Gnorb.NET

I’ll try to keep this short: I decided not to continue using and hacking away at the theme I was using before. Kiwi is an absolutely awesome theme, but to get it to do what I needed it to do was almost impossible. Overall, it just had too many technical challenges for me to cope with. (I’m pretty much a baby when it comes to PHP, and some of this stuff required someone more experienced.) As such, I decided to go to a theme which had previously caught my eye, but which I had passed up in lieu of Kiwi, TypoXP. This theme is a bit like Kubrick, but generally easier. (I think it’s actually based on Kubrick.) Over the next few weeks/months I’ll be moving things around in order to make the site less bloggy and more professional looking. The biggest issue here is keeping it clean and easy to read.

(By the way, Ski, I haven’t forgotten about you just yet. I’ll be writing that design article for you that I promised. I’ve been looking at blogger and it’s all pretty easy stuff. It’s just a matter of properly documenting it all.)

The second thing: I’ve added a number of plugins which should make the site a bit more interesting.

• I added a set of social bookmarking site links at the bottom of every story, so if you have a Shadows or Del.icio.us account, you see something here you want to put up on Fark, or you want to track your comments using Co.mments, I’ve got you covered.
• I added a search engine tracking tool which figures out what search engine you came from, your search terms, and articles which you may be interested in based on those search terms. Frankly, this is one of my favorite plugins. If you want to test it out, go to your favorite search engine (preferably Google or Yahoo) and type in “Gnorb florida”. Look for the first gnorb.net link you see (should be the first one anyway) and after clicking on it, take a look at the top of the side bar. The message containing all the aforementioned information will be there.
• I added an email obfuscator which covers up emails to keep them safe. If you type gnorb@gnorb.net, the email will be obfuscated in the code and spammer bots won’t be able to grab your email address. (Do a “View Source Code” to test this out. Look for this sentence and try to find the email address.
• I added a list of the most recent posts to the sidebar (viewable everywhere except the front page, where all the most recent articles are, anyway) as well as the most recent comments, so Junior now essentially has his own section on the site, sort of. (I need to figure out how I can get more commenting to happen here. I’m starting to feel all lonely and stuff.)

There’s still a few other things I need to do, such as add a “Blogging Buddies” roll (Quantum, Ski, anyone else — I gots y’all covered), a “most popular articles” list, and do some improvements to the search capabilities, something the previous theme had a royally hard time with for some reason. I also want to see if I can strike a deal with some online comic creator to feature their comics on the site. (Something tells me that’s a bit of a ways off, though.) Still, I think I’m happy with what I have right now, as most of the site now works just fine (which is more than I could have said for my bastardized version of Kiwi).

Oh, and I brought back the alternating headers, at the request of Junior, although they’ll need a bit of fixing. (Of course, if you’re an online comic creator or artist looking for a place to prominently feature some of your work, I’d be more than happy to talk about lending that space out to you.)

With that, if there’s anything you’d like to see, anything you’d think would make a good addition, or anything you feel I can do better here, whether it involves my writing, site features, or whatever, then this is the place to tell me. (And yes, I will be adding more online games. That’s another thing: I need to create a group of links somewhere that emphasizes the online games available here. People seem to like those. I also need to create a section outlining my own favorites from this site. I’ll be the first to tell you that though I’m no Hemingway, I’ve written a good amount of stuff I really enjoy reading. I’ve also written some stuff that I refuse to delete solely on the principle of completeness, which is another way of me saying “What tha — did I write that? What was I, drunk?!” But I digress…)

If you have something to say, say it. Consider this an open thread.

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