Category Archives: BLog Technicalities

Information about the creation and maintenance of this site.

Web Tools: Color Wizard

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An online tool helps a non-designer pick a color scheme for a new blog.

I am not color blind. I know I’m not. I see colors and I know when certain colors look good together. But I can’t, for the life of me, come up with a color scheme on my own.

Color, of course, is a major part of any Web site’s look and feel. So when I found a blog post months ago that listed a few online color tools, I bookmarked them for later use. On Saturday, one of them came in very handy as I decided on a color scheme for my blog’s new look.

The Color WizardThe Color Wizard is a Flash application by Donald Johansson. This excellent online tool helps you find colors that work well together.

From the Color Wizard page:

The color wizard lets you submit your own base color, and it automatically returns matching colors for the one you selected.

It returns a set of hue, saturation and tint/shade variations of your color, as well as suggests color schemets to you, based on your color’s complementary color, split complementary colors, analogous colors and other variations. The color wizard also has a randomize function that lets you generate color schemes you might not have thought of on your own.

It’s the randomizer that helped me. I just kept clicking the Randomize button until I found a few schemes I liked. When I had about eight of them, I went back and reviewed each one, eliminating the ones I liked less until I had one I liked a lot. I then picked the blue color from the theme and generated another scheme from that, so I could get the colors I planned to use for my links.

What was also handy for me was the print feature. Although it’s not obvious on the application, if you right-click the Flash app, a Print option appears in the shortcut menu. I used that to print my two color schemes on my color printer. So not only can I visualize what the colors look like — or at least approximately what they look like; I don’t have a great color printer — but I have a document that clearly lists all the hex codes for all the colors.

I’m so pleased with the results that I clicked the Donate link at the bottom of the Color Wizard and used my PayPal account to send the developer some lunch money. (As usual, I urge everyone who uses great free software like this to thank the developer with a donation or at least a visit to his advertiser’s sites.)

Looking for a color scheme? The Color Wizard is a great place to start.

An Eclectic Mind

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The site gets a new name, too.

After months of thinking about a new name for my personal blog and book support site, I finally took the plunge. The new name is An Eclectic Mind.

Why Eclectic?

The name comes, in part, from a regular visitor here, Thomas Fucili. He read my post “What’s in a Name?” and responded using the Contact form with a suggestion: Eclectic Pronouncements. I liked eclectic, but didn’t like pronouncements. He came up with a replacement word and I thought deeply about it but made no decision.

ec•lec•tic |iˈklektik|
adjective
1 deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources : her musical tastes are eclectic.
2 (Eclectic) Philosophy of, denoting, or belonging to a class of ancient philosophers who did not belong to or found any recognized school of thought but selected such doctrines as they wished from various schools.

I liked the word eclectic because it seemed to suit the site’s content. As anyone who visits the site regularly knows, I write about widely varied topics. In the world of “pro blogging,” that’s a big no-no. But I’m not blogging to make money, so I don’t really care if the site’s not focused enough to build a high volume of regular visitors and feed subscribers. I write about what interests me, while providing support for the folks who buy and read my books.

The second definition seemed to suit me, too. I don’t think inside the box and can’t be easily labeled. I listen to a lot of theories and opinions and choose the ones that make sense to me — even if they don’t usually co-exist in other people’s belief systems. I’m not a philosopher (although sometimes I do feel ancient) but I’m a strong believer in independent thought.

Eclectic seemed a perfect fit.

The Domain Name Challenge

One of the challenges I faced was coming up with a name that was somewhat (at least) original and still had the domain name available. Although I don’t expect to formally change the domain name for the site, I did want new visitors to be able to find the site by clicking in the domain name with a dot-com at the end. I came up with a few twists on the word eclectic but couldn’t secure the domain names for any of them.

And then, one day, I just came up with An Eclectic Mind. The domain name was available and I bought it. Without really realizing it, I’d settled on a new name.

That was a few weeks ago.

A Day of Changes

I wanted to tie in the site name change to a complete site redesign. So I spent some time looking for the right theme. I found Cutline, which I’ll probably discuss in some detail in future blog posts. I also wanted to [finally] upgrade to the current version of WordPress (2.2.2 as I write this). I knew from experience that the upgrade would break some of my plugins and my current theme. So it made a lot of sense to take a whole day and just do the name change, upgrade, and new theme.

That day was today.

The site’s not done yet — I’m still adding in a few features that my old site used to have — but I expect to be finishing it up over the next few weeks. I’d love to hear your comments about it; use the Comments link or form at the bottom of this post to share your thoughts.

But for now, I just want to thank Thomas for his suggestion. I couldn’t have come up with the new name without his help.

Under Reconstruction

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Today’s the big day.

Today is the day I’ve decided to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.2 (finally). I figured that while I was at it, I’d change the blog’s theme — I’m rather bored with this one — and change it’s name.

So throughout today, this blog will be looking and acting weird. I hope it doesn’t get too weird for me to fix in one day. If all goes well, the blog will be at least 95% fully functional by day’s end, with some features gone and others added little by little over the coming weeks. I’m also hoping to add some new features.

The theme I’ve chosen, a version of Cutline by Chris Pearson, features two sidebars and a wider fixed-width page. This will fill the width of most folks screens and make it possible for me to have more before the “fold.” The second sidebar column will make it possible to display offsite links and advertising separate from internal navigation features. The look is clean and polished, the font is larger, and the theme is more far advanced than what I’m accustomed to, so I’ll have plenty of room to grow and learn.

I’ll tell you more about the blog’s new name and plans for the future when I get the hard stuff done. Stay tuned.

And please have patience if you tune in and see a big mess — or, worse yet — some PHP errors here.

What’s In a Name?

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Apparently, a lot.

I’ve been thinking it over for about six months now and have finally made a decision: I need a real name for my Web site/blog.

Maria Langer, The Official Web Site* and WebLog** is not cutting it, primarily because no one follows the asterisks to the footnotes in the footer, which say:

* Read with tongue planted firmly in cheek. (In other words, it’s a joke, folks. No, I’m not so full of myself that I think there are unofficial Maria Langer Web sites.)

** Don’t believe everything you read. (That’s my disclaimer, in case you find something inaccurate. It’s also for the folks who like to say that I’m making claims that aren’t true. Maybe I know that. Now my readers do, too.)

I think the name of my site is turning off people who don’t get it. And I don’t want them to get turned off by a name. I’d rather they get turned on or off by content.

Unfortunately, my imagination is completely tapped out and I can’t come up with any fresh, new, witty names for my site. This is what has taken me so long to make the name change decision. Obviously, if I already had a great new name, I’d just start using it.

Whatever name I do come up with must reflect the fact that the site is a mix of content, with everything from first person accounts of the things that go on in my life to illustrated how-to articles about using your computer or software. Visitors use Macs and Windows, so to include either operating system in the name just wouldn’t be right. Ditto for references to flying or Wickenburg or writing or any one specific topic I cover here. I need a name that’s more general.

I’ve got some ideas that might work, but I’d be interested in getting suggestions from the folks who have been following the site for a while. Use the Comments link or form or Contact Me with your suggestions.

I’d appreciate the help.

100,000 Visitors

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My site reaches an arbitrary milestone.

100,000+ VisitorsJust before I [finally] got to work today, a peek at my Blog’s home page revealed that the site has had more than 100,000 visitors since July 1, 2007 — or in less than a year. And no, that doesn’t include my hits.

That’s a big deal for me — reaching this number in less than a year. It means I’m not blogging in a vacuum. It also means that if even 50% of the people who came here did so by mistake (hey, it happens), 50,000 people came and read at least one article. And if 90% came here by mistake (let’s hope not), 10,000 people came and read at least one article.

The number, of course, is arbitrary. I’ve been keeping a Web site since 1997 — more than 10 years now — and a blog since 2003. But my counter has only been at work since July 1, 2006. So I have no idea what the total count is. I’m just pleased about this count.

My next milestone: getting the comment count to exceed the post count.

Don’t mind me…I’m just crazy about stats.