I had some free time Friday and Sunday evenings to work out some of the annoyances in my blog (the list is quite long, I’m saddened to say. I’ve cleaned up the stylesheets so the comments don’t look so much like content). Digging into the arcane nuances of style sheets has been very time consuming. I think I’m doing what a lot of people do: find a cool web site, dissect it, look up the particular elements, and paste them into mine. I’ve learned quite a bit. For example, the content boxes for the google ad and search box are floating elements.


I also found some cool plugins and some interesting information at Adam Kalsey’s site. (FWIW, Adam, David Raynes, Kevin Shay and Brad Choate have dozens of nifty Movable Type add-ons. You should check ‘em out.)




While playing with Adam’s “related entries” plugin, I noticed there was a MTKeywords field in the database and a couple of references to a place where one could imput these, but I couldn’t find where this is done. There’s an option in the Movable Type UI in the entry edit screen, where you have to select “Customize the display of this page” and tick off the individual fields you want. I had previously selected the “Advanced” box, but apparently it doesn’t include this field.



Some of the more interesting things on my “to do” list include:


  • voting — I’d like some idea whether an entry goes over like a lead zeppelin, or if people like it. (Yes, I’m one of those quirky bloggers who enjoys getting comments and reads every one.)

  • pulling out links — I’ve seen some folks automatically pulling out the list of links to other sites. This would be a nice feature because some of the more interesting ones may be too subtle.

  • what I’m reading now — I have a little blurb on the top right corner of my home page that has my current list of books, but it’s very manual and only shows what I’m reading whenever someone views it. I want to be more organized, like my friend Kristin, and keep track of books over time.

  • Rides database — the Northwest Cycling Events page is currently an Excel spreadsheet that I export into an html document (sans the annoying Excel stylesheet) and pdf format. It’s too late for this year, but next year it will be database-driven. Furthermore, I’ll provide a simple interface for people to query for rides based on various interesting parameters and ride organizations will be able to add/edit their own events. As an extra special bonus, there will be event ratings.




Version 3.1 is supposed to be due out any day now, so I’m not going to do any serious hacking until it’s installed.