On HOld

So, I've been away, playing with the format, adding features to the site, and getting distracted easily. I'm doing what I can to get the home page going, and as prominent as possible, which is taking considerable time. Who knew that Google (etc...) needed so much work behind the scenes? To my knowledge, other than the pages that haven't been updated (I'm going through each pages HTML and cleaning them up, making sure there are no problems) everything looks good. It's really a matter of getting people to visit. So, if you got to this blog through some other method than my website, I suggest you check it out (here is the link, Science Revolution ).

Happy New Year

Ok, so I realize that I haven't been posting much since the new year began. Some of that comes from me just not making a lot of progress with the website, really. I have been adding content (not just reformatting it!) to a page, and its become a time-consuming project. It isn't overly hard or anything, I just get easily distracted. it'll look good when I am finished with it, though, and it should be up within the next few days.

Another reason is that I have a new job (YAY!) This means that I have been spending my days at work and not editing when the boys are asleep. I also take time out to feed my addiction of Warcraft.

Updates are coming, though, so keep your eyes open.

Keep on Sloggin'

Ok, so I think I've added all of the major new features to the site, so now I can keep on cleaning up the formatting of the pages given the switch to more accessibility. I have completed all pages through the ones starting with 'h,' although I may go through and color code my dictionary pages. I have done a test of what it would look like, and it does look neat. If I do it, though, it'll probably have to wait until after all of the formatting is finished; I think that needs to take priority. The good news for me is that now I have a job, which means I can spend a bit more time on the website, since I don't need to look for work. I really hope this turns out well, as this has been a lot of hard work. I look forward to the day when my site is getting thousands of hits a day rather than hundreds a week, hehe.

From Strict to Transitional

So, one of the major things I am trying to do with my site is make it accessible according to the standards of the W3C, as mentioned before. I had been trying to get all of the coding to follow their strict XHTML standards, but I found that with the new CGI search code, I had to switch everything to transitional XHTML standards. This means that it contains elements of both the old standards, and the new. What it means for my site, is that for one tiny little art of the search feature, I had to go from strict to transitional (strict doesn't allow a target window to be opened as part of the form tabs).

Does this change anything for the viewer of the site itself? Nope, you probably wouldn't even notice it if I hadn't mentioned anything. It wasn't even much work, thanks to the features of the web page editor I use (thanks Dreamweaver!!!) Since all my pages are based on templates I have designed, all I had to do was update the template and save it. Dreamweaver automatically saves all of the pages that use the changed template, so from there, all I have to do is upload the new pages. This process is done through FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Its a program that takes files from one place, and transfers it to another place. Pretty amazing program, but apparently simple.

I also came up with the idea of color-coding words on the dictionary pages I have on the site. For definitions that belong to a certain subject, they will have that color background. For example, my geology pages are orange, so all geology definitions would have an orange background. I figure this might be visually appealing and helpful for people just looking for words under a certain subject.

More New Features

So, I've added yet another main feature to my website. It's a discussion forum, and its pretty darn nifty. It's another feature offered by my webhosts, and I'm excited to have it. After all, a core element to science is discussion.

Yesterday was hectic, as I was trying to implement more features offered by my webhost. The have things called content management software, and I thought it would be useful to have. I have on already, its the basis of the wiki I've already added, so I figured maybe there would something else I could use. Turns out they were difficult to set up (impossible, maybe since I never did) but in hindsight, I think they were overkill anyway. Looking over the sites the programs are featured on, they really didn't seem much different than youre basic blog. They also offered templates and layouts to create websites fast, but I already have all of that, so it didn't seem necessary to have them.

New Stuff

So, in keeping with the updating of my website .:Science Revolution:. I have added some new features. The first is that there is going to be a cgi-generated search engine, as provided by the webhosts. The difference between it and the search engine now is that this one doesn't appear to have any limits. The one I am using now, which is great, has a page cap limit which will easily be surpassed with the content of my website.

The other big feature is that pages will have a wiki alternate, where visitors can add content (to be approved and updated by yours truly in the future) and make comments about what is there currently. I feel that this might help me to generate content at a much faster rate than I am currently. Also, it makes me feel that there is some sort of objectivity and validity to the site, since the information will (hopefully) no longer be sole source. I don't make the claim of being an authority on any of the content I have on my website, and would hope that people challenge my information, and often.

Both of these features are made possible by my webhost Advanced Network Hosts (also known as Chicago Web Hosting ) They have an extensive amount of things for websites, including the tools I am currently adding. I only wish I knew how to use some of the other things they offer!
If you want to see my new wiki, check it out at PhpWiki. Feel free to add content, and make sure to leave some record of being there.

Let's see how this goes...

So, I've decided to add a blog for my website .:Science Revolution:. . The idea behind making a blog is so I can keep people posted about the progress of my update. As some people might already know, I am updating my site to be completely accessible following the rules set up by the World Wide Web Consortium (a.k.a. W3C ). Because of this, and other distractions (my sons Elliott and Simon, and what I affectionately call World of Warcrack, which, as the name implies, is horrendously addictive.) At the moment on the website, I have updated through my files starting with 'f,' including all of the chemistry pages. Minor adjustments need to be made with some of the page formatting (some of them have an inexplicable gap when viewed in IE, but not in Firefox).