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Roderick

Blog advice

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Man, you haven't updated in FOREVER. Did your book deal finally go through? Blogs tend to die down a bit once the publishers come 'round.

Fuck books, man, movies are where it's at. I would be swagging jugs of Cristal and have gold diggers all over my million dollar jacuzzi in my hummer limo outside my LA mansion if it hadn't been for that asshole George Lucas. Me and my AFTRA ad-pub team was this close to brokering a greenlight for a one-hander dramedy/feevee that would have me up to my Montecristi in payola, and then he fucks me in the ass. This city, man ...

hB21V.jpg

This city.

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Already. Already at step one I'm bummed in the gob. Here I am listening to the easy tunes of Bryan Adams, relaxin' all cool, and WordPress is giving me shit on my own server.

bummedinthegob.jpg

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What were you trying to do? Looks like Wordpress tried to do a thing and then something returned 404.

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I pressed the button 'install WordPress' and it gave this error. I think it's tied to the Captain August site's error screen, but I have no idea how its architecture works. Others have been kind enough to arrange the inner workings for me, I have only ever just supplied the content.

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Maybe Captain August is a WordPress site that's already installed and is conflicting with your new one? I remember needing to give my new WP install a database prefix (inside wp-config.php) different to the old WP site to get it to work.

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Oh man, I am hilariously ill-equipped to tackle these problems. Maybe I should just get the easiest install. Let's try Blogger next.

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So, I've been tinkering around with Blogger, and so far I like what I see. It's all pretty customizable, I was able to easily tear out some bothersome, superfluous bits and came up with what I hope is a clean and pleasant design.

http://filmadeus.blogspot.com

Commentary more than welcome! It's a bit shit right now, but hopefully it can be improved with your insights.

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Can someone tell me how to increase the width of the posts on Blogger/Blogspot?! I hate this about it. If I'm trying to show art it squeezes the pictures too much and my text looks like a weird prose poem all the time.

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As far as I can tell, you can adjust this in the 'sjablonen' (sorry, that's Dutch) tab, there's an 'adjust width' option.

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You're welcome! I'm still tinkering with my own design. I think I do want the design with a big picture in the background, because I like how colorful it makes the site, but I do want it to fit the theme. So I'm thinking: nice big screens from good movies in the background. I can rotate them every once in a while, while keeping the design the same.

Another question for the collective hive mind: do you feel the ability to comment on a review is an additional reason to read a blog, or don't you care about voicing in?

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Another question for the collective hive mind: do you feel the ability to comment on a review is an additional reason to read a blog, or don't you care about voicing in?

When you're feeling uninspired, receiving a complementary comment your blog can give you some energy. The flip side is that you can get some assholes posting on anything you've written.

As for reading. Sometimes I like to be able to interact. Sometimes comments can add further insight. But there's nothing worse than reading something which you think is rather excellent, and then reading a comment from someone who didn't understand what was being said. (It is the internet, after all -- just look at YouTube!)

Sometimes I feel comments should be banned altogether, and I contemplate installing a Chrome extension which hides all comments by default...

I personally think people should exercise more control. Somewhere along the way it became considered "dishonest" or "uncool" or something to delete comments. I think that's total nonsense. I wish people would delete rude and obnoxious comments from their content. If someone has a reasonable critique, then fair enough, but if it's just "You suck! You totally didn't understand that film! You idiot!!!" then it's just adding another bit of shit to everyone's day.

That's my 2c.

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Commenting isn't really a motivator for me, but it is nice to have the ability for that one time in a blue moon that I want to pick up on a point or fact in the post/article. It's more of a motivator if I know there's a strong possibility of the author replying most of the time.

Also, I fully support a site's right to delete mean/stupid/pointless comments. Not everywhere has to be Reddit.

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I like the ability to comment. What I don't like is how a lot of blogs stick, in their comments section weird/stupid trackbacks. This blog post isn't too bad - there's a fairly clear visual distinction between the comments at the top and the trackbacks at the bottom. Unlimited Hyperbole is a bit worse - notice how it's a kind of a mess down there at the bottom. The worst are the ones that just mix the two together, although I don't have an example off the top of my head. I too, like Ben X, have no problem with brutal repressive censorship.

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Hurrah. Glad you found an easy solution, Rodi.

Yeah, I guess in the end I just trusted more on the moral fiber of Thunderpeel than everyone else here, choosing Blogger. Choose your allegiance! Ahrem.

I generally don't care about comments on most sites, though I might just opt for comments on my own to see if anything good comes from it. Can always just switch them off afterwards if it turns out either a bad influence or superfluous. Thanks for your insights, people who posted.

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I've always hated the two-column blog layout. The side-column just detracts from the content, and isn't even that useful.

I prefer to center the content, and increase the font size (and line spacing) a little. Most links (archive, twitter, about) can go across the top, along with the one-line blog description.

As for comments, I prefer to disable comments and leave contact information instead. In my experience, comments that are emailed in tend to be far more thoughtful. You may miss out on the odd insightful comment here and there, but it works out pretty nicely overall.

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Agreed. If all you have is a simple blog, you can have "About" "Categories" whatever, links at the top and just drop the sidebar entirely. Content front and center! :) Also, Rodi, IMO I'd drop the transparency on the main box, 'cause it looks a bit confusing right now. EDIT: Actually, that's only a problem for the sidebar, so if you'd remove that Problem Solved.

Steve Zissou in the background? I approve. :tup:

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Thanks for chiming in. I've been messing around with the design all day and was indeed just about to drop the transparency. One of the things I like about the sidebar are the possibilities for gadgets that will actually enhance the blog, such as displaying tweets (which unfortunately doesn't seem to work right now). I think there's plenty of room for the blog itself and I'm taking a lot of care to make elements as unobtrusive as possible.

Heh, I look forward to actually posting on my blog instead of messing around with the design.

[EDIT] Righto, I think I may have something resembling a passable blog now!

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You're right, if you have stuff like twitter feeds and such the sidebar is quite useful.

It's looking great now. The text in the sidebar (the about text) is too dark, needs to be lighter than that dark blue, methinks?

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Thanks! I've made the blue a little lighter. The text is unfortunately tied to all the other text, so I've made it black. It should be legible enough. The main attraction should be the blogs, so the contrast is highest there.

I've also registered a proper domain: http://www.filmadeus.com

The only thing that bugs me at this point is that I don't know how to fix the HTML to give me rounded corners at the bottom of the main body. And of course, I hope the Twitter feed starts working at some point. Other than that, we've got a blog.

[EDIT] I've managed to conjure up the rounded corner and for now disabled the Twitter feed, until the time it works again (I've tried various different widgets and custom javascript code, to no avail).

So I think the blog design is pretty much finished, barring some slight adjustments for legibility. Time for a mission statement! With Filmadeus I'm going to put up film reviews or articles. The idea is for these posts to be relatively short while still offering some (hopefully) quality reflection. No grading or scores. I plan on posting a new bit every few days, which should be doable.

Also, thanks everyone here for the offered help setting up my blog, and specifically motivating me to get it together.

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Last update: I managed to get the Twitter feed to work as well! The standard widgets are still useless, but someone gave me some HTML code that worked like a charm. I don't know what did it, I'm just glad it did.

Still missing something? Let me know!

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Just my two cents: you should probably have more contrast between the background tiled image and the content in the dark blue frame because it hurts my eyes a bit. The content is interesting though.

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Do you have a clear suggestion for that? Others have told me the background is too distracting. I could make it monochrome (blue or greenish), that would at least create a less explosive visual impact.

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You could try darkening it, should take some of the attention away from it. Here's a super quick mockup.

post-6135-0-09208000-1352716858_thumb.jpg

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