Sunday, January 20, 2008

Food Blog S'cool Template

I decided to give FBS an official new-style blogger template.
A few good things have come out of this:
1) The list of members has replaced the member blog links. This means I don't have to update links by hand and that the list will always be current and actually only include people who did actual sign up (the previous links included people who asked to be signed up but never actually got around to completing the sign up process which was difficult for me to track).
2) I can add blogger widgets like the poll I am currently testing out.
3) Adding labels should work properly now - so please add relevant labels whenever you post.
4) The Google Search is working properly now it would seem - so no need for me to archive past posts into a library.

On the downside:
1) I can't get the recent comments widget to work. I'll keep trying.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts/opinions/comments/etc regarding these changes, bearing in mind FBS is something I would prefer mainly looks after itself rather than needs a great deal of babysitting from me.


This Post was written by Sam from Becks and Posh

24 comments:

Kalyn Denny said...

I'm all in favor of setting it up so you don't have to do a lot of manual updating. I have no idea how you ever could have kept up with it. Great idea.

Anonymous said...

looks awesome!

Anonymous said...

Looks good! :D

Barbara said...

Great job, it looks good Sam.

Elise said...

Hi Sam,

Let me preface this by saying that I greatly appreciate everything you've done to build and nurture the Food Blog S'cool community. This site has been extraordinarily useful over the years and a great way for the community to exchange ideas.
My main feedback on the new design is this:

1. Hard to read. The easiest text on over 40 eyes like mine is black on a white background. I find black on a medium green background is not enough contrast and it strains my eyes to read.

2. I miss the navigation elements that allowed us to see all of the posts of a certain label. Now if I wanted to see all of the copyright posts I would have to pretty much guess the URL. The Google search is okay, but I prefer also having some sort of category navigation.

3. It would be helpful if the list of contributors was in some semblance of alphabetical order.

Best,

Elise

Elizabeth said...

It's very green, isn't it? Like Elise, I would prefer a much lighter background with dark text.

I'd also like to see the contributors listed alphabetically. Is that possible?

But otherwise, well done, Sam! Especially that you no longer have to do manual updating.

Rachael Narins said...

Sam,

Allow ME to preface this by declaring you are one chic and fab lady with a discerning eye and a flair for style...

But lordy, lordy, that green could send a girl to the blind institute!

Mwoah,
Rachael

Sam said...

ok - i can change the colour no problem.

as for the other things - I don't think I can. If someone else has he tme to work it out let me know.

I can actually add the old library back in and intend to, BUT it was a huge job that had already taken me hours and hours of hand editing (and I mean DAYS) and it was never finished. So in future I would love to ecourage all team members to add labels to new posts so that I don't have to on my lonesome manage the whole library by myself.

This change over already took about 4 hours of my weekend, I can only do a little bit at a time.

I will try to make improvements as I go. A little bit here and there.

Sam said...

I checked and it seems the list is kind of alphabetical to the email address of the member which is not necessarily the same as their user name. Unfortunately I do not see any way of changing this. Also some members do not have a blogger profile set up correctly, but that is down to the individual to do, not me.

If anyone wants to make up a list of member urls then please let me know and i will be happy to publish it here.

Kevin said...

Sam,
I thought I posted a note on this but don't see it. The site is now one of those that won't let you back up (the Back button doesn't work) and I hate that. Anything you can do?

Sam said...

kevin - you commented in the previous post and i responded with a request for mre info

Elise said...

Ah, much better with the white background for the main column, thanks Sam!

Happy eyes here.

Kalyn Denny said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elizabeth said...

Thank you, Sam! I'm so glad to see the white background.

-Elizabeth

Elizabeth said...

I'm staring at this "help" page on widgets to see if there is a clue to how to get the contributors' list to be alphabetical by name. But I don't see anything really useful there.

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=47270

Sam, can you post the coding you use on the page? Whatever goes after:

<div class='widget Profile' id='Profile1'>

(To display < and >, please type &lt; and &gt;)

-Elizabeth

Kalyn Denny said...

I like the white background!

I deleted that other comment because before when I was home (with Firefox) I didn't have a back button and at school (with IE) there was a back button. But now I am home *and* I do have the back button, so there goes that theory.

Sam said...

which back button do we talk of please can someone explain to me?

Sam said...

ejm i will post it later or can make you a FBS admin
THANKS

Kalyn Denny said...

Kevin is talking about the back button in the upper left corner that takes you back a page. Sometimes it's grayed out and doesn't work. Fine for me now but when you first made the change to the new template it wasn't working for me, ever. Fine now for me, but don't know about Kevin.

Sam said...

ok - i have never seen this arrow nor can i see it now. i have nvever seen it or used it on any blog?

Kalyn Denny said...

I'm doing a terrible job of explaining this. It's not on the blog, it's the arrow on your browser that takes you back. For some reason when you first changed the template it wouldn't take you back. I would forget about it unless you hear from Kevin again because it works for me now just fine.

Elizabeth said...

Whichever you want to do, Sam. I don't know for sure that I would even know how to fix it. I'm just guessing that I might be able to see how to fix it if I see the coding.

-Elizabeth

Parisbreakfasts said...

Only about a month late...ahem
Very many lovely changes
BRAVO! Sam and THANK YOU!!!
One little suggestion..
You might consider making the comments a "pop up" box so one can refer back easily to the post.
It takes seconds in Settings.
Anyway thanks so much for all your work.
Much appreciated :)

Anonymous said...

http://scarpe-hogan.webs.com/apps/blog/
http://hogan0scarpe.webs.com/apps/blog/
http://nicehogan.webs.com/apps/blog/
http://thebesthogan.webs.com/apps/blog/
http://sharehoganshoes.webs.com/apps/blog/