blog.chriswelch.com

[This will be the first post following me as I upgrade ChrisWelch.com. What follows will be an overview of the project, and later posts will describe the various steps along the way.]

As I mentioned in my previous article, I wanted to start experimenting with WordPress 1.5, a blogging product. Having built 90% of this site by hand, my needs were quickly outpacing my ability build features to support them. After a fair amount of research, I narrowed my choices down to WordPress and MovableType, both running best on Linux platforms. WordPress seems to be a great mix of flexible customization, robust features, and ease-of-use. Although it only supports one blog per site at the moment, I’m sure multiple blog support is in the works. MovableType, although supporting almost all of the features I wanted, can be pricey for the Basic (US$69.99) and Unlimited (US$99.99) versions, whereas WordPress is free.

After reading up on WordPress, I’ve also decided the whole site needs a bit of a touchup. I’m a little bored with the monochromatic color scheme, so I think I’m going to spice the design up a bit (kick it up a notch, if you will). I’m also going to improve the photo albums, enhance my calendar, improve navigation, et al. And with WordPress, there will be a whole slew of new blog features such as TrackBacks, PingBacks, RSS Feeds, Comment Moderation, Categories, Archives, Posting via E-mail, etc…. It’s all very exciting!

My goal in this redesign is to code as little as possible and just integrate as many features as I can using only the best free or almost free software out there. I want to see if I can build a highly managable site without killing myself, or my wallet.

After choosing blog software, the most important thing a person can do who wants to setup a site for themself is find a competant, reasonably priced hosting company to store your website. I can easily and highly recommend 1&1 hosting. 1&1 is one of the largest hosting companies out there. That means although you may not expect 100% of the personal support you’ll get from a small company, you can expect really good FAQs, great documentation, and better features for the same or less money.

The Business Linux plan that I just signed up for offers for US$10/mn the ability to host up to 150 web sites (100 registered domains/50 subdomains), a virtually unlimited number of e-mail accounts (with 1GB mailboxes each), a 100MB database, etc. Plus they feature either PHP4/PHP5/Perl/MySQL (Linux) or ASP/ASP.NET/SQL/Access (Microsoft).

I was trying to figure out what took me so long to start implementing a real blogging system, and I guess it all comes down to wanting to do it all myself. Now that I’ve suffered the cuts and bruises of DIY, and learning how a blogging system works, I can finally move past myself and start building off of someone else’s work.

Anywho… I was looking at some other WordPress driven sites and I’ll leave you with a few blogs to browse…

• http://9rules.com/
• http://www.chrisjdavis.org/
• http://aphotolog.com/
• http://chrism.us/photos/
• http://phonophunk.phreakin.com/news/

One of the things that constantly frustrates me is my inability to have one place to share my life with those that I care about and those I don’t know. ChrisWelch.com has been a 4-year project to publish a cross-sample of my life to the public, but as I become more mobile and my needs become more sophisticated, I often find myself needing an interactive place where I can not only share but also manage my data such as my calendar, files, and photos.

With this site, which is largely built from scratch by me, I find my time is dwindling as my digital needs increase, leaving me with a deficit of features that I really do want and need. In my perfect life I would be able to have a site that I could manage all the information that I need in my life, so that I can edit and view it no matter where I am in the world. Unlike "briefcases" which are small and can only store a limited amont of files, I advocate that each person be able to pack a "suitcase" for themselves which would store all kinds of data in it.

What would my suitcase contain?

• My Blog(s)
• My Profile
• Projects & Writings
• Shared Files
• Quotes
• Personal Portal
• Links
• Calendar
• Contact Form/Information
• Address Book
• Books on my Bookshelf
• Shared Photos
• My Friends
• My Groups

Between Yahoo!, with it’s My Yahoo! and Calendar, Briefcase, and other integrated features, and ChrisWelch.com, which I’m moving to a new hosting company and installing WordPress as my new blogging software, I’ll be able to integrate "my suitcase" together with a mimimum of hassle. Even at that, my data will be in 2 different places, both on ChrisWelch.com and Yahoo!. In years to come I hope to see companies that offer digital suitcase products and then give users the ability to attach a Web Site to it, which provides visitors a unified way to view a person’s suitcase.

Imagine a company providing their users the ability to publish their blogs, modify their calendars, check their mail, and then share files, and it automatically being published to their very own domain. The possiblity is exciting, especially with the ability to share suitcases among sites with RSS and other XML formats. I’m looking forward to the day when I no longer have to build my own personal suitcase here at this site, and pay a company to do it for me.

Being a long Republican, I arrived at that point in my political life where I found myself struggling to uncover the soul of the Republican party. I needed to find a message that was deeply meaningful to me, a truth that guided my ideology, that I could use as my own young republican mantra.

While talking with friends recently, most serendipitously, I happened upon it – what I think most encapsulates all that is good, righteous and conservative; the most quintessential grain of truth that I feel embodies the Republicans and everything that makes us great. That bit of truth, the zen of the GOP, is found in the simple phrase "Not my problem."

In three words all that is conservative is revealed, exposed in all its glory. Income tax cuts dismantling your social programs? Not my problem – there’s more money in my pocket. Federal disaster area bringing you down? Not my problem – the ocean’s not in my backyard. Pollution and toxic waste killing your kids? Not my problem – my grass is green.

Magnificence. A moment of celerity that will be recorded for the ages. Young republican brethren, hail our new slogan from the roof tops! Unite under a banner of self-righteousness and indignation!

And if you don’t like it? Well, that’s not my problem.

Just spent a bunch of time working on what appeared to be viewstate bugs (i.e. "feature") in ASP.NET 2.0 Beta 2. Here’s what I found: When your page uses a master page, both your master page’s and your page’s EnableViewState setting must be set to True in order for your page to have viewstate. If either is set to false, viewstate will not be enabled.

This means that if you want to disable viewstate on your master page to cut down on page size for your standard elements, but enable viewstate on your page’s content, you’ll have to enable view state on both the page and master page and selectively turn off view state on all the controls in the master page.

Sorry guys, I know I’ve been out of touch for a little while, but there’s a good reason… well, maybe not a good reason. While working as a Web developer at Weichert Lead Network, I had the opportunity to take my Real Estate Licensing Course, which I completed late in July. That means I’m now licensed in NJ (and Connecticut and Alabama) to sell real estate so watch out Probably not useful for me at this point, but it never expires if I keep paying my dues, and it was a great education.

Did you know that when you buy real estate, you’re actually not buying the land, but a bundle of rights that includes the exclusive right to the land? Plus did you know that a person can sell their their mineral and air rights and upon sale your property is actually split into 2 properties? One where your building sits, and another above or below where you sold your rights. I’m sure I’ll be posting more about it, but it was really exciting to really get into the information, although admittedly boring at times.

I highly recommend it if you have $380, and can stand 2 4-hour classes a week for 10 weeks.

As for the blind date, which I know many have expressed interest in, it actually didn’t turn out too bad. We had a nice time, but it was still awfully awkward, and I get very chatty when I’m nervous. In either case, it was a nice way to practice, and a nice evening out.

In another effort to meet people my age, I’ve become a member of the NJ Young Professionals, which is a free group of 21-35+ professionals that sets up 20-30 events a month throughout the great state [sic] of NJ. A great place to meet singles and network with other professionals around the state. I’ve been to one event so far, and would recommend it to any. It’s also great practice for a guy like me who didn’t get the full college experience while at school (read: no parties at RIT).

Anyways, life is good, and hopefully, now that I’ve fixed a number of issues on the site, I’ll be posting a little more frequently.

This is Chris, signing off!

It’s fairly common to come across a link such as Click Here, or Go there now, but as a blogger or Web developer, it is important not to forget the venerable hyperlink to improve the quality of the content you create. Using hyperlinks to allow users to visit related content as they’re reading can make your page much more interesting and potentially build loyalty on your site.

The Hyperlink is Born

There were two original purposes of the hyperlink. The first purpose was to provide navigational hyperlinking within and among related pages in a site. In this function we have seen hyperlinks progress from their "Home | Back | Up | Next" ancestors to sophisticated menu system and primary/secondary navigation bars.

The second purpose was to link together related documents within the content of the page. There are two groups of this kind of linking. The first is relational hyperlinking, which is hyperlinking to content that may also be of interest to the reader. This includes content such as advertising, sponsored links, and other similar documents on other sites. Examples are found on sidebars, related links panels, and at the tops, bottoms and sides of nearly every news article on the web.

While relational hyperlinks serve a very useful purpose, there is another, often forgotten hyperlink, and that is contextual hyperlinking. These links actually allow a reader to get more information about a related topic, as they’re reading! While you see these kinds of links on some sites currently online, they are much more rare, but can be much more valuable.

A Brave New World

Imagine the time during the early Web, in the late 1980′s and the early 1990′s, when it was unheard of to be able to read something and instantly find out more information about it. In traditional research, professors and scientists reviewed studies and theses and had to spend hours locating and reviewing cited works to understand and verify references.

In today’s brave new world of hyperlinking, though, a paper’s author could link the cited works inline, saving the reader hours of research, while providing a new level of access to the casual reader who would otherwise not spend the effort to check out the cited works from the library. In addition, the author could also link to other papers that relate to his for example, take this sentence…

"Despite the early failure of the Apollo Mission, NASA continued the program."

How much more interesting is this sentence if the reader could get more information about the Apollo program, and NASA? Try this sentance instead…

"Despite the early failure of the Apollo Mission, NASA continued the program."

If we take full advantage of the hyperlink’s true power, we will infuse new life into the content of our web pages.

Rules for Contextual Hyperlinking

1. Link the most relevant topics.
2. Link them sparingly.
3. Link the words themselves.
4. Make the words scannable.

Link the most relevant topics

The point is to give users ready access to relevant topics as they read, not bombard them with links to every little topic you can find a link for. It can sometimes be a tough call as to what should and should not be linked. Too often too little is contextually linked, especially on commercial sites that are fearful of visitor attrition.

However, it is also possible to link too much. You don’t need to find a link for every word in every sentence. As an example, when you have a page discussing plant varieties, and you mention a plant by name, it would be appropriate to link to more information about that plant.

If you’re struggling to find relevant links for content in your article, allow me to suggest an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia, the open source, publicly edited web-based encyclopedia, or a government Web site such as the CIA World Fact Book. Using non-biased, public sources can really improve the quality of link, by providing reliable and well-balanced information for the reader.

For a good example of a well linked page see the Wikipedia article on Crew Exploration Vehicles. As the article describes the NASA program, individuals’ names and terms that are important or related to the topic are linked to allow the user to get more information. Additionally, cited works are linked to directly. This allows the curious visitor to rapidly expand his knowledge not only about the topic but also around the topic, or the issues and personalities surrounding the topic.

Link them sparingly

Let me reiterate once again. Please don’t link every third word in your article if you think it could be possibly viewed as relevant by someone, somewhere. The best rule I can give is to put yourself in the user’s chair. If, as a reader, it would be really interesting or useful to link a word or phrase to a related article, then link it! If, on the other hand, you think you’re going a little overboard, then you almost definitely are, so only keep the most relevant links – those that provide the most value. While links are great, too many can be really distracting to the reader.

Link the words themselves

The goal of contextual linking is to provide a link within the context of what the user is reading, so don’t push the link off to the side. If you mention a word or phrase you’d like to provide more information about, don’t be afraid to link it right where it is on the page.

Make the words scannable

Make sure your links stand out, and don’t hide visited links. A link like this is much more noticeable than this. See what I mean? Believe it or not, some sites hide visited links so they blend in with the content on the page, but what if a user wants to visit a link they found on your page? They’d have to read the whole page to find it again. Very annoying for the user, and unnecessary. Tastefully selecting link colors using CSS or your blogging software improves the user experience by letting links stand out without being too distracting.

Conclusion

When you’re writing for the web, whether it be a new blog entry or a new web page, it is important to focus on the user-experience. Linking to related content within the body of your page makes the user’s visit much more interesting by allowing easy access to resources they otherwise may not find. By providing relevant links that carefully chosen and are easy to find, you’ll stand out by giving your users an experience found on too few other sites.

I know I ususally don’t go into romantic stuff on the site, but this is exceptional enough to make note of:

I’m going on my first blind date tonight. A lady from work set me up with her kid’s kindergarten teacher. She’s good looking and sounds interesting on the phone – but she’s bringing her friend along who came into town early. This is going to be a complete disaster Blind date with a girl I’ve never met (by def.) and her friend… I hope the friend isn’t one of her ex’s, at least. That would be rough. I have no idea how to get to know someone I don’t know when her friend is in tow.

Ha! As Steve says, "This is going to be great!"

This is the first lazy weekend I’ve had in a while, and it’s a long weekend to boot! Sorry for the long delay in a post, I’ve been putting off working on some stuff for the site, including improving the operations of this editor, which I have now finally the time to do. I have to say, there seems to be many features I want to add and simply not enough time to add them. I wish I were using a more sophisticated development platform like ASP.NET or JSF, cause PHP’s simplicity (read: no features) makes it a slow language to develop for – and I’m no slouch!

This weekend’s activities include reading, sitting on a blanket in the park, and a movie marathon. I will be looking forward to seeing Star Wars III finally. I’ve heard many good things about it.

Frank is moving to Fairfax, Virginia in a month, which makes good friend #3 to be in the DC area, not to mention the handful of other people I went to college with that live down there now. I feel like I’m being drawn there.

I’ve been working on my first article on this site about Hyperlinking this morning, so I’m sick of writing, I’m off to do some reading

I know I could use one of the available software packages on the web for my blog, but I chose to design it from scratch to meet my own needs and keep me up to speed on PHP and open source technologies, as I usually spend my days with the glorious .NET Framework. Although in some instances I question my judgement on this, it has forced me to think through many of the more unique design scenarios that may one day grace my own blogging software.

In any event, the ability to post comments is now available on my site, and please enjoy. I hope it adds a new dimension of community to this site that many others have enjoyed for some time. Cheers!

Went to see Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keiler at the Town Hall in New York City tonight. One of the coolest things I’ve done since I’ve come down here. Go to their site and check out pictures of this week’s episode if you get a chance.

This week’s guest, one of the world’s great sopranos, and a native of Rochester, NY, Renee Fleming. How often do you get to see a world renouned soprano Hoe Down with someone from Minnesota? Not very, I’d imagine