Members Richard King Posted May 13, 2011 Members Share Posted May 13, 2011 Take a look and leave me some suggestions and/or comments. This is my first attempt at my own site..... http://www.richardkingmedia.com/ Enjoy (maybe). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 14, 2011 Members Share Posted May 14, 2011 You've got a good start, there, Richard! I think you'll find that WordPress is a quite good platform that allows you to update your content easily and quickly. It's pretty easy to give your site a whole new look via third party themes (although it can be vexing when many of your little tweaks to your old theme disappear when you change themes, depending on what you're doing and how you do it). And using so-called starter or parent themes, you can create a child theme and remake it in the form you like, if you're willing to spend a little time figuring out their markup and modify/customizing the CSS that styles it. And, depending on your theme, you can often start customizing your site even without getting your hands dirty with CSS, as some themes allow you to insert custom graphic headers and such. Speaking of that, I think I'd suggest such a header -- nothing fancy, necessarily, just a nice clean header. Maybe a custom font, or a touch of drop shadow or such, done in a graphics editor. Another wonderful thing about WP as a platform is that there are all kinds of plugins for self-hosted WP blogs, from automated backup to all kinds of social media widgets. For instance, I just added a Facebook Like Button to a client's conventional site, and it was more than a little annoying working through their not always informative developer tool descriptions and widget generators (not to mention I had to give them a credit card number to 'prove' I wasn't a spammer -- not that anti-spam stuff is a bad idea, they need to ride better herd on some aspects of their game, no question). But with a WP blog style site, you can just browse for a social media plugin or plugins that fits your needs. For instance, I tend to use a handy little plug called AddToAny (not sure on the camelcase, but you get the idea). It displays a button that pops into a nice little dialog that lets the visitor select from a number of social media sites to post/like/recommend/etc your site to. Very slick and relatively easy -- for coverage of a slug of media sites from FB to Twitter and beyond. Now, with regard to what you have... I think I'd emphasize your current operation and gear in that photo strip and create an about/history/bio/something page where you can post the cool pix from the past along with the pertinent aspects of your p.v., etc. And no reason you can't go to town on that aspect, you can create as many pages as you like. (As you already know, I'm sure, the WP world is basically divided into blog posts and pages.) You could write a series of articles or reminiscences on separate pages and then link them in through a sidebar or sub-menu. Anyhow, lots of fun can be had! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Richard King Posted May 14, 2011 Author Members Share Posted May 14, 2011 Thanks, Mr. Blue. Ah, yes, it's a start. I had the music from http://soundcloud.com/richard-king posted on the site and playable on the site until they upgraded WordPress a few days ago. Once they upgraded I could no longer post the songs on the site, of course, I had informed no one about the site yet, so, no one saw the playable music on the site. Now they have to go to Soundcloud to hear anything. Any clues on a potential solution there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 14, 2011 Members Share Posted May 14, 2011 No... I'll have to give it a try. You're hosting your blog on your own site, yeah -- as opposed to hosting it on wordpress.org with your domain pointing to yourUserAccount.wordpress.com? (But that shouldn't make a diff, see below.) __________________ I'm back... Good news -- I was able to embed their object code OK and have it work (and I'm on the latest WP update): http://onebluenine.com/obnblg/slant-six-valiant/ And, more good news, I was also able to do it in my one wordpress.com hosted blog, as well: http://ks2problema.wordpress.com/test/ So, I'm thinking there's some other problem. Now... I know it sounds to obvious a mistake to make, but I make obvious mistakes all the time... did you make sure you did the embed from the HTML editor 'view' rather than the WYSIWYG view? Maybe a plug-in that's interfering... Also, the issues are a little hazy, but I do recall that when embedding object code for YouTube, you can't use WP's video insert button, so I'm assuming the audio insert button is a similar no-go with full object code. Just go into HTML view and cut-n-paste the object code from the Soundcloud widget creator thingie straight into your HTML code view. (If there are any WP mavens out there who know a better way on that, I'm all ears. I'm moderately new to WP, myself. although I've gone to the mat with more than a few issues getting my blogs over into it.) BTW, with regard to podcasts, I use a podcast plug-in in order to automate the tiresome podcast process, I use the peculiarly spelled Blubrry PowerPress plug on my band site: www.onebluenine.com -- for reasons I can't recall I haven't got it installed on my main blog, which hasn't been very active lately, but I probably ought to look back into that. The issue you'll find with podcast plugs is that they want to see the media on your blog site and it has to be downloadable, as far as I can tell, since, after all, the point of podcasts is to have a way of automating downloads of newly updated audio. But that last brings up a quite pointed question I've often pondered -- lots of us DL podcast episodes manually -- but how many of us actually use automated podcast software to use them as designed? I know I don't. That said, if you want to get your audio or video-rich site listed in the supposedly influential/crucial iTunes podcast listings, you've got to play the podcast game... and, worse yet, you've got to play it Apple's way, since they have very specific format requirements above and beyond normal podcast universals. Worse, it can take forever to get listed so you jump through all these hoops and then you have no way of knowing if you were successful for as long as months -- by which time you've forgotten you were even trying. (If you're anything like me.) And, of course, you have to have the invasive, quite annoying iTunes software installed on at least one of your machines to check. It's a total pain. BTW, for a guy who devs websites, I've been pretty shameless about using/slightly modding third party themes. Actually, make that lazy. But I'm in the finishing stages (waiting on customer approval) of a custom WP site for a client using the Thematic starter theme. And, once you have things going the way you like, it's quite gratifying to have a really customized theme. (I can't link to it because the prototype client info is in there but hasn't been approved for public viewing.) Most of my own blogs, OTOH, just have minor customizations like custom header and/or sidebar images and such. (But that's a quick way to get some vivid but quick customization, particularly if the theme you started from is fairly simple. That said, on some of my own blogs, I've been a bit of a sucker for OP's slick, richly graphic theming. Worst offender, w/o doubt is my 'big' blog, with acoustic version of my songs: http://ayearofsongs.org/blg/ -- I love the theme I'm using but the first time I see someone else using the same theme, I know I'm going to be crushed... Is she really going out with him, indeed. ) Anyhow, they're all penciled in for complete customizations and I'll almost surely use Thematic unless something better comes along before I get rolling. Basically, the Thematic theme I used for the client site is a very plain theme, with most functions you'd ever want available, written so that it's easy to customize a child theme via CSS and/or function hooks. Not all 'starter themes' are equally easy to mod, by a stretch, so picking a good starter theme for a parent -- and always use a child theme for your customizations or when the theme is updated and you've hacked the theme's code, there'll be hell to pay with your update as it overwrites your changes. There are a few other well-liked starter themes but be careful, because not all themes that call themselves starter themes are equally well written or extensible. My music blog theme is called Tweaker and it's supposedly written just for those who want to customize their themes. Well, I picked it when I was just getting started, created a number of theme widgets for it and then realized it was a TPITA to mod. (I'll bring it over to thematic to do a proper customization of it.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted May 14, 2011 Members Share Posted May 14, 2011 My comments are not technical. The site looks fine. http://www.richardkingmedia.com/?page_id=47 In 1984 I designed, wired and installed a 24 track studio system in Prince Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 14, 2011 Members Share Posted May 14, 2011 Ken's cheating... he actually read the copy! Yeah... it's always a very good idea to have other folks go over your content, and if they bring a fine-tooth comb, all the better. Even the best writers become blind to their own mistakes, even when they should be perversely obvious. (I drop words out of sentences all the time and then mentally supply them as I quickly 'proof' the copy. And then there are homophonic mistakes -- the kind that make it look like you did a poor job of using spell-check and ended up with the wrong words. I never used to make their-for-there type mistakes but, I dunno if it's the amount of typing I do or simply that I read a lot of BBs and the sheer amount of misspellings and their-for-there type mistakes has twisted my brain, but... well... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Richard King Posted May 14, 2011 Author Members Share Posted May 14, 2011 I just walked in the door again. I spend all day now at a house that I have on the market. The plan is that once it is sold I will put (assuming I get close to my asking price) about $100K into my house including building a studio area in my currently 18'x28' covered porch area. Now, back to reality.... Ken... your ideas were correct and have been changed on the site. Blue....I like the way you do the music on the right side of your page rather than the "ribbon" looking link that you have next to it (and similar to what I had at one time). Is the music that you have on the right in a different site or at Soundcloud.com? I'm going to read the rest as time permits here. I have to go see the band "Escape Artist" playing locally (at Riverside Cafe) here this evening. They are one of the bands that I recorded and have posted at Soundcloud.com/richard-king. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Richard King Posted May 14, 2011 Author Members Share Posted May 14, 2011 Blue... you made my brain work again. It appears that they will work on site (again). I got the first one going right and will now check out doing the others. (It's raining like CRAZY here now). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Richard King Posted May 14, 2011 Author Members Share Posted May 14, 2011 Much better. I still need to do a bit of work, but it's coming together. Thanks guys for the advice. http://www.richardkingmedia.com/?page_id=47 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 15, 2011 Members Share Posted May 15, 2011 I'm thinking you're referring to the little player over on the right side? As opposed to the Blubrry Press expanding 'ribbon player' (like below the vid toward the bottom of this page?) That's one of the player widgets from ReverbNation. There are a lot of good things about ReverbNation but I hate dealing with my pages there and don't update them nearly enough because of it... they have one of the most absurdly crowded, confusing interfaces (on the artist facing/dashboard side) of any online service I've used. But there are some very good things about them and they have cleaned up the visitor facing side and made it a little less ADD-baiting. http://www.reverbnation.com/onebluenine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted May 15, 2011 Members Share Posted May 15, 2011 And then there are homophonic mistakes -- the kind that make it look like you did a poor job of using spell-check and ended up with the wrong words. I never used to make their-for-there type mistakes but, I dunno if it's the amount of typing I do or simply that I read a lot of BBs and the sheer amount of misspellings and their-for-there type mistakes has twisted my brain, but... well... I think I've been making more and more silly typos in my copy. A lot of it is posting while at work, doing it very quickly, but I don't know what accounts for the rest. I'm a good typist - I think about 73 words per minute - but some of the mistakes I've made are things like changing "their" for "there", as you mention, "right" for "write", and some other things that are similar. But my favorite is when I'm thinking of a word while my fingers type a completely different word. Puhhhh.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 15, 2011 Members Share Posted May 15, 2011 I think I've been making more and more silly typos in my copy. A lot of it is posting while at work, doing it very quickly, but I don't know what accounts for the rest. I'm a good typist - I think about 73 words per minute - but some of the mistakes I've made are things like changing "their" for "there", as you mention, "right" for "write", and some other things that are similar. But my favorite is when I'm thinking of a word while my fingers type a completely different word. Puhhhh....Word. I mean, I could have written that, every single point, including right for write -- and typing a quite different word than the word I'm thinking -- there's usually a connection but sometimes the connection, typically some sort of sound association thing, but sometimes the connection even flummoxes me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted May 15, 2011 Members Share Posted May 15, 2011 Yup. I can't think of any right now, but I've had some strange words crop up when while I'm typing that don't make any sense. I can't figure out the association occasionally. I don't know whether it's good old fashioned insanity or something else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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