integrate blogging, e-commerce, a community component and some type of online magazine/publication, or whatever you're trying to create.
But this is a major project. You should expect a month for development, on a realistic timetable, and maybe $500-1000.
Uh oh, did blogger just swallow a very long comment by yours truly?
In case it did, here's the bottom line: Wordpress won't do everything you're asking. You need a CMS, like Joomla, with a Wordpress plugin.
You'll also need a month of development and $500-1000.
tho probably reduced since I'm growing tired of it.
I knew from the start that it wouldn't be good news.
Victor
in this thread I have explained what to do when it looks as if Blogger has swallowed a comment - it sometimes says nutty stuff but just follow my directions and you find your comment again and no it doesn't object to very long comments it just says so once in a while.
Good Luck! for next time, for now it is of course too late.
http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2011/03/progressive-israel-scolds-inadvertantly.html
Silke,
I'm sure that I commented in the "Roger Waters is a fool" post in response to Lee Ratner at March 8, 2011 1:53 PM.
I supplied the link to two articles by Eugene Rostow so maybe blogger did not like that?
Anyway I cannot seem to find it.
From your link Yaakov writes: for whatever reason, my system here (run by Google) sometimes doesn't like you. However, so far as I can see, whenever you write a comment it reaches me, whether it gets published or not. So rather than write and re-write, if your comment disappears drop me a line and I'll pull it out of the spam column and back into the comments section.
Are there perhaps certain words that one should not use?
By the way the comments from the link you provided were in a different format to that normally appearing.
Blogger?
I unspammed whatever was stuck...
Thanks
Post a Comment