Chugging along

Chugging along on Sanctuary of the Wood when I can. Had some longer hours at work and a lot of other stuff on my plate, but it’s coming along.

I’m concentrating on it for the time being because of the contest deadline ( which while still quite a ways in the future, can be a problem if I encounter muse issues ) and the tradition I have of posting one every year. I don’t want to break that.

I’m enjoying the change-up from the last few. I mentioned it a few blog posts ago, but this one is a different type of story, though it will still be easily recognizable as part of the series. I’m just blending the more recent stories with the first in the series.

Thought I’d drop a line. I also make posts on the forum and sing out on the shoutbox there, so there may be stuff there even when I don’t update this blog. If it looks silent for a day or two, check those other places and see if there’s something going on 🙂

Much better

The new direction of Sanctuary is one I’m much happier with. It doesn’t have that draggy feeling the original was giving me.

I went through the blog subscribers and eliminated around 70 that either showed up in the spam database, had names that looked plain spammy, or came from the .ru/.pl domains. Hope I didn’t get any legitimate subscribers, but I’m trying to clean up things now that the new anti-spam plugin is catching the spam subscribers before they can clutter my database 😀

I am so loving this spam database. It’s like the Roach Motel for spammers. They check in, but they don’t check out.

Not that I’m complaining about the standard plug-in that catches spam comments. It does a wonderful job as well, and hasn’t let a single spam comment come through. It just wasn’t stopping spam registrations, and this one is 🙂 It’s the double-whammy.

When you combine that with the same spam protection on the forum, my website is now wonderfully free of spammers. I smile every morning when I get up and evening when I get home from work as I review the error log of banned spammers desperately trying to log in or post spam.

I’m going to try to remember to start adding tags to my blog posts, in order to better index in search engines. That’s good for everybody, because it can lead to more feedback, which helps my motivation, which gets more stories out.

Back to formula on Sanctuary

Getting started on Sanctuary again with the new starting point and altered main character. Think it’s going to flow much better this way.

This one’s going to be a little different than the last several. In a way, it’s a little more like the first of the series, but there are differences. It’s sort of a melding of Steward and the rest of the stories in the series.

Hard to explain, but I guess you’ll see when it comes out 🙂

Had to do some last minute coding to fix something this morning, but otherwise, I’m going to set the website aside for a few days and try to concentrate on writing. I was using the website as a way to keep me busy when my muse was napping on me, but then I got obsessed *laugh*

Accomplishing several goals has leveled off that obsession, and I think I can get back to writing again. Plotlines and characters are starting to yell at me from the back of my head again. Letting all that stuff build up sometimes is helpful to advance stories.

Nearly finished fixing code

I’m almost done fixing all the code on my website to validate to xhtml strict. The only page left to do is the front page.

Let me know if you see anything strange happening. I’ve checked all the pages, but I know what’s supposed to happen, so I may miss something. You can use the bug report form on any page that glitches.

I also fixed a bug in the new “Show All” page on “My Work” that wasn’t clearing up data properly, so it was generating links that didn’t exist for “reviews” on some stories.

EDIT: And DONE! The entire ( visible ) website now validates to xhtml strict. It’s been bugging me for a while, and now it’s all in compliance.

Fixing a few things

I knew pretty much nothing about CSS and XHTML Strict when I started this redesign. I was just building on a generic template.

Lo, the ugliness when I started checking with the validator. Ugh…

Anyway, I’m coding all future pages so they’ll be fully validated before going live. I’ve also fixed several universal blocks and some one-page-only blocks to fix numerous errors. I’ll steadily fix the other blocks and pages so that they all validate properly.

In some cases ( such as the Latest Releases page ) this will mean losing something, although I doubt many will care. On that page, I had to get rid of the “opens in a new window” functionality. Actually, I could have kept it, but it would have required huge amounts of recoding, and when I balanced it out, I decided the functionality wasn’t worth the effort involved. A quick backspace of a few characters, and the page validates completely.

Most of my errors are from using tags such as img and br in the old format, and the new strict format requires these tags to “self close” with an ending slash. Fortunately, a lot of these are in blocks, and I was able to nuke all the problems with a few keystrokes.

Unfortunately, there are a lot on individual pages that I’ll have to fix one at a time *laugh*

Ditto for image tags, which require the alt attribute in all lower-case now. Pain in the ass…

I’ve also figured out another big problem, which involved me not understanding classes and id. While the pages display fine, they won’t validate. All it really requires is changing a couple of IDs to Classes in both the css and the page, but that’s something I’ll want to do very late at night, to minimize the possibility of people seeing broken pages in the meantime.

I have corrected this on the Latest Releases page, which should look no different than it ever has. The same will be true of the rest of the pages where these fixes will go in.

Getting everything into compliance should help my search engine ranking, which might draw more eyes to my stories, which is part of the goal of the website. I also need to go through and add descriptions + keywords to every page. Even though the first is low priority and the second almost no priority in searches, they should really still be there.

Getting everything fixed will also get me in the habit, making coding everything correctly the first time more likely.

Added one more thing to the forum as well. The current version of the software removed the little online indicator when viewing threads, and I installed a hook to restore this functionality. I’ve always liked it, and there are a lot of people who do as well, so it’s back on my board, dagnabbit! Coming from one of the best invision coders as well, and fully supported.

There’s another hook by this coder I might take advantage of in the future as well. It allows me to use blocks within the suite that I build my webpages in on the sidebar of my forum. I’ll probably add a “Latest Release” block to the sidebar there. If the forum ever takes off, a lot of people are likely to bookmark the forum rather than the main site ( I know I often do this ) and that will provide a new story alert to anyone who does this.

The young one is just not cooperating with writing today. He’s been upset all day, and I’ve been alternately trying to figure out what his problem is and engaging in his favorite play to cheer him up. The latter tells me that it’s probably just a mood, because if he was sick or something, playing might make him smile while we were at it, but he’d immediately go back to whining. It’s tough when he can’t tell me what hurts or anything of that nature. 🙁

Maybe once he winds down for the night, or before he gets up in the morning.

EDIT: Down to 10 pages ( visible to anyone but me ) left to fix for full validation. Two of them won’t take long, and may get done while the young one is falling asleep ( winding down now ) One is the main page, and I’m going to wait until the lowest traffic time possible to fix that one. Ditto for four more. Three I may cheat and change to a new style sheet on, as they’re connected to the group of four. If I don’t switch it up ( probably should be done anyway ) then that will be seven pages I’ll have to edit fast to keep them from showing up screwy to any visitors who stumble across them while I’m working.