Saturday, October 05, 2002

I'm exploring some of About.com's pages that define the basics of doing a personal web page, and I got to their section on what books to buy to help you, which I think is very personal depending on what an individual person thinks they need, from overall perspective on something, to a good manual. http://personalweb.about.com/library/weekly/reviews/aabybbooks.htm I am fortunate in having several large book stores near where I live.  Books a Million (I estimate closer to 1/3 of a million there), Barnes and Noble, Borders, and others, so I can go browse the sections of these stores looking for something of particular interest, but unfortunately some of these book stores need to learn from the librarian profession when it comes to putting books on the shelves so people can find what is there that we are interested in getting. Worth looking over, because towards the bottom of the list is the topic of books to help us do a better job of writing well. Most of the books listed here seem to assume that we are using the generation of web creation software that came before weblogging, but webloggers still can learn from generic books such as those that talk about improving usability and accessibility.  I myself not quite ready for an HTML book, but am headed in that direction. 8:20:42 PM

Thanks to [Alison (Blog) Fish] for these great links to doing a better job of blog writing: Daniel Will-Harris's Five Keys to Building a Better Site Will feels that we need to know what we want to accomplish before we start our website. Well I think this might make some sense for a business, but not neccessarily an on-line journal, or someone like me who is using the software to learn how to work the software. Look at the competition and learn from them how to do a better job with a site that does not look just like them. Provide navigation to help visitors easily move around your site. Study your logs to find out which pages are being visited and which are not. I have no idea how to find such logs. Cameron Barrett's thoughts on what makes a good weblog. I am not so laid back about giving credit, as you probably have seen.  I want to carefully identify where I got something from if at all possible, but I recognize that it can clutter the text when there are a string of weblog equivalents of an e-mail many time forwarded. With respect to the notion that a shared site can overwhelm the editor if the pool of contributors gets too large, I think the answer to that is to have Radio post to Manila where there are several editors. Good advice here about things that need to be done. Search Engine belongs on the site so that people can navigate the archives. Run link checking software against it from time to time to locate and deal with any links that have become broken. Review our archives and re-feature our all time greatest links from time to time. I do need to get a Spell Checker for my Browser some time. Don't let yourself get burned out with this hobby. 2:01:54 AM

© Copyright 2002 Al Macintyre.