Road works complete
Metablogging - - Posted on April, 19 at 4:01 pm by Tim
Well, pretty much–for the time being anyway. (Phase 2 is coming as soon as possible.)
Hope you like the new look and find the site easier to use.
The main improvement should be in commenting. WordPress (the software platform Surfdom is now using) has a better method for controlling spam so there shouldn’t be the same problems with comments not getting through. Hoo-fucking-ray! I’ve also reinstated the ‘Most Recent Comments’ feature in the lefthand sidebar so that you can more easily keep track of the various threads. Additionally, there is a cool new ‘quote’ facility that should make it easier to quote other comments you want to comment on. Just click the ‘quote’ link next to the comment you want to comment on and it appears in your comment box. Also, comments are now permalinked. All in all, commenting should cease to be the pain in the bum it has been.
What else? Well, as you can see, I’m using Google ads, but we are also looking at some alternatives. Stay tuned, but in the meantime, click the bloody ones that are there!
I’ve also–at the top of the lefthand sidebar–put up some links to info about the blog and about me. I actually get asked about this stuff a fair bit–mainly by students doing media courses–so I figured I’d put it all down in one place. And yes, there’s a comments policy, but as you’ll see, it’s pretty straightforward.
I want to thank Jon and Gail from 12th Harmonic Web Services for their help and expertise, not to mention their patience with my endless Skype calls - can’t we make the border 1.1 instead of 1 pixel wide?
There’s a couple of other new bits too, so have a look around. IF there are any problems, suggestions, thoughts or comments, let me know via email or comments. In particular, if you would like your site to appear in the blogroll, let me know–thanks to the fact that it takes a feed from Bloglines, it is very easy to manipulate, and it will be updated regularly.
Anyway, that’s about it: hope it all works as planned.
BEST LAID PLANS UPDATE: Hang in there, folks. We are still having some rendering problems with the pier image. It might take a day or so to fix, but it’s getting there! We are going to leave it live while the fiddling continues. Please let us know of any other problems, especially how it is working in various browsers.
Posted in Metablogging |
April 19th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
everything in the comments below my first on thsi thread only is strikethrough - including all the form instructions.
In addition the entire right hand column - everything is STRIKETHROUGH as is the boilerplate stuff at the bottom of page. Only when I open up the comments on this thread. I’ll close browser and open up again and try in IE and FireFOX. I’m on OPERA 8.54 build 7730 on XP.
April 19th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Same problem on IE and Firefox. A bit worse looking on Firefox
April 19th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Firefox renders it ok, but the concept in MY mind is .. well.. crap.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
Looks good. “About a blog” needs proofing. Return of blogroll is helpful.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Looks good, Tim. Especially that link to the … well, that other After Grog Blog.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Renders fine on my Mac, with Safari browser, and OS X v10.3.9.
Generally looks good and easy to use. Though not quite sure about the yellow-orange colour used for the background and lettering in the respective sidebars, it kind of stands out and is a bit distracting. Or maybe that’s just me.
April 20th, 2006 at 12:15 am
Spoke too soon. There is a very minor problem with the ‘Support Surfdom’ active link image on the top of the right hand sidebar. It covers the bottom of the text immediately above it that starts “The Road to Surfdom has been live since May 2002.” Changing text size (in my browser) usually fixes this kind of misalingment on most web pages, but it doesn’t do so here.
April 20th, 2006 at 6:22 am
Appearance and mechanics seems fine in my firefox on windows, a bit ugly but that’s just my tastes (at least blue was more evocative of surf! I guess this is supposed to be surf at twilight? Are we learning something about your view of the world today?).
However you seem to have molted comments from at least the ‘President of Indonesia’ thread, so we no longer have adrian’s illuminating constitutional insights.
A shame.
April 20th, 2006 at 6:30 am
Ah, semble that Seeker as well is the precipitating type - mechanics aren’t great in firefox - posting is a misery - first told I needed to be logged in to post, then received an unfamiliar error page, but the second post actually worked despite error page.
Good luck!
April 20th, 2006 at 6:51 am
Scary blue man! With head much too small for his body!!!
*Sobs*
*Hides under desk*
Get him away from me!!
April 20th, 2006 at 8:25 am
Oh stop whingeing you bunch of 70s leftover hippie socialist ratbag dole bludgers!
It’s a FREE LUNCH, guys! Tim’s forking out so we can argue the finer points of welfare state social security strategies, exchange info on which are the slackest Centre Link branches and how to sponge off the government in general - all while ungratefully slagging-off John Howard who - it must be agreed - is the Greatest Prime Minister of the past decade.
Who gives a shit about the color of the backdrop or whether strike-through works too well? If everything was perfect we’d have nothing to complain about.
I say, “Good on yer, Tim”. You’ve given us a great forum and a wonderful opportunity to nitpick at the fascist reactionaries who rule this country.
To celebrate I’ve gotten my old brown corduroys out of the garbage bag in the cupboard and am wearing them as I write. I’ve always kept the beard as a reminder of the Days Of Rage, but it really feels sensational to wear the “Old Reliables” again, even if they’ve shrunk a bit around the waist (probably the thirty years in storage). The whisking sound of cord-on-cord as the inner thighs brush together brings a tear to the eye.
Chicky-babes out there, look out! Aussie’s back in town… and he’s brown. Thanks Tim for all the help in making that possible.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:47 am
Kudos on the return of the blogroll. Color scheme hasn’t grown on me yet, but I’m sure it will in time. Like Patrick, I was partial to the blue background.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:49 am
One request Tim re: the blogroll: Liberals Against Terrorism has undergone a name change to American Footprints.
An upgrade in my opinion.
April 20th, 2006 at 10:33 am
OOh, lovely!
April 20th, 2006 at 11:01 am
OK Aussie Bob, can cope with the rest of it but “dole bludgers”?? I actually do hard physical work for the pittance I get to pay the rent. Please don’t ask me about “enterprise” or “workplace agreements”. Might have to spew the remains of a cask of Renmano Port over the keyboard .. and THAT will not be pretty.
(still don’t like the colours on this new site and, bugger it, will be forced to buy a bigger monitor. AAArrrgh!)
April 20th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Yeah, it looks better on a bigger monitor, like the one I have at work. But at home…aarrhh.
Anyway who are we to complain, particularly if commenting is easier.
April 20th, 2006 at 11:30 am
I love the colours. Sand and shadows, what’s not to like?
Using Safari on Mac OSX (10.3.9), looks fine to me.
April 20th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Thanks for the comments - all problems have been duly noted by Jon. The pier image is currently cut in half and will work better when fully restored. It looks heaps better when you can see the legs of the pier and the water. (It’s the pier at Henley Beach near Adelaide, btw).
Anyway, keep the suggestions coming and stay tuned for the fixes.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
I suggest you remove the request that users click on your Google ads. That’s strictly forbidden by the AdSense terms and conditions.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
AB, Tim D did ask for our comments and suggestions.
Patrick says: “Ah, semble that Seeker as well is the precipitating type…”
Seeker don’t understand.
April 20th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
Love the “slow down cowboy” line
where did that come from?
April 20th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
‘Might have to spew the remains of a cask of Renmano Port over the keyboard .. and THAT will not be pretty.’
Try the de Bortoli’s Davo - a much better class of chunder. No carrots, guaranteed.
Site looks luvverly Tim, but I’m Bobbish on design, couldn’t really care less, so long as there’s a stink somewhere!
April 20th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Tim,
Trust me, I am an architect so have a little bit of insight about graphic designs. The colors suck. And too much contrast. can we go back to the blue and grey?
April 21st, 2006 at 7:26 am
I actually once a read a few lines from a book (this was long ago, before my intelligence had deteriorated to the point you have all come to know and love me for).
It was on website design, and the gist was that reds yellows and, er, oranges, are vastly more effort to look at than are blues, greens, white, blacks and greys, etc. (literally - something to do with their wavelength - makes us pay more attention to them, but uses more eye muscle to do so!).
So you should use them for things like ‘buy now’ and ‘copyright warning’ but not otherwise.
Just my two cents more
Seeker: I was just referring to the fact that we both ’spoke to soon’ - I had written the same thing, and then saw your comment.
April 21st, 2006 at 8:57 am
Well I’m no architect but I like the colours. It looks different and fresh and I don’t find it hard to read.
According to this:
YELLOW is associated with curiosity, playfulness, cheerfulness, amusement.
BLACK is associated with seriousness, darkness, mystery, secrecy.
Sounds like Tim has all the bases covered!
April 21st, 2006 at 10:12 am
Much as I hate to agree with Patrick…
Apart from the colours I think that the margins on either side are too wide.
BTW are you going to get those avatars (?) that appear on other sites and tend to brighten things up a bit.
April 24th, 2006 at 3:18 am
Gosh, who’d thunk the old pub could scrub up so well.
Yellow and black? So bold darling. So late 70s Peter Saville Buzzcocks meets the Hacienda. And yet I feel so curiously appropriate to the times now, n’est ce pas cherie?
The jury’s still out about serif vs sans serif as a standard blog typeface but the 1.5 para spacing does make for an easier read.
By the way, where’s the frickin’ loo?