Coma Dan, a Beginner Blogger's Blog

Adding a T-Shirt Store to Your Blog

2008-03-28T18:11:00.001-07:00

I just found about about spread shirt. You can make your own t-shirt shop on the site and sell t-shirts to people, and you can set a commission to charge so that you can earn money on each shirt. The prices aren't bad. The site is a little slow, but how cool. It's really easy to put your spread shirt store on your blog or website too. Just cut and paste some html code. You can check out my science quips t-shirt store here.

Too Many Blogs, Too Little Time

2008-03-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've got too many blog projects going, and not enough time. Between work, studying for the GRE's, managing websites, etc, I find that I am not posting as much as I'd like on my blogs. Too many blogs and other projects, too little time.

Finding and Using a CMS - The Best Content Management System

2008-03-24T04:21:00.001-07:00

There's no such thing as the best or perfect Content Management System.

I've designed/written a few websites and webpages, they were all entirely written by hand, hand-written html and php and javascript. No dreamweaver, no CMS (Content Management System), just a plain text editor.

Needless to say, although you get direct control in a hand-written website, the downside is that it can be time consuming, difficult and annoying to update information, and not elegant. Handwriting websites is so 90's.

So I decided to start checking out the CMS world. The problems is, if you are a noob to CMS like me, there are over a hundred of them out there. Technically Blogger is a specialized CMS system in itself. There are so many CMS systems, that it is really hard to pick the one you want to use.

Now if you do a search for the best CMS system, you'll find that no one has a short list of the best CMS systems. The canned answer is "There is no single best CMS. Each CMS is different, and the best one for you depends on your particular needs." Great. No help there.

Finding a CMS right for you is difficult. I installed about 10 different CMS's based on what was the most popular and what seemed best suited to the website I was working on: The People's Climate Pact. After testing them all out, and reading countless reviews on the internet, I went with Textpattern. I highly recommend it if you are a PHP programmer and are building a small to medium-sized website that you want to make easy to update and add to for non-technical people. Textpattern is built on PHP and MySQL, and uses Textile, a very easy to use markup language. There is a bit of a learning curve, as the documentation is spotty and spread out, so that is a disadvantage. But with some hard work and reading, you'll figure out the ropes (it took me about a weekend, although I'm still learning), and trust me, you'll love it. Textpattern is elegant, easy to create plugins for, easy to add code snippets to, and has an easy interface. I highly recommend it.

Safari 3.1 Review: Works with Blogger. Finally!

2008-03-24T04:15:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like the new Safari 3.1 release works with Blogger. Finally! The WYSIWYG editor seems to work just fine, which was the major crashing point before. I'm running Safari 3.1 on my Powerbook G4 12 inch on Mac OS X Tiger. I love Safari, but mainly because of it's clean apple interface and because it's generally the fastest browser on my computer. Although I think Camino and the new Firefox 3 beta are very close seconds.

Firefox 3 Beta Review: Works Great with Blogger and Powerbook G4 Mac OS X

2008-03-24T04:06:00.000-07:00

So I'm constantly on the lookout for a better browser to use on my 12 inch 1 GHz Powerbook G4. I currently have 3 main browsers that I use on my dated but useful powerbook:

Safari 3.1
Camino
Firefox 3 Beta

I will be posting updated reviews of all three of these. I have to say, that I love the Firefox 3 Beta. There is a cool new zoom that actually intelligently resizes not just text, but images, and layouts! That means that when you increase or decrease the size of a web page, the webpage still looks good. This is unbelievably useful, especially on my dinky 12 inch monitor. All of a sudden, I can watch a video (which I am doing now) while browsing the web without having horizontal scroll bars stunt my surfing style. I love it. Go Firefox! It's my new favorite browser for my 12 inch Powerbook, and it works great with Blogger too!

Camino is the Best Mac OS X Browser for Blogger

2008-03-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

So I've been using Camino with Blogger for the past week or so, and it just works. Flawlessly. So if you went through problems with a buggy experience with Safari or a slow experience with Firefox and Blogger, I highly recommend Camino. It solved all my issues.

More Blogs Unlocked by Blogger

2008-03-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

So a few days ago, I complained that several of my blogs were locked by blogger. Well, all but one were unlocked. I don't know why the last one wasn't unlocked. Go figure. Hopefully it will be unlocked soon.

Alternative Web Browser for Safari on Blogger

2008-03-11T22:02:00.000-07:00

I finally found a browser that seems to work seamlessly and fast on my Powerbook G4. Camino! It's fast and works with blogger. It's my new blogging browser of choice. Finally a browser for my mac that is fast and works with blogger.

Uploading Blogger Images Takes a Long Time

2008-03-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

Have you ever tried uploading an image to Blogger? It takes forever! I am trying right now to upload an image to my blog where I put up a (crappy) drawing each day, Dan's Daily Doodle, and it crawls along at a snails pace. The file is only around 300K, less than a third of a megabyte, but the upload takes forever, it's been 30 minutes already, so I give up. For those who don't know their bytes, that's pretty small.

Maybe it's just my ISP, but I suspect that blogger is just slow with image uploads. A faster, but more cumbersome solution may be to put up the drawing somewhere else first, than put insert the image as html...

One Blog Unlocked by Blogger

2008-03-10T19:00:00.001-07:00

So a while back, I blogged that my blog was locked by blogger. It was unlocked today. I had filled out the form that was emailed to me with the recaptcha image. Of course more of my blogs were locked today as well. And those were empty too. So no spam. No comments spam.

So I took one step forward and many steps backward. I filled out the captcha image form, so hopefully, it will take a short while to unlock the blog. The blog that was unlocked today was locked 4 days ago on March 4th, so it took 4 days to unlock, including two weekend days.

I think blogger has some definite work to do with their "intelligent" spam bot. Locking an empty blog is pretty dumb.

Multiple Empty, Blank Blogs Locked on Blogger

2008-03-10T18:38:00.000-07:00

So I went a little blogger crazy the last few days and registered more than a handful of blogspot names on blogger. Most of the blogs are empty, and are awaiting content. Well, Blogger's spam-detection bot just locked many of the blogs I registered, identifying them as spam. Except they are empty ... completely blank! What gives?

I know blogger (more likely Google) has to work to avoid spamming blogs. I've actually found a few spam blogs just from doing some searches on google's blogsearch, nobody wants to see the internet filled with spam, especially not Google, since it makes it hard for their search algorithms. But it seems like empty blogs that were recently started should not set off any flags. There's no SPAM, they are empty!

I wasn't going to post onto the locked blogs for a while, so it's not a huge inconvenience, but it's definitely annoying.

Safari and Blogger don't get along

2008-03-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

So, I've decided that Safari and Blogger just don't like to play well together on my Powerbook G4. Safari will "unexpectedly quit" way too often when using Blogger. Well it's not unexpected for me, it's happened about 15 times in the last two days.

Apparently the WYSIWYG editing features are not compatible with Safari yet (see help article), and it looks like it might not be for a long while.

For the most part, that's okay with me, since I use the html editing panel mostly, but it's annoying. On the other hand, overall Blogger appears to be slow when I'm using Safari. Of course Firefox running on my Powerbook G4 is a CPU blackhole, and terribly slow. On a window's machine, even an old one, Firefox is nice and zippy and has no problem running.

Am I stuck with a crappy blogger experience on my powebook g4?

Blogger and Wordpress Early Comparison

2008-03-09T01:13:00.001-08:00

My three blog's right now are on blogger. I don't have a lot of complaints. It works, and the interface is clean and intuitive. There are bugs though. The compose tool does weird unexpected things with formatting, so I only use the pure html box. And Safari on my powerbook seems to hate blogger, so I have to use Firefox.

I've been toying with wordpress.com as well. I haven't put any blogs up yet, but it looks easy to use. It has a slightly steeper learning curve than Blogger, but Wordpress looks easier to customize. But on the other hand, you can do more advanced customization with Blogger. And it is more speedy.

Here's a dated but detailed comparison http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2005/09/27/bloggercom-vs-wordpresscom/

I'll update soon with more impressions.

wordpress bug, multiple/duplicate blog on dashboard

2008-03-09T01:12:00.000-08:00

So I registered a new blog at wordpress.com today. In case you don't know, they're one of the bigger competitors to Google's blogger. Well, there was a bug, the blog showed up twice on my dashboard (list of blogs). I tried a couple of things to get rid of the multiple listing: transferring ownership, removing the blog, etc.; but nothing really worked. It looks like I'll have to contact their support about this one. They have an interesting support model. They have a support link on their website that only gives you contact info if it is in during business hours. It's an interesting way of offering support.

Having worked on hobby swap I know how tricky it can be to come up with a customer service solution that works. It's an interesting way of taking control of how much time you spend with customer service.

I guess I'll just have to wait until Monday morning to see if the folks over at Wordpress.com can fix my account.

Using WordPress.org CMS

2008-03-09T01:11:00.000-08:00

I have been playing with lots of different CMS's (Content Management Systems) and blogging software. There are an overwhelming number out there.

If you are new to blogging and using CMS, like I was two days ago, it can be totally overwhelming. That's okay. I've been there. It's like being a kid in a candy store. There are tons of cool things, but it's hard to pick one thing that is exactly what you want.

I've actually been playing around a lot with wordpress lately. They give out free blogs on their wordpress.com site, and also they have a piece of software you can run on your web server on their wordpress.org site.

Wordpress software is really easy to install on your personal website. All you have to do is download their software, put it where you want your site to be, change some read/write/execute permissions, and voila you are done. And there are tons of cool plugins that are very useful. One called E-Commerce makes it exceedingly easy to sell things on your site. It's amazing how easy it is (with some tech savvy and know-how) to quickly setup an online store.

Overall, wordpress is very cool and easy to use. I like blogger, but I'm definitely going to give wordpress a trial to see if I don't want to use it for some new websites I am working on.

Blogging is Addictive

2008-03-09T01:10:00.004-08:00

I must admit it. Blogging is addictive. Even though no one is reading my blog yet, it is a lot of fun to write in this blog. Or I should say blogs. I set up two others. Maybe it is just that writing is addictive. Or maybe this is just another way for the internet to suck away my time.

Google Analytics on Blogger

2008-03-09T01:10:00.001-08:00

Well, I looked around for a way to add stats to my blogs, and it turns out that there isn't one built into blogger. So you have to use a third party tool. I decided to use Google Analytics to both this blog and my science fiction blog. That way I can see if my sites are being visited. So if you are reading this... Big Brother is Watching.

Using Google Analytics is easy and takes about 5-10 minutes to do:

Go to http://www.google.com/analytics and sign up.
Put in your blog url and click continue
Add in your contact information (everything but country is optional). Then agree to the terms.
Choose the "Legacy Tracking Code" or the "New Tracking Code."

The "New Tracking Code" gives you access to new features that become available. You should probably decide on picking one or the other here, I don't really see any drawback to the new code, so I chose that one.
Add the javascript code to your blog.

If you're using Blogger, go to your Layout > Page Elements, and add a page element. Choose a HTML/javascript element.

Paste your Google Analytics javascript code into the content box. You can leave the title blank. Save the changes, and you're done! You've added Google Analytics to your site.

Don't add the code in more than one spot, as that will screw up your stats.

You can add Google Analytics to more than one site, so it's pretty useful, if you have more than one blog/site like me.

Empty Blog Locked

2008-03-09T01:09:00.000-08:00

So my blog was locked down by Blogger today. Not this one, another. I confess that I got blog greedy after my first blog yesterday, registering quite a few new blog addresses. I know I'm not the only one that has done this, because a lot of the blog names I wanted to try were taken, and the blogs were completely blank.

So I have no idea why my blog was locked. The message I got said

Dear Blogger user,

This is a message from the Blogger team.

Your blog, at http://xxxxx.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog. For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog. To request a review, please fill out the form found here: http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=xxxxx

It is not against the terms to register multiple blogs. The blog is completely nakedly empty. I haven't blogged a single post! Go figure. Now I can't put up new postings, change settings, delete the blog, or anything. I have to wait for the blogger staff to review the blog (should be easy, since it's empty) to make sure that I am not spam robot. Oh well, I wasn't going to get around to get that started for a while, but it still drives me a little neurotic. Anyone else had this problem?

I did some searches on how long it takes to get blog unlocked, and have heard anything from 4 days to weeks. So it could be a while. If you've ever had this happen to you, talk about frustrating.

First Beginner Blog

2008-03-09T01:07:00.001-08:00

This is my first blog posting here on my first personal blog. I concurrently made my first posting on a really geeky blog on a subject near and dear to my heart: science fiction. You can visit the site at scifiaddict.blogspot.com. I am totally new to blogging and am still figuring out how it works, but I love the idea, so I'm jumping on the blogging bandwagon.