Greasy Blog: Search, 3 column template, Blogrush etc

As you can see I've started messing around with more features for the blog. I won't try to be too meta about blogging about my blog, but they are tweaks that elevate one's blog from being the stock blog.

Search Bar

This isn't too useful for now, but as we expand with more and more articles, it'll come in handy. I found the article on Widgetbox , which I guess has a bunch of widgets for your blog. The cool thing about it is that the widgets are as simple to install as just inputting your blog url and the width of your search bar, and basically it'll install on its own.

My only gripe is it doesn't make it easy to tweak once you've already installed, unless you sign up for a (free) membership. When I had to tweak the search width I just ended up deleting the old one and installing a new one.

Still, the search bar seems to work like a charm.

3 Column Blogger Layout

I usually try to design all my sites to be viewable on an 800x600 monitor, but my stats show monitor resolutions that small only account for 2% of the views on this blog so far. Most are either 1280x1024 or 1024x768. So that means it's okay to expand a little.

Blogger's default layouts are perfectly functional, but they don't offer 3 columns by default. Luckily, you can tackle the layout template yourself, if you want to get your feet soaking wet in HTML, XML, and CSS.

I found a blog (Tips for New Bloggers) that takes the guesswork out of it by showing you exactly what values to edit to get a 3 column blog. I still want to alter it so the two thin columns are on the right, and to widen the main reading area a little, but that'll be for a later time (I already spent an hour trying to get it to work, but I couldn't get it perfectly right).

Update: I ended up switching to a completely self-contained template I found at Finalsense, simply called Keyboard. It's a 3 column template that has that gaming keyboard image that I haven't gotten around to changing yet. It looks cool and appropriate, but unfortunately I actually don't have such a keyboard (though I've got a perfectly fine Labtec wireless keyboard and mouse).

BlogRush

Blogrush is a widget that's kind of an RSS exchange for blogs. You build credits based on your traffic, that shows your article headlines on other blogs that use the widget. You can filter what category of blogs will be shown on your widget, and it seems to be working well so far.

I'm still prioritizing content over traffic promotion right now, but slowly but surely I will be putting more effort into driving traffic into the site. There are plenty of articles out there that are all about driving traffic, and it's all a matter of what you take advantage of.

Update: I've also now signed up with Feedburner, BlogExplosion, and BlogCatalog, as that article suggested.

Thunderbird, Firefox, and Backups, October 10, 2007

Continuing from excerpts taken out of my "private journals" written back in October of 2007.

On the internet side of things, I've started taking advantage of Mozy, a free online backup tool that gives you 2 gigabytes and a program that automatically backs up certain file types and folders you specify. I'm not a huge fan of adding more background running programs, since I was already running google desktop, but I couldn't think of any other way to make sure the backups are made... I think I'd just forget. I might learn Windows Scheduler if I can use that somehow, but for the moment I need to start referring friends to it so I can get the free gig per referral.

With my being given a huge external hard drive for backups by [the production], hopefully the inevitable hard drive crash won't be nearly as overwhelming now, although there is a lot more data at stake the next time it happens.

On a related note, I researched remote desktop utilities on the hope that should I forget stuff at home, I can always connect to my home computer and look it up. Unfortunately for the moment I wasn't able to find a full featured freeware option that was also secure enough right out of the (digital) box. I'll have to shelf this idea for the moment until I can find the time to devote to it.

For Firefox, as with the others, it was all about tweaking the most performance out of it, uncluttering the desktop as much as possible, and using extensions that take those extra windows and mouseclicks down. I was also able to find a program that made backups of my extensions and tweaks, as by this point I'd made so many changes to the program that I wouldn't remember how to restore it in case I have to start over.

One extension [Searchwords] involved adding keyboard shortcuts as substitutes for using the search window. Now I can just install a search engine, give it a code letter like "g" for google or "y" for youtube, and just type "y jurassic park" into the address bar and it searches youtube for jurassic park clips. This took down the number of input bars on Firefox from 3 to 1, and gave it so much more room.

Online wise, I've started using iGoogle, which is a customizable home page portal where I was able to get notifications and previews of my email and yahoo mail, weather, and other gadgets like dontbreakthechain and a calendar.

(editor's note: Dontbreakthechain is the web application I used to keep track of my exercises and other daily routines, like making my bed)

Most importantly, though I was also about to put an RSS reader into the igoogle page, namely Google Reader. Now I'm able to keep up to date on all my favorite blogs in one place, saving me having to do a lot of typing and clicking. I'm excited whenever I get to bookmark yet another interesting blog, knowing that I'll never forget to check it in the future.

Thunderbird went through the same treatment of extensions and consolidation and purging of unnecessary buttons. Most importantly, though, I finally went super nuts on putting everything into categorized folders. I'd done this to my laptop back when I was in Jersey but importing the organization into my desktop did not handle very well. I still need to reinstitute all the filters I had to put them all in the right folders, along with probably having to create folders for the "Sent" folder as well.

Finally, I've started using Autohotkey, a batch process program to let me open and close multiple programs in one doubleclick. Eventually I'd like to learn to write batch programs myself, but for now this is an excellent choice.

The preceeding wasn't changed much from the original entry back in October, other than adding links to the respective applications. As such, many of these tweaks have become obsolete (upgraded or removed altogether).

Don't fret though, cause I plan on catching up real soon. I just wanted to really let you in on the process by which I got to my present configuration.