Anguish and Tips

Today I got a fright...when I tried to open Bee online, I had a blank page. This is the problem when we have free hosts...when something goes wrong, we cannot complain.

When it finally came alive, Harry's Blogspeak comment line was gone (it used to be a free service). Fortunately, he was kind and considerate to direct us to Haloscan, which looks simple and efficient.

Many web developers are like us...webheads, who do it out of love, but there is a moment, for some, like Harry, who cannot continue unless they have some kind of support or sponsoring. The same goes for owning and managing a site. The English Department was launched in 1998 on Tripod, first on a free basis, with some pop-ups which started interfering with my hotpotatoes code. Last year, I decided to upgrade it and now I they charge me every month to keep it going. It is a great job and I love it but it costs me time and money.

I have some trouble with the HTML coding as I have not learnt it but I get by. I use Dreamweaver 4 for my site so when there is something I cannot manage, I just copy the whole code on a Dreamweaver blank page , work in there and re-post it once it looks the way I want it to be.

Surfing today I downloaded a programme called Blogjet, which I believe may solve my problem. According to the blurb: "With BlogJet you can easily make posts with different colors and fonts, insert pictures and links without knowing how to code HTML, just like you edit documents in Word. BlogJet displays formatted text in the editor so it looks like the same as it will appear in browser. " Fantastic ! A Dreamweaver for blogs! I still have to install it and verify (to be continued)

I'd like to make Bee online as interactive and equipped as possible to show the students and other teachers all the possibilities we have. This morning I read an interesting article on blogging in the New York Times called My So Called Blog by Emily Nussbaum and published on January 11th 2004. It gives you a psychological insight on how young people are using the blogs and how they feel about them.

Another good link for prospective bloggers is:
Ten Tips for a Better Weblog

And if you are already a seasoned blogger take an MIT Survey