Basic Web Coding

I missed one class all semester, and it was possibly the worst decision I made throughout the entire Journalist’s Toolkit experience. 

I missed the week that the class reviewed basic HTML/CSS and blog enhancements.    Coincidentally, of all my Web skills, I struggle the most with HTML and any blog-related skills that don’t involve typing in this box I’m currently typing in now.  Bummer.  So I’m left doing some self-learning, making up the lost ground I missed during absent Week 12, and, uh-oh, I’ve got to blog about it.

I’m so bad at building Web pages and blogs that even when Technorati writes the code for my own, individual widget for my own, individual blog, I can’t manage to make it work.  I actually struggled with the cut-and-paste the code technique.  For quite a while, I might add.  I put the code in the wrong place.  I altered the code without meaning to.  I got the Technorati icon to appear, but the link was dead.  And did I know how to fix any of it?  Nope. I end up getting so frustrated that I just start deleting things or cutting-and-pasting randomly.  Which, I know I know, is bad.  Very bad. 

However, I did manage to enhance my blog and work with the coding enough to get the widgets I wanted to appear almost perfectly (see right).  I’ve got an RSS feed.  I’ve got Technorati, although that one really put up a fight.  And I’ve got a Site Meter.  Kind of.  You see, the Site Meter works.  It’s a legitimate link, and it records and tracks my blog’s progress and popularity.  The icon also looks peachy-keen on my laptop.  But on my huge, archaic work computer, all I get is a little box, with an X, and Arial script reading “Site Meter.”  The link still works, but no pretty icon appears.  Coding problem?  I’m almost positive.  Do I know how to fix it?  Not on your life.

But all coding aside, the little hide-and-seek Site Meter icon stands for many more sources of pain in my ongoing, journalistic online experience. 

It blatantly and honestly records the fact that no one visits my blog.  When you’re popularity reads in the zillionth, you know you’re in trouble.  And you know you’re not doing what a true, journalistic blogger should.  The Site Meter makes the vague-but-troubling nature of my online experience all the more up-front and worrisome.  So what to do, what to do.  Like I said, bad day to have to miss class.

In short, I’m taking some inspiration from my Web and blog observations to write some New Year’s Resolutions for this blog, and how I can give it more pop, pizazz and higher Site Meter ratings.

1.  Read other blogs, and when I say read, I mean really read.  Sure.  I peek.  Sometimes, I skim, but I never truly absorb, and I need to if I want to understand how to make my blog better.

2. Comment on other blogs.  I need the ping-backs, and maybe if I’m generous with my words (which this class has proven are basically null-and-void, and sadly, my only true journalistic skill) I’ll get some curious visitors. 

 3.  Link to blogs that relate to what I’m talking about.  This would require me to take up Rule 1, as well.

4.  Put my blog out there.  I should put it in the bottom of my e-mails.  I should link to it in my online work.  I should link to it in online profiles.  I should work it into conversations wherever I can…

5. Give it some meat.  Journalists tell stories, and I really should do more of that here. I need to give the Web-readers something they want and need, not just synopsis of my learning experiences, which are required anyway.

So with less than three weeks to go till 2008, I’ve less than three weeks to get pumped up for a whole new blogging experience.  Cross your fingers for the good old Site Meter.  One day, it will read above zero.