So I’m setting up a new site for Crescent Lake Bible Camp where they want to upload sermons. I’m installing WordPress to provide an easy to use structure for uploading and organizing the sermon mp3 files. I’m testing to see if it works on my own WordPress installation. Here is a recording of a Podcast that I made for the Youth Ministry.
What would it look like if a person attempted to take a snapshot photo of someone’s life. Of course, many formal roles and accomplishments would surface. These are the items that appear on a resume, certificate of appreciation, or during a job promotion. Other meaningful items that contribute to the character of a person often go unnoticed.
So, here are some of those hidden yet meaningful things I’m proud of but didn’t get credit for doing.
I figured out how to embed video into my blogs but I haven’t tried audio yet. I’m going to give it a try here.
Grant Schneider’s Missions Presentation
I’m working on “tableless” layout using CSS. That’s Cascading Style Sheets for my web challenged friends – and mom. I’ve designed all my web sites using table up to this point so it’s time to learn the better way.
The point is that the HTML page contain all the content with few images and formatting while the CSS file get all the design and layout. This makes life easier in many ways. First of all, it makes it easier to code content into the HTML file. I won’t have to scan through layers of layout code to find the sentence that I want to edit. Secondly, it’s easier on the web browser and search engine. The page will run cleaner on the computer system, display faster in the browser, and rank higher with search engines.
Crescent Lake Bible Camp has graciously agreed to have me redesign their current web site for a new one.
This is great for me and them. They get a sparkling new web site and I get to learn some new tricks. It’s been fun going at it.
By the way, the link to the new site will change as I design and develop. You never know at what stage you will be viewing the site. Even worse is that I will eventually break the link to the next site. Enjoy while you may.
Sitemaps are a nice way to help search engine spiders recognize and crawl your web site. The Google sitemap generator did not work very well so I went to XMLEcho to generate my site map. It’s so easy. Finally, something that’s easy. Yes!
I spent my free time today planning a web site for Crescent Lake Bible Camp. Heather was a big help and we really enjoyed working together – as usual. I realized that Adobe GoLive sucks and that I am more comfortable hand coding my web pages than using a WYSIWYG program. So, I cracked open my JavaScript for the World Wide Web book and reviewed my rollover programming.
As a practice, I removed all the GoLive code and reprogrammed my buttons to a nice snazzy look.
Enjoy.
I’m done redesigning my blog for a while. It’s been fun but I really don’t know CSS and PHP well enough to redesign my blog into a static page. My goal was to build Crescent Lake Bible Camp‘s web site from WordPress. However, it’s just not worth the time investment when I can design their site using simple HTML and CSS. It will be static but at least it will be a well designed site.
I’m trying new things. I’ve been frustrated with my Outlook calendar not syncing properly on two computers with my PDA as the intermediary. Somehow appointments were getting duplicated or put on the wrong day (mostly birthdays and reaccuring appts). Clearly it is wise to have only one calendar. I wanted to put a calendar on my web site so I can make changes anywhere I had internet access. This is where Google rules.
I’ve set up a Google calendar, a task plug-in, and have signed up for GMail. That pretty much wipes out Microsoft Outlook.
The only thing I’ve not done is import my address book into Google. But, I think it’s time to rid myself of the old address book with contacts gone by to never be seen again. I have over 500 contact but only need a fraction of them. So, no importing of the address book. I’m starting over.
Boy Prodigy does it once again – I’m referring to Isaac Bowen, of course. Isaac is the teen who originally programmed the church web site and the boy whom I’m so diligently trying to match in web design skills. As of yet, Isaac is way further ahead than me.
I’ve been struggling with embedding streaming flash video to my web site. You Tube has upload limits and I just did not want to pay for a third party service. So, Isaac informed me that Google did not have said limits. Nice. Here’s Isaac’s recommendation at work with my first test of Google’s video services;
My web site got zapped by a virus. My father in law found it – or should I say that it found him. Fortunately, his anti-virus caught it before it infected his computer. Appearantly, one of my PHP programs had a vulnerability and this virus was running wild all over the web host servers. My Norton did not catch it when I viewed the site but maybe the virus did not “attack” me. I’m not entirely sure because my Norton subscription just elapsed a week ago. Yet, this virus is several years old so my scan should have caught it if it were present. We shall see. I stopped by Office Max and picked up a copy of McAffee antivirus.
I called my web host and they found the virus on the server, deleted it, backed up my files, and created a new root directory. This caused all sorts of problems as the inforation was older and I still needed to upgrade to the most secure versions of my gallery and blogs. Needless to say but I learned a lot in the process. I have to learn how to do my own backups next. My web host has lots of automated tools but I have yet to learn them.
