Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Blog

Blogger beta has arrived at Lone Prairie.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

Late on Thursday night I finally my official invite to switch over to Blogger Beta. First and foremost, I backed up all my blogs. I'd read of a few of the snags some bloggers went through and I didn't want to have quite that much headache.

Amazingly, it went smoothly. No problems whatsoever. Beta has some nice features and I'm kind of glad I'm among the last to get the invite so I didn't have to suffer through the early setbacks. I've been looking forward to the switch and as of yet, I can't see any reason to regret the move. I'm liking Blogger Beta.

So, what's new to you, reader?

My archives are now in a drop-down list instead of a monstrously growing list. That has nothing to do with Beta, but it's new.

Mainly, this blog has post organization no longer limited to the random and somewhat meaningless method of chronology, but by labels (topics, I'm calling them). No longer is it necessary to rely on the search page.

The "topics" list to the left. Check it out.

Every single post has been categorized and let me tell you, going back over all of my posts and labeling them, most with more than one label, was not fun. But for your benefit, you can simply click on a category and read all the posts I think fell under the category.

I found, as I was going back over my posts, that I should just shut up. I learned a lot by reviewing all my old posts. You can't see the post number count like I can in my Blogger account, but I can summarize it this way: too few posts in the "humor" category, way too many in the "my life" category, and far too many in the "essay" category which, as you might have guessed, is a nice word for posts in which I was a rambling, pontificating blowhard about something I had no business talking about. The "family" category is the one which will keep me out of the Will. The "blogging" category is proof that bloggers are narcissistic and chasing after their own tail. I mean really. "My life." To force it on you. Good grief.

In fact, after this hurried review of posts (during which I deleted some posts which were just stupid), I throw this out to you: what would you like to see me blog on?

I need to raise the standard, to raise the bar, on this blog!

::The rest of this post is a little tech fun for other bloggers, so some of you might find it boring. You are forewarned.::

Regarding the problem with incorporating a label list while using a classic template or a custom one like I do that isn't part of the new set with drag-and-drop features, I found many hacks on the web. Unfortunately, I couldn't understand any of them. Some were complex and seemed to be outlining elaborate ways to make the list automatically generate or something. I have no idea.

What I did to create the "Topics" section to the left of the screen is cheesy little bits of HTML. It's pretty obvious, so I think the hassle everyone was going through was to find a way to make it automatic. This isn't. It's a separate HREF for each label page which blogger creates. Here's the code for those of you who want to do it, in the form of a crude GIF. This is basically only going to be of interest to beginners or those with minimal HTML skills such as myself, and you're not going to necessarily use the H2 tags if your CSS or whatever calls for something better, and you'll want to use your own file structure (Blogger creates the labels folder and files automatically) but you get the idea. It works. If I add a new category, I go into my template and add it as such. I will be rebuilding the art gallery and shopping sections of my site into one whole blog and rely upon the use of these automatically generated pages for categorization.

Labels: blogging

Like this post? Subscribe to the feed. Help support this site. Facebook | Stumble It! | Del.icio.us | DiggIt! | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | Newsvine

Links to this post:

<$BlogBacklinkTitle$>: <$BlogBacklinkSnippet$>
posted by <$BlogBacklinkAuthor$> @ <$BlogBacklinkDateTime$>

Create a Link

2 Comments:

I just did this too, but I have no idea what it means or why I care.

By girlfriday, at 11/12/06 00:24

In that case, think how non-worried and concerned about the whole thing you can be.

For me, mainly, it was the labels. I've been waiting for years for that method of categorization. I've even considered switching to various other blogging platforms just for that.

By Julie, at 11/12/06 01:31

----------------------