I have two WordPress Blogs at the present time. I am planning at least a couple more in the near future, but these two are serving for the time being.

WordPress has come out with a major update to the software. It has been available for a few days. I hesitated running the updates for a bit, because I did not know how the update would sit with my few visual changes. There was no problem. It has now occurred to me that there was even less problem than with some smaller updates that I did previously. Those involved changes to the css file so required editing of the css file to get back to my personal normal. With this update I just uploaded my header and footer files and my image folder and there is no visual change to the blogs.

There is a new control panel for the backend of the blogs. This seems to be  quite user friendly. The positions of some of the utility blocks has changed, but all the stuff that I use is there and readily available. I am a relative new user of this software, so I am not set in my ways and the transisition will be no problem.

I do still plan on putting up a couple of blogs. I had been working with a theme that is not yet listed on the WordPress site as being compatible, but I suspect that there will be no problem with it. I think that there has been noone that reported on that particular theme. Time will tell!

My best performing website is Mixing Live Sound. I get steady search engine traffic to this site. The content is a bit limited at the present, but each time that I add an article I see a slight uptick in traffic to the site. This is a niche site for the live sound industry.

I went with my three column format. I moved the articles index to the left nav panel. On the right I put a box for random quick tips at the top with an ad rotator under the tips box. I dressed these boxes with a small border. I also moved most of the biographical information to an expanded ‘about us’ page. I am using different local nav items in the top and bottom nav bars. I have left the old front page on the server for a time. If you want to compare the old page to the new page follow those page links.

I have a goal to update many of the sites during my typically slow season. Of course, the priority for this is to update the better performing sites first, and then trickle down to the lesser sites. I have a notepad file in which I am keeping ideas for sites and improvements to sites. The list keeps getting longer as each idea seems to spawn a few more.

Last evening I went live with the update to The Closet Online, check it out!! The primary feature of the update is the home page with eight boxes with randomly rotating content. The page will look slightly different on each load (hint, when you visit the page hit the refresh button a few times).

I learned something about the clear function in css. The page was falling apart at lower screen resolutions (I am designing on a 19″ 1440X900 screen). I tried inserting a spacer div to keep the page from falling apart at anything below about 1300px and that includes at least 75% of viewers probably. Until I thought to apply ‘clear: both’ to the div in the css I had no success. Since I found this key I have added the spacer div to my starter pages. I had been applying a height value to my content area. That kind of works, but when the screen resolution is reduced past a certain point the content spills off the bottom of the page. I will need to revisit each of those pages probably to correct this problem. I probably can’t craft a ‘find and replace’ for this situation because the content varies from page to page.

In other news, I started a ‘to do’ list a couple of weeks ago with jobs and ideas for the websites. I add things as I think of them and delete completed projects when I finish with one. So far, the list gets longer much quicker than it shrinks. I will have plenty of tasks lined up for this slow season in my regular business. Somebody may even find one of these pages and click on a banner or link and buy something.

I have been working on the new home page for one of my sites. There are eight boxes with randomly changeable content. There is the potential for each of the boxes to change each time that the page is loaded. I have now populated the files for each of the boxes so that none of them come up blank (usually). I will upload a bunch of stuff to the site and do some testing online. Then, if everything works, I will go live with the new page. I will post again with the link as soon as the ‘new’ page is live.

There is now content in five of the eight boxes on the home page (on my local server only). I made a very minor error in one of the text files and that box loaded only intermittently. I looked at the file and say the error immediately. I had added a separator after the last entry. That appears to be something that can confuse the poor script, but I guess that it was really just loading the blank space after the divider. I also had to isolate my label from the script because I had used a few smaller banners and they would push some of the headings out of the way. I had wondered about that. It is all doing what it is designed to do on the local server. It will be interesting to put it up live. I might have done that this evening, but a job came up at the last minute, so once again, work is interfering with my hobby.

This afternoon I have been working on the new home page for The Closet. It is not up where you can see it, yet, but I have made significant progress. I have a layout that works although I may need to go to a fixed width with this one. I need to test a bit further but will probably need the fixed width to keep things from getting stupid.

I have eight content boxes on the home page, one each for seven departments and one for a daily flower. I used some of the flower pictures that I have up on Number One Pictures for the daily flower and put them into one of the auto-rotators so that each time the page loads a random image from my store loads with it. I will be putting banner ads in rotation in the other boxes in random rotation so each time that the page loads it will look slightly different. Maybe the constantly changing look will catch someone’s attention and make it a fun site to visit.

Right now I have to deliver and set up a rental, so the real business is interfering with my fun!

I added a footwear department to The Closet Online this evening. I also got a start on the left column nav box and put some thought into the home page. Right now you land in a banner farm. The page probably takes too long to load because of all the remote images that are called on load. I am thinking of a home page that has dynamic content through the use of the php script that I have been playing with. I am also going to include a flower box on the front page using some of my flower pictures.

All in All it was a fairly good day for a hobby webmaster. I have an experiment in design in mind. I will let you know how it turns out.

I put the ad rotator script into action on the Shopping for Electronics site. If you refresh the page the skyscraper ad on the right should change most times. This is a random ad rotator (from the six ads that I put in the file) so it is possible for the same ad to display a second time. Roll the dice and see what comes up!!

I still have most of the more info pages to do for this site and my navigation trees to grow for all three of these affiliate sites. That is why the space on the left is blank at the present time.

I have seen some visitors to this blog. Thanks for stopping by!! I would be interested in seeing some relative comments.

I tested one of the php rotator scripts on my local server last evening. It does work – and slick. I want to check out a minor mod (name change in two places) to see if I can get two instances of the rotator on one page. I think that it has been done before, so it should be no problem.

This script opens many possiblilities for dynamic content. It will call whatever is in the file path, so it can be used for pictures as well as ads. I am thinking of rotating screen shots on my site index page and doing some dynamic content on other sites as well.

I also got the ‘more info’ pages done on the PC Apps site. Today I will be working on a rebuild of the Shopping for Electronics site and nav for all three of the ‘banner farms’. The ‘more info’ pages are a bit time consuming, but will probably pay off in the long run. Someone clicked on a ‘more info’ page on The Closet site yesterday, probably a representative of one of the sites advertised there.

I can use the basic format that I have produced for these farm sites for a general catalog page. Eventually I will get away from the banner farm concept to something that is more likely to produce results. I am still looking at possibilities in this respect.

Check back for further updates. I would also be interested in your comments on the subject.

I spent several hours yesterday adding content to a couple of the banner farm sites. There is an evolution in the design of the sites as I go along. Adding the evolutionary enhancements will take varying amounts of energy, depending on how far along in the development of the site I was when the design evolved. The PD Application store is currently most nearly in its final form.

I started adding more info pages to the sites, so there is a link to a page for each banner (still in process on The Closet and Shopping for Electronics sites).

I have my first successful three column layout that I am using on these sites. I didn’t check, but I think that it would hang together down to around 640 px resolutions. The left column is a nav box. I am using a php include so that I can easily make adjustments as I go along. The right column is a featured product skyscraper banner space. The center column is the content area. The banners have a more info link on the right.

My nav boxes are still basically empty. I have to get the site navigation together. I will group these by catagory and provide an alphabetical list at the bottom. I guess I will not have time for mischief tonight.

I found a php ad rotator last evening. Eventually I will replace the banner farm home pages with something a bit more interesting. I will probably still do a banner farm on the catagory title pages. It is all a work in progress. I will need to update my starter folder when designs are finalized.