Seeing the Light

Just a quick note to say thanks to everybody for a) visiting, b) reading, c) being patient will my teething pains on the new site, and d) for all the suggestions. We're on pace to log 75,000 hits for the week by this evening, and I've gotten a lot of very nice emails and comments and a lot of great advice.

I think I'm going to stick with TypePad for now, but I'll be starting a beta site in WordPress when I have time, to find out more about it.

I'll keep posts on the blog about new material elsewhere on the site to a minimum. I'll group several uploads in one posting, and provide links.

For those of you who would prefer just reading the blog, that should work fine. It will go on just as before. The added features are mainly archives of my other writings—and it just wouldn't be feasible to upload even a small percentage of that material as blog posts. I've written more than 250 columns for various publications over the years, for instance. Just a "greatest hits" selection would, um, clog the blog.

For some reason the individual page URLs such as permalinks are not always propagating in the address bars of peoples' browsers. I don't know why this is, but I've posted the whole URL for the direct link to the Weblog page on the Welcome Page. You can use that for your bookmarks if you'd like to open the site directly to the blog.

I'm always open to your comments and suggestions. I learn more from you than you learn from me. Thanks again for helping to make this launch a successful one.

___________

Mike

Comments

[John]

Glad you're here Mike!

[chris]

For a few days, I did not know your blogs were being updated. I then took a moment to actually get familiar with the layout.

Anyway instead of bookmarking your home page, I bookmarked: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

simply because i like to read your blog first.

[Michael Seltzer]

Hello Mike,

A quick comment on notices of new material in the resources.... Putting the notices in the blog doesn't bother me much--I can blip over them pretty quickly. I am a bit of a neat freak, so clutter is something I abhor (and so create massive amounts of), but if that's the easiest way, by all means do it. (The ROI on trying to develop another method might not be worth it.)

One thought I did have, and don't know if this is feasible or even possible on the new system you're using, is to put the notice in the resource link. So, for instance, the COLUMNS & ESSAYS link would have written right below the heading something like, June 7, 2007: _The Colors of Black & White_ (in much smaller type than the resource heading). Only the latest posting would appear, but it would allows us to scan down the Resource links and see what's new. Of course, the resource page has a table of contents at the beginning, which also allows us to see in greater detail what's there, what's new, etc. And if you wanted, this might be prettified, a line or something added to give a visual separation between the resource heading and the latest posting information (we are visual animals, at least those of us visiting your blog).

Anyway, just a thought, and maybe not a good one under the circumstances. It's a great site, and a valuable service, and any way you choose to handle the notices isn't going to change that..

Michael Seltzer

[Annedi]

When things calm down some, rework your colour scheme just a bit, please, to make it easier on the eyes.
These orange sidebars are just a tad glaring and scream 'ad revenue'.
I much prefer the browns & beiges of Ye Olde Site.

I was so relieved to find that The Online Photographer was not going away because you had fallen under a bus or something !!

[Mike]

Michael,
David Emerick had the same idea, but unfortunately it's not feasible. TypePad sets up the sidebar information in "Lists," which is why you see titles above each kind of ad (which I would not otherwise have). It's not too slow to change the contents of the list, but unfortunately I have no convenient way to change the ORDER, short of tearing the list down and building it up again, which would make it really ponderous to make an update listing under the subject tabs.

Mind you, there might be a way to do this in TypePad--I'm sure a real whiz could get into the HTML template and write a little program to do it automatically--but I'm about five levels beneath whiz.

Mike

[Mike]

Annedi,
Orange? They're supposed to be a pale yellow.

Hmm, perhaps the unhappy result of using web-unsafe colors....

Mike

[Mark Levison]

Well I don't know what you did but things are marginally improved. The browser now displays:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2007/06/seeing_the_ligh.html
when viewing this page. Thats an improvement--but it still ties you in to typepad.

Have you turned domain mapping on? Then your users should see: theonlinephotographer.com vs. the current: theonlinephotographer.typepad.com

Also, have you considered using feedburner? This would help migrate subscribers should wordpress or some other tool better suit your needs.

For examples of how all this works, visit my blog http://www.notesfromatooluser.com and you will find that you never see typepad in the browser bar (or the feed).

[Michael Seltzer]

Hello again,

Actually I wasn't thinking (often you could put a full stop right there) of placing the update listing in their own tab beneath the subject tab. I was thinking of changing the subject tabs themselves. That way you'd have the subject heading and in smaller text the new post information both in the same box (tab). (Looking down the left side, I see several ads, such as "UPSTATE LIGHT," doing something similar.) This too might be onerous. For all I know, the "UPSTATE LIGHT" ad is simply a graphic they've given you. And as I said before, how this gets done is not critical.

BTW, I see a pale yellow.

Michael