Web Work

I have spent the better part of my free time this week FINALLY tying together all of my blogs and my "professional" site - the result is The Home of the Cool Librarian.

Today was challenging. First, we lost power for a few hours to a nasty coastal storm system. Then, Blogger was down just about all day. But, I managed to get just about everything tied up - my personal blog, jessica, while functional, will be in better shape by next week (I am going on a camping trip this weekend, and will be offline for a few days - eegads).

If you are reading this, or any of my blogs, I thank you. If you have a blog, I'd love to list it in my blogroll, and would love a link on yours as well. Maybe it's just me, but the hours spent doing this stuff seems much more worth it if I think people are actually reading. I'm finding that it takes a long time for a blog to catch on if you aren't yet in the "inner library blog sanctum," but I'm going to hang in there.

On a technical note: I have used a number of tools to create my various blogs and webpages, and that was not an accident (though it may look like one). This, and my new jessica blog are managed in Blogger. I find Blogger to be the "easiest" of the blog tools in terms of initial set-up, especially if you are interested in screwing with the template code for a personalized look. My librayland blog is powered by WordPress, which was the perfect tool for a multi-page setup like that - though I find WP to take MUCH longer to get going initially, and the templates a bit more difficult to personalize (OK, a lot more difficult). Hats off to the WP theme creators - I don't know how you do it.

My business page was hand coded with HTML and CSS. A bit of a process, but so easy to maintain once it is together, and completely "controllable." It also produced the professional look I was going for. My undying gratitude to Auntie Weasel for letting me rip off some of her code. The logo was designed by a commercial art student.

Lastly, my home page was created in, get this, Publisher of all things. This was a total lark/experiment. I have been using Publisher for years, and I actually use Publisher to design any graphics I may need (because I am too lazy to learn Illustrator/Photoshop). Yes, laugh all you want - I know I'm a hack. But, for all the drawbacks, and there are many, Publisher was a QUICK fix for me, and produced a somewhat hazy-looking page that goes perfectly with the color pallette I used and the mood I was trying to create.

Oh, yeah, the color scheme I used for the homepage and the jessica blog is called yinyang green, and I found it on the wonderful Colour Lovers site. If you are a color freak, check it out.

Aren't you glad I told you all this?