JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

Another update on ongoing changes to the site. In addition to new themes, a spell check plugin has been added to the site. I was able to find the site icon on the “weekly hogen” search in Feedster and the “today’s current weather” search in Technorati. So, little by little the changes are beginning to take effect.

Okay here I go again. My Feedster icon only shows in the actual Feedster account, not on the Feedster search section. So I’m trying to see what it takes to get that portion of the site to display the icon.

If you have been following the site then you will notice I’ve made a few changes. The varying themes have been updated to provide a more complete and wider selection. I’ve also added links for little “escapes” from the island life. I am continuing to try and learn the scripting languages of each program in order to provide a site that can be viewed accurately in as many applications as possible. Good news is I was finally able to get my icon on the Feedster claim and it actually shows up on the Technorati site!!! One down, one million nine hundred ninety-nine… things to go.

Not giving up on this yet:

Okay, after five tries, I finally got Feedster to recognize my claim. It seems there is a step missing in the instructions. Or at least after I did this non-mentioned step Feedster recognized the claim. After you post the claim HTML, view the site and click on the link.

Now if I can just get Feedster to recognize my Jpeg for the icon. On and On, and on and on…. LOL

In my quest to find the best uncomplicated method to provide images to the widest array of mobile devices, I have reached the following solution (for now).

Open two copies of your browser (One for the blog and one for the Flickr account)
Go to the Flickr site and open a Yahoo account
Open a Flickr account [try to use the same user name for your blog, Yahoo account, and Flickr account to keep others (and yourself) from being confused when viewing your Flickr photo gallery]
Upload images to Flickr

For each image applicable:
Select image and all sizes
Select thumbnail
Copy and paste HTML info (selection 2) into your post (Note: it helps to create a message such as “Click on image to view large size” on line following image)

So far this is the only method that allows all images I have used with it to be viewed on my Japanese mobile phone. Usually image files are too large to be loaded. Also, the Flickr account lets you use a “buddy icon” that can produce a sense of continuity between the blog and Flickr gallery. I simply used my blog URL icon (favicon), enlarged it in photo editor, used “Paint” to save as a Jpeg, and uploaded it to the Flickr account buddy icon section of “Your Account”.

Good news, I was able to get the mobile page’s Japanese characters to display properly my mobile phone . If your Japanese cell phone isn’t showing the blog’s Japanese font properly, try going to the menu for help. Click on the menu and make sure the font selected is UTF-8. This should eleminate the garbled mess that appears if the font for the blog is set on something else.

Here it is almost two weeks since I last discussed blog search engines. I’ve posted daily, usually more than one post, since that time and what I’ve discovered is the posts don’t always get picked-up by the blog search engines. I believe the best bet in keeping up-to-date with a site or topic you find interesting is by suscribing to that site’s feeds with an aggregator (also known as a reader). I use Sharp Reader. Aggregators also let you keep up-to-date with comments. In some cases, regular blog search engines will not pick comments up because the adminstrator has turned “allow pings” off in the discussion section. To suscribe to a feed of a site you like simply type or copy the URL into the aggregator’s “suscribe” or “open” feed section.

If you are new to the WordPress blogging world, the first thing I recommend is learning about plugins. These are your best friend in fighting spam. The two absolutely necessary plugins, as far as I’m concerned, are Kitten’s Spaminator and Smart Update Pinger. Kitten’s Spaminator eliminates all the unwanted nonsense of outside spammers. Smart Update keeps you from getting banned from search engines as you make editing corrections to your posts while you learn how WordPress and blogging works. Even better than that, both have very uncomplicated installation instructions. Putting these two plugins on your side will allow you to keep on sluggin’ in the game of blogging.

Well, I’ve been keeping track of how quickly two Blog Search Engines pick-up a new post. So far the quickest is IceRocket. Feedster is a little slower, and so far I haven’t been able to claim any of the posts (even when I follow their instructions). I’m going to try again in case they are having complications.

(Removed feed claim do to nonrecognition by Feedster claimfeed. 7:34p.m.)