Now That's Done...

Time to get back to writing my con report. I feel surprisingly refreshed after a few days of troubleshooting templates. Ok, I didn't want to do it and was very grumpy about it when I started, but I do seem to be designed to be happiest when I'm figuring out a problem. I really should have been a computer developer and not a writer. *sigh*

Well, THAT was Anticlimactic

After all that work on Elayne's blog, which I'm pretty happy with, and all the work it took to convert this blog, I thought the Aquaman blog (which is embedded in the Aquaman Page) would be the hardest of all. Instead, it was the easiest. In some ways it was even easier than converting Eric's Wonderful Blog of Oz and Teacher Blog (although, to be honest, both of those were a snap).

But if I hadn't done Elayne's blog first, I would have had a lot of trouble with it, just as if I hadn't done this blog before Elayne's, I would have had more trouble converting hers. I learned a bit more CSS and a lot more XML along the way. Fun stuff!

And so, it's done. All posts should be accessible on all the pages I actively participate in. Nothing should be hidden by a deliberate bug. And hopefully Google won't decide to radically alter the design again and force me to play catch-up.

Ready to Make the Change

I'm about to start making changes, so the blog may look a little odd over the next couple of hours.

Update: 10:36pm - It is done. Well, there are a few tweaks I need to make, but mostly it's in the layout format. It is rough around the edges, but I've got four other blogs to convert, so I'm going to worry about smoothing it out later. If you see any major format problems, please let me know (and mention what browser and OS you are using, thanks).

Blogging About Blogger is a Sin

And I'm a sinner. Still working on downgrading this blog to the layouts format, and finding, slowly, answers to most of my questions. I'm going to go technical to record some of the problems so when I get to Elayne's page I can remember what I did...

0) I set up a dummy blog and imported my classic template into it in order to have a safe sandbox to play in. Google has made it impossible to test edit any other way.

1) Start with the shape of your page. The widgets or gadgets or whatever they are calling them this week are immaterial until you have the layout of page itself fixed up. To do this, you can find a similar layout and switch to it, then strip away everything that doesn't fit. This is the most difficult step, but not the most annoying.

2) Gadgets store the information you really need in a database on Google. This means that you have no access to the code you insert into a gadget unless you go through the rigamarole of opening each gadget individually. This is the most annoying part of downgrading. You cannot simply edit the code within the HTML, it's not stored there.

3) Some prepackaged gadgets don't allow you to format the information in them. This sucks. It makes it very hard to duplicate the look I have on my sidebars. Apparently it's the cool thing to hardcode formats now. I spit on developers who do that with stuff they intend to share. Gadgets would be "cool" if they were more customizable. As it is, many of them are simply unusable.

4) If you want a custom header, you have to delete the default header. You cannot edit it. It will revert back to whatever you edited it from. This is not just annoying, this is maddening. It would have been nice to have a warning on it, or even in the documentation, that it isn't possible to edit it.

4a) You can only delete the worthless default header by deleting it in the HTML editing area. You cannot delete it from the drag 'n' drop window.

5) Download the HTML repeatedly while editing. If you hit a step that destroys your work, you can upload a working copy. Trust me, you will hit a step that destroys your work.

6) If your previous template worked on IE and everything, don't assume it will still work. Test on IE, Opera, and Firefox. If it works on Opera and Firefox, it's a non-compliance bug in IE. Curse Microsoft for their non-compliant browser, and then try to fix it. There are numerous hacks to work around Microsoft's unwillingness to be compliant with browser standards. They are ugly, but having your page display oddly in IE is a poor choice.

7) The good old "conditional tags" from the classic templates have been replaced by poorly documented If/Else statements within widgets. This is annoying, but not impossible. The format for these statements is simply enough. It must be right after the b:includable tag, and be in the format b:if cond='statement' where "statement" is the condition. To make a widget show up only on the main page, the statement is data:blog.pageType == "index". To make it show up on everything except the main page, you change "==" to "!=" like so: data:blog.pageType != "index". The other pageTypes are "archive" and "item".

8) There must be a good tutorial on XML templates somewhere, but I haven't found one that doesn't assume knowledge I don't have. Annoying. Frustrating. Maddening.

Oh well, back to work. I hope this helps when I start to dissect Elayne's template.

Update: Ah, I remember the problem I had before. Because each bit of code is saved in a database, you can't just create a dummy blog and transfer everything over. ARGH!!!!

Blogger: Auto Pagination

Hi all. As I was going through my archives to try to find a couple of things to help me write my con reports, I noticed that a WHOLE BUNCH of my posts were no longer showing up, and nothing I did would make them show. I eventually hunted down the information in the edit window, but it appears that those posts are no longer available to readers unless they know the exact URL of the post page.

Why?

Because Google has introduced a bug (which they call a feature) to Blogspot blogs. This bug, called "Auto Pagination", limits the amount of data that will display on a page. The data is limited at the source and cannot be worked around. For all Blogspot users that have a "layout" version, this isn't a real problem. Those blogs have an "older posts" link at the bottom of the page which leads to the posts that don't show. But for those of us on classic templates, like this blog, it's a real problem. Because Google never bothered to figure out how to give us an "older posts" link, those posts are simply no longer available!

In short, Google is being evil to all Blogspot users who are still using Classic Templates. The workaround is to downgrade our templates to the sucky "layout" version. This wouldn't be a problem if I hadn't heavily customized my template, but because I did, I will lose ALL formatting if I make the change and have to start over from scratch. There is no conversion tool, and Google has not offered any help. I will have to learn a completely different tagging system, and will probably not be able to get my blog back to this format (which I'm very happy with) even if I do manage to learn their layout garbage.

So I have this choice: either downgrade my blog from classic template to "layout" format, or have a large number of my posts become lost.

Gee, thanks Google.

There really isn't a choice. I don't have the energy for it, but I'm going to start working on the problem as soon as I can muster any strength. The "layout" format is supposedly easier to edit once you've got your blog in it, but I dread converting six blogs (including Elayne's) into it from their heavily customized state. I don't want to learn another tagging system. I just want my freaking blog to WORK. Times like this I really consider just converting over to a Wordpress blog hosted on my own domain. I don't like that solution, either, but at least I'd be in control.

So if you notice any strange format errors on this blog over the next month or so, you know why. Or if this blog suddenly moves to a Wordpress blog hosted over on gjovaag.com, you'll also know why...

On Comment Moderation...

I moderate all of my comments.

Like Chris, I get so much spam that if I didn't moderate, half the comments (or more) on my blog would be spam. I also moderate so I'm sure I don't miss any comments that people post. I don't get a lot of real comments. Most of what hits my queue is spam. After deleting the spam, I look at what's left, if anything... any personal attacks go into the bit bucket, and what's left goes onto the blog.

While I don't always support Valerie's opinions, I support her right to express them in any way she feels, up to and including deleting dissenting opinions *on her own blog*. As long as she doesn't reach across the internet and shut up dissenting opinions everywhere, I'm cool. What each of us does in our own corner of the 'net is up to us. Not to the masses of people who may or may not read us.

In Desperation

I don't want to do this, but should any of you wish to help with the cost of a rental car until we can either get me a new car, or the cost of the tow and repair to Eric's car, please feel free to donate to us through one of the methods below.

Amazon

Paypal

If you don't, I apologize. I find it painful to ask for help, and totally understand any desire on your part to dislike me for it.