The TechnoDiva

We’ve all had them… THOSE weeks. The weeks where you’re flying twelve different directions doing everything for everyone when suddenly you realize it’s Friday and nothing has really been accomplished.

It’s been that kind of week for me. I’ve been busy every waking moment yet I’ve accomplished little. One of the things I thought I’d accomplished was updating the Romance Writers Ink site. This morning I received an email from a board member telling me that the page I updated yesterday was now missing.

Somehow in the process of saving the page I deleted every bit of content. I actually believe the error was due, in part or whole, to the Spaw WYSIWYG editor I’d installed in our Joomla content management system. I’ve had it happen before (and usually I double-check things before signing off on them!), but in my haste to get the update made and make a meeting half an hour later I didn’t check to make sure everything was published correctly.

My mistake.

This morning I had to recreate the whole page. (sigh)

Thanks to the fact that Google caches sites, I was able to copy and paste most of the text from the original page. I had to re-do the edits I made yesterday, but it sure beat having to rewrite the whole page!

The quick and dirty way to rescue a lost page is to do a search for your site on Google, then click the cached link.

Copy and paste your lost info and, violà! You’ve saved yourself a lot of work.

Still lovin’ the Google!

The better your html code is the easier it will be for any combination of browser and operating system to read your site. This means someone on a Mac using Safari can see your site as well as someone running Windows and Internet Explorer (or FireFox which is what I use!).

Good code also means faster download times. If you take the short amount of code I referred to in my last post and converted it into the 24 pages of junk code (also from last time!) which do you think would download into site visitor’s browsers faster? Hmm….I wonder.

Of course, these are the overly simplified reasons you want good code…but they ARE good reasons!

I know I promised a new series on blogging and I will start it soon, but I wanted to address a few things this week. You see, I’m speaking this weekend at Conestoga 2007 on Saturday so I want to give folks a bit of an appetizer and address some important issues in web design, too.

When working on your website it’s important to realize that the web is not print. It is not read the same way, it cannot be created the same way, it is not looked at the same way.

As an author one of your most important tools is probably a word processor of some sort. Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice are just three of the plethora of word processing programs out there. While these programs are great at what they do, they are not adequate for the web.

I know, I know, you can save your stuff in html format with these programs so it should be a no-brainer, right? Not exactly. The html code that a word processing program spits out is amazing. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Word is notorious for its junk code.

Once, just for kicks, I took a page of a site that I had hard coded (I wrote the code by hand) and converted it into Word’s html. One page of hand-written code turned into 24 pages (single spaced, one inch margins) of junk.

So…

If you’re designing your own site and don’t want to learn the nuances of html, get a good html editor. Invest in Microsoft Expression Web or Dreamweaver or another program made especially for the web. Try to avoid Microsoft Front Page. It has been discontinued (in favor of Expression Web) and it writes horrible code. We’ll talk about why good code is important next time!

Had to share this photo that I took last night at our fireworks display. I’m trying to learn photography so I was playing with all the settings on my camera last night. I got a few good photos. Here’s one for ya:

Watch for a new series on blogging coming soon!

While not website, marketing or writing related in any way (though I will tie technology into it here in a sec), I have to comment on this. Glamping is camping the way it should be. Persian rugs, antiques and a THERMOSTAT! I’m so all over this. Where can you find this wonderful oasis you ask? British Columbia at the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort.

Here’s what they say about themeselves:

In the decade since opening, the resort has grown its ’soft adventure and soft beds‘ program into one of the most exclusive and unique vacation offerings in the world.

I could so do that! There’s even a world-class chef and, get this…WIFI! I’m thinking I need a vacation but with the $40,000 to $50,000 a week price tag I need a sponsor. Anyone want to send me? I’d blog about it.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a Google lover. I use Gmail for my personal emailing, I use Picasa to keep my digital photos organized. I’ve also started using Google Docs & Spreadsheets for some of my writing projects. Google Docs will open Word, OpenOffice, rtf, and html documents and you can also create documents from scratch.

One of the major benefits for writers (besides it being free) is the collaboration feature. Since it’s saved on the web you can work on a group project without having to make sure each participant has the latest version of the document. As with any project you’ll want to keep a backup local copy just in case.

I use Google Docs to store website update information from clients. This way no matter where I am I can access the information to make changes on sites. Handy since I’m constantly toting kids to and from sports practice….my laptop and Panera’s WiFi connection are well acquainted!

If you haven’t tried Google Docs & Spreadsheets it’s well worth a try!

And, hey, if you have disorganized digital photos you might give Picasa a try (click the button below)….I love it and maybe you will too!