Month: April 2010

The other day, I posted about the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. What you didn’t know was that I was playing with a blogging program while I was typing up that post. It was tons of fun, and I decided that I will use it more! I’ve had it on my computer ever since I tried it for Great Grandma’s Journal transcription. I forgot all about it until this weekend. Then I got curious about how it could work for what I blog about now. Well color me surprised! There’s a lot packed into this program! It’s called Windows Live Writer.

I liked being able to see what it would look like with my layout. Depending on your blog layout, you will see more or less here. I just like seeing how it would look on my background.

It’s as easy and point and click to insert images and links!

Even entering tables is easy as pie! Tables aren’t exactly popular among coders anymore, but for beginning webmasters, they are a layout dream. I used tables on all my layouts up until the last year or so. In fact, I still use tables on my index page on Moore Mays. It is sometimes easier then making sure that each browser will interpret your code the same. Trust me, the more complicated the code, the more hassle it is. Tables are a nice simple layout option.

I had the most fun playing with the image effects. You should have seen my face when I had instant rounded corners! I love rounded corners. I actually was trying to round the corners of everything in the beginning of this blog. However, to get the transparency I wanted, I had to save files as .png. That made the file size MUCH bigger than I liked.

The watermark feature was interesting too! Yet another Photoshop shortcut. I love those by the way. I don’t usually put watermarks on anything, because I’m not real worried about photo theft. If they want to get it, they get it. If you get my drift. I like how I could just add a little MoaG watermark in the bottom corner though. It made the pictures a little more personal to me. I won’t be in the habit of doing that but maybe on pictures I take on trips and post here, I will make the effort. So they are a bit more special.

Another favorite button of mine was the little Preview button at the bottom. This shows you EXACTLY what your post will look like once it’s posted. I like to use this often so I can make sure I have things laid out properly.

There is also a Source button there to show the raw code if you like that kind of thing. Along with the Source option, there is spell check! I don’t know what I would do without spell check so thank god for that!

You can do most everything in this program that you can do on your blog. Depending on the blogging program you use, maybe even more!

Including opening posts from your online blog! You can make some minor changes, I haven’t completely tried it yet. You can’t add the effects to pictures already posted though. I tried to get my rounded corners back in my first post and it didn’t work!

Overall, I’m really enjoying playing with this program. I can’t wait to find out what else there is to it. Definitely worth a download at least!

I finally feel like I have moved back into my domain. Over the past week, I’ve been working on a new website for my Uncle. This gave me the motivation to dig around in the coding for both this blog, and the main site. Well, I’ve finally got a fairly uniform looking website! I could have added the side menu from the website here too, but felt that wasn’t necessary. The buttons at the top of the page will take you where you most likely want to go on the main site. The buttons are the same on both sites. Though I may change the order of the buttons a bit later today. Just to satisfy my need to change my mind. 😉

moore-mays.org main site

moore-mays.org blog site

I won’t lie to you, there are a few things I might still tweak. They are only cosmetic things in the big picture though and you likely wouldn’t notice them. I hope everyone who visits this site enjoys it as much as I do!

I had some trouble sleeping last night, so I was thinking about some things I could do to improve my website. I’m still trying to work on blog stuff. Just need to learn the code first!

One of the things I decided about my site is that I can add new “trees” manually. I usually just import GEDCOM files into the site. That works great, if my GEDCOM file was in shape to be imported.

The second thing I realized was there is no reason I need to have “living” people information on the site. So what I’m doing, is I’m starting from my 4 Grandparents. Those lines are going to have their own “tree.” I’ll add one person at a time, sourcing every speck of information I put in, uploading a photo or two for people I have photos for, etc. This allows me complete control. There may be some double and triple people at points in time, because I’ll only be deleting people from the “old tree” once I have them completely sourced in the “new tree.”

For those who don’t visit that part of my site, this won’t mean anything to you, but I’m excited just thinking about it. I sometimes really hate that I don’t spend enough time concentrating on a single person. Not anymore! This will also give me a chance to send for records of those I need. My file is such a mess right now, I don’t know who I have records for and who I don’t. So that’ll be great.

The last benefit of this method for the site is that I can do the same thing in RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker. I’m still determined to have both programs do the same things. I just have to figure them out. I might even be able to purchase the full version of RootsMagic in a few months. I just want to make sure I have enough for my Ancestry.com renewal in September. I should have it by then though!

I might even consider putting up a public Ancestry.com tree, once I have things under control on all my other programs and sites. I don’t know, I’m still flip flopping on that 😉