Raving Amicks

Dad suggested that we should consider password protecting the website, which honestly is something I’d like to avoid since I’m super lazy.

He does make a good point about privacy, though. We should be careful about posting phone numbers, addresses, and even email addresses should be avoided (unless you know the person is okay with it). I think other than that, we’re okay, but it’s a family website, so it’s up to the family.

In unrelated news, pictures of my colon.

I added a picture thingy underneath the text area where you write posts. You’ll see it the next time you post anything. You can use it to include pictures (that you’ve already uploaded) inside a post. For now, it doesn’t link to the larger photo, but I’m gonna work on that.

In order to add the picture, click on the image you want. It will spit out a bunch of gibberish into the text of your post from where the blinking text line is. This gibberish is where it puts the image, so don’t worry about it.

This has got to be the best Blonde-Joke ever.

So… how do you guys like the new post dates?

So, there’s this thing called RSS (it stands for Really Simple Syndication, but I don’t know what syndication means). And we have RSS on our website.

If you scroll down to the bottom of any page on ravingamicks.com, you’ll see: Entries (RSS) & Photos (RSS) & Comments (RSS). Those are links to RSS files. Click on them and you should see a page full of text. Safari knows what to do with these, but many other web browsers don’t.

“Entries (RSS)” lists every post that anyone has made
“Photos (RSS)” lists every photo that has been uploaded.
“Comments (RSS)” lists every comment that has been posted.

Each item is listed in the order they were posted, newest at the top. It works like a notification system.

To use RSS in Safari, click on one of the links. Then go to the “Bookmarks” menu > “Add Bookmark”. When it asks you where to organize the bookmark, choose “Bookmarks Bar”. Now it will appear as a link at the upper bar on the browser window. Do this for each RSS link.

What’s cool about this, is instead of forcing you to constantly check ravingamicks.com for updates, Safari will check for you and display the number of new updates since you last looked at the website. It will look like this: “Comments for Raving Amicks (3)“.

You can click on the blue “RSS” button at the top of the browser window to go back to the website. Anyway, I use this feature all the time. Many websites all over the internet use RSS to make it easier for people to see when they’ve updated.

I should have introduced Mindy as a new author on ravingamicks.com, but I was lazy, and forgetful, and irresponsible in general. Which is completely unlike me.

Soooo, Mindy has been helping out with the website here and there (like filling in photo titles with useful names instead of just “IMG3245.jpg”), and she’s an extremely capable writer, and she’s practically part of the family anyway, so I felt like it was stupid to keep her off of the website.

Uh, but perhaps, in the future, those posts could be, uh… a little less, ummm… epic.

Oh, and hooray for keyless entry!

Looks like things are working well on the website. I fixed some things here and there, so images should show up a bit more reliably. Flickr says their website is running slow because so many people are using it, which is why the photos might not show up right away.

As you may have noticed, when you are logged in to ravingamicks.com, comments will already have your name as the author. When you’re not logged in, you have to enter your name manually, otherwise the comment shows up under “Anonymous”.

The first day back at work was kinda tricky, but I made it through. It helped that there has been hardly anyone in the library. This has actually been a pretty quick sleep schedule readjustment for me. It’s been harder to get used to working again .