richwklein.com

One of the hot new features coming to Firefox 2.0 is microsummaries. Microsummaries are regularly-updated succinct compilations of the most important information on web pages. I decided to put together a sample microsummary for Digg.com.

This digg microsummary generator grabs the top story off the front page.

First install the generator, then bookmark Digg.com. In the bookmark properties dialog set the summary to “Digg Top Story”.

Firefox - Discover all the ways a browser can make the Web better for you. Firefox is the safest and most enjoyable way to surf the Web.

I blogged about how abysmal my visitor stats were. I vowed to improve them by being more active.

How have I done? I’ve went from an average of 6 readers a day, to having an average of 14 readers per day and climbing. I had a record 70 unique hits on April 24th, the day we released Forecastfox 9.0. Hopefully my readership will continue to grow, and I’ll keep people informed.

I decided to put together a little walkthrough of this site since some people may not be aware of what all is available. The site is made up of 4 parts, a header, footer, left column, and right column.

The left hand column of this site consists of blog posts from the last 5 days or if you are on one of my other pages, it shows the main content for that page.

The right hand column is the sidebar. First on the sidebar is my blogger profile. It includes a link to my complete profile. Next is a group of links for navigating around the site. One link is for the main page. One link is for any development ideas I would like to pursue in the future. One link is for a directory listing of people I graduated from high school with. From that page you can update your contact information, or request more information on somebody. The last of the links is for my Tip of the Day extension. I’m currently reworking it, and those pages will enable people to submit there tips. After the links section is my Flickr section. This rotates my public photos from flickr. 2 photos are shown at a time. Then we have the Digg section. This section lists out top tech stories from digg.com. After the digg section we have links to my previous blog posts, and my blog archives. The last 2 sections are ads from google and logos from different services I use.

The footer of the page has a stylesheet switcher. You can choose between 4 styles to display the page in. When you select a style it is persisted throughout the site, and will remain until you change to a different one. There is also a search box in the footer. This does a google search on this site.

Earlier in the week, I decided to revisit some websites I had designed several years ago.

• http://fbic.faithweb.com
• http://westoverbaptist.faithweb.com

I looked at these sites, and I say to my self. “What was I thinking?” I used table based layouts, fixed font sizes, and lots of other mistakes. It makes me shutter in horror now. The Westover site is still maintained by that church, so it will have to be left alone. The First Baptist site, however, has not been updated since 2001. I’ve decided to give it a modern makeover. I’ll be removing a bunch of outdated stuff. I’ll keep what content is still good, and I can add content later if people want. I should be publishing a new version of the site within a couple of days.

Below are some screenshots for posterity:

I’m trying to be more active in my postings. I think it is good for me. Hopefully, I can find a good balance of things I’m interested in, and things that other people will be interested in. Drop a comment if you have any suggestions.

I’ve had Google adSense on my site for a little over a year now. In that years time, I’ve made a total of $6.05. Isn’t that pretty sad? I’ve detailed in an earlier post, that I don’t get the most page hits in the world, so it really is not very suprising.

My site statistics are pretty sad. I average about 6 unique visitors a day, and about 14 page views. I really don’t know why I keep the site up to date for that. I guess those 6 people that read my blog wouldn’t know what to do without it

I’ve updated the website so all my pages use the same layout and stylesheets. My blog has always had multiple stylesheets that you can choose between, but it only worked with browsers that support it. I’ve added a stylesheet chooser to the footer of the site so the style can be changed with non-compliant browsers. Your selection is saved to a cookie so it will be the same on all pages on my site whenever you visit.

I realize over the past month I have not updated the site as much as I should. I do have excuses, but I will not bore you with the details. I’m going to renew my efforts at keeping the site updated. So if I go more than a week without some sort of post, please someone remind me.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks so I haven’t had much time to post lately. I just thought I would drop a note to say you should start to see more posts soon. I still have lots to say