You may have noticed, some commenters have created a “signature line” for their comments, which provides links to their blogs or websites, or quotes or other info about themselves. Learn more about signature lines in today’s Daily Blog Tip.

Several readers have mentioned that they miss the way the old blog used to highlight names of those who provided the URL (link) to a blog or website, meaning you could visit their sites to learn more about your fellow commenters. Rugbyplayingpriest’s comment is typical:

The one thing I miss is the manner in which the old site made weblinked names blue- thus easy for people to navigate to one another’s own websites. Could it be re-introduced?

To our knowledge, it can’t be reintroduced in quite as simple a fashion (On the old blog, you had the choice every time you posted a comment as to whether you wanted to include a URL.)

The way to provide links to your blog or website on the new site is to use a signature line. Several commenters have started using them. Here are a few examples. (note you will only be able to see these if you have your preferences set to view signatures. see details below):
Ross
D.C. Toedt
NewTrollObserver
Dr. Priscilla Turner
LfN
SanDiegoAnglicans
Hakkatan

(This is not an exhaustive list of those using signature lines. All of the above are the signature lines from one single thread. Sorry we couldn’t link every user who has set up a signature. Feel free to comment on this post if you have a signature set up — Show off a bit!!)

And no, as of writing this, we elves had not set up a signature yet! So, we’re going to use this post as our means of doing so.

So, now that you know what a signature line is, HOW do you create one?

1. You must be logged in to the site
2. Go to Your Account (which replaces the login link whenever you are logged in)
3. Look for the “Edit Signature” choice in the left menu
4. You can put in a quote or saying. You can put in a link, whatever.
5. To put in a link, you can just paste the URL in the text box. The software will automatically code it for you. (Correction from earlier)
6. Finally, as noted above, you will only be able to view others’ signatures if you have selected that option in the Preferences menu.

As always, let us know if you’ve got questions or need further help with what we’ve written here.

FEEL FREE TO USE THIS COMMENT THREAD TO TEST OUT YOUR SIGNATURES — it may take a few tries to get it to look like you want. That’s one of the reasons we set up this thread! Note: all changes are retroactive and your new signature will show up in ALL of your comments, even those made before you created your signature.

An opportunity to give feedback on the T19 Archive pages… And don’t forget. Any questions or problems? Write us: T19elves@yahoo.com

I think we have the T19 Archives working pretty well now. (They now show only T19 entries, whereas before they were mixing up T19 and Stand Firm entries). Try clicking on the monthly archive links at the bottom of the right sidebar and let us know what you think.

Is the current arrangement clear? useful?

The page design is about as boring as can be, but we can worry about that later… 😉 Right now we’re aiming for content and functionality.

I don’t know if it is possible to include more info along with the title of and link to each post:
— post date?
— author? (e.g. Kendall or elves)
— a short excerpt?

If possible, would you want to see some or all of that information?

If it’s helpful to compare with old T19 Archives, here’s link for April 2007 archives from the old blog
http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?m=200704

If you can’t get CaNNet to come up, here’s the link to that archive in the Google Cache

As on the old Titusonenine site, we are using a daily calendar here in the sidebar. You can click on the date to quickly view each day’s entries. It’s simple & easy. But right now there are a few small issues with the calendar. Please read this even if it seems to be way too basic to be of interest.

Update: After this post was written and posted, we made some changes to the blog set up that affect blog navigation. There is also more news about the calendar. PLEASE make sure you read all the way to the end of the post for the latest and most current info!

Update #2:
We’ve now added some blog navigation tools to go back and forth between individual articles without returning to the blog homepage, which should be nice especially for long comment threads. See end of full text for details.

On some blogs, one of the most important reasons to have a calendar in the sidebar is to see which days the author has written something. On a day with posts, the date is highlighted and clickable. On a day without posts, the date is fainter and not clickable. For T19, that is basically a moot point. Kendall did not miss a single day of blogging on his old site from the day he launched it (Jan 15, 2004) to the day he shut it down (May 22, 2007). INCREDIBLE!!! Thank you Kendall for your amazing commitment and dedication.

But apart from being able to tell what dates have blog entries, there are 3 big advantages to getting in the habit of clicking on the calendar each day:

1. It makes scrolling much easier with a shorter page to scroll.

2. The page loads faster, with fewer posts to show.

3. You can instantly see any new entries have been posted. In these early days of this new blog, this might be of particular interest, since, as most readers will have noted, we are often making some of the blog admin posts “sticky” — meaning they are held at the top of the page and new entries are posted beneath. Whenever there are sticky posts up top, it may not be obvious whether there are any new entries until you scroll down a little ways. Clicking on today’s date, however, always ensures you will see the NEWEST posts at the top. Sticky posts are no longer “sticky” when you are using the calendar, they revert to displaying on whatever date they were first posted.

There of course is also the ease of quickly getting to an entry posted on a previous date. If you know the date you can click on the calendar and browse that day’s entries. This is helpful when you don’t remember the title and a keyword search might be difficult.

IMPORTANT: Mysteriously, several dates in the calendar (currently May 22 – 25) are broken. Even though there are lots of posts for each of those days, the date acts as if there were no posts. Greg is working on that and we hope it will be fixed ASAP. [It appears something is causing the calendar to only display the most recent 7 days of activity. We think it can be fixed pretty quickly now that we’ve figured out the problem.]

Here’s how you can get around the problem in the meantime:

There is a very simple format for the links to each day’s entries. If a given date is broken in the calendar, you can use the following links to get you to the daily archives:

May 22: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/2007/05/22/
May 23: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/2007/05/23/
May 24: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/2007/05/24/
May 25: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/2007/05/25/

Since we are posting this on June 1, it is perhaps helpful to explain how to see the previous month’s calendar. To the left of “June 2007” at the top of the calendar, you’ll see double arrows. Click on those left double arrows and you’ll be taken back to the May calendar.

Finally, while on the topic of blog navigation: we’ve had some e-mails from readers saying that when they login they keep seeing old entries. We’ve added a link at the very top of the sidebar to the blog homepage (i.e. the main page). You can also always get there by clicking on the TitusONEnine logo at the top of the blog. This way, if you login and get directed to an old entry, you can quickly get to the home page and the latest entries. (Or once again, click on the calendar to see the date you are interested in.)

————–
UPDATE 1:

Since first posting this article, we have set up pagination. The main page now displays the 50 most-recent entries (usually equal to 2-3 days’ worth of articles). You can then click on the next page to see earlier entries. All entries from the blog’s launch through today are now available by following the page links at the bottom of the blog.

Hope this is helpful. As always, we welcome your questions & suggestions.

——————————————————-
UPDATE 2: (11:45 GMT / 07:45 EDT) — Another Blog Navigation Upgrade!

We were reading the 100+ comment thread on speaking in tongues this morning. And as we got to the end of that long thread, we thought to ourselves: “Self, you clever elf, do you know what would be really nice? Being able to click to get to the next entry, or get back to the home page without having to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page!” So, being an elf, with all of our wonderful magic powers, we made our wish come true!

Now when you get to the end of an individual article and its comment thread, you will see three links:

Next entry (above): [article name and link] — this goes to the NEWER article
Previous entry (below): [article nameand link] — this goes to the OLDER article

Return to blog homepage [returns you to the blog’s main page]

Hope you agree with us that this is a nice feature!

Note: if you are in the comment section of a “sticky” post that is displaying at the top of the blog, the “next” or “previous entries” relate to chronological order when the sticky post was first written. So if there is a sticky post from May 29 still on the top of the blog today, the other articles in the next or previous sequence will be from May 29, not today, June 1.

UPDATE 3: Check out the new “Blog Admin Stuff” section in the sidebar.
When you roll over each link you get a pop-up description about each post. We are so cool we amaze ourselves sometimes! :coolsmile:

Just a heads up. We’re slowly figuring out Expression Engine templates, tags and modules, and starting to try and setup the sidebar. Feel free to let us know your preferences in the comments.

Note: the May 2007 archive link that is now showing up at the bottom of the sidebar still needs work. It is displaying results from both T19 and Stand Firm. And there is a lot of stuff yet to fix and edit in the Archive Template page. Please ignore the mess for now. Hopefully we can get back to it tomorrow.

Update: We’ve found a way for the category structure to be displayed. You can take a sneak peak here. It is nothing like what the final product will be. (Can you imagine one page with everything Kendall has ever posted by category?! Even after only 1 week, the list is overwhelming. He’s up to about 160 posts already, maybe a bit more.) But it will give readers an idea of how the category structure works and what gets posted where. TONS of work still needed though to turn this into something actually usable.

UPDATE 2: WOOHOO!!! We’ve got category links now working in each post. If you click a category you will see all posts displayed in the category. Sweet!

==> Your feedback on sidebar, categories and other blog design elements is both NEEDED & MUCH APPRECIATED. Thanks to those who are offering input and ideas!

As regular readers will know, we elves like lists and data. On Monday, we posted a “Titusonenine Top Ten” list to help those still trying to learn their way around the new blog have an easy way to find the posts that are generating the most comments. (One wag said since this is “T19” it should be a “top nine list!” We might just do that in the future…!)

So, how did we come up with that list? Is it just elfin magic? Or can regular readers quickly see what threads are being hotly discussed? Read on! With the new advanced search features here, you too can be an elf!

Here is how to search the blog for the posts with the most comments yourself, using the Advanced Search feature.

1. Go into Advanced Search (up at the top right near the search box and calendar)
2. For the broadest search possible, enter “the” as your keyword (you can of course limit to some keyword of your choosing, e.g. Anglican).
3. Choose: Search on Titles, Entries and Comments in the pull down menu to make sure you’ll get all posts
4. Choose: Titusonenine in the blog selection menu
5. Choose: Any Category to search on ALL categories. Or limit to the category / categories of your choice. (Yes you can select MULTIPLE categories)
6. Finally, over on the far right choose: “Sort Results By: MOST COMMENTS”

This will give you a list of posts with the most comments EVER (assuming you’ve not limited your search by keyword or category).

You could also limit the date range of your search, example “today and newer” or “this week and newer.” Try it out!

I thought it would be helpful to begin a series of posts highlighting tips about and features of the new blog.

Here’s the answer to a question we have seen several times in the comments: How can I permanently turn off the “Notify me of follow-up comments?” feature? I keep forgetting and now my inbox is full!

We replied to one commenter in some detail here:

Library Jim. Go into Your Account, and the e-mail settings button
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/member/edit_email/
There you will see an option
Enable email notifications by default when you post messages

UNCHECK IT. Once you uncheck it, the “notify me of follow-up comments box” will be automatically unselected.

Also, If you have various threads for which you mistakenly had the “notify me of follow-up comments” box checked and for which you want to UNSUBSCRIBE from future comments, you can go into subscription manager, also in your account control panel:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/member/edit_subscriptions/

There you can unsubscribe from any comment threads you are subscribed to.

Rather than just tell you how to turn off this feature, however, let me also urge folks to read Greg G’s comment in the same thread, where he explains more about the e-mail settings for the blog and why some folks may want to keep the “notify me of follow up comments” option checked. Most important is his exhortation:

I strongly recommend everyone spend a few minutes poking around in their control panel. You can do a lot to customize the way you experience the site.

Note, what Greg refers to as the “control panel” is accessed with the “Your Account” link, which you can see once you have logged in. You must be a member and logged in to see it. The “Your Account” link is up at the top of the sidebar, above the search box and calendar.

That’s it for today’s lesson. Feel free to let us know what tips and lessons would be helpful. You’ll be able to find all these “Tips” posts by searching on “Blog Tip” or the Admin Category. –elfgirl

Update — June 1: We’ve made several changes to the blog “pagination” and navigation system overnight. You can learn all about what’s new in today’s “Daily Blog Tip” entry.

An open thread for all reports of “bugs,” and “turkeys” (definitions below) and requests about the blog function & setup.

The Background:
We found a bug with the search feature this morning. It is being worked on and should be almost fixed as I type this. [The links to blog entries which showed up in the search results were giving an error message when one clicked on the article title. Should be fixed very soon we hope. Thanks Greg!] UPDATE: Bug is fixed. Greg rocks!

The Request
Since we made this switch to a new blog quite quickly, there is still a lot to do and you all get a chance to give your input. We need input from you all in three areas:

1. Bugs.
(Something that is not working. It is supposed to do one thing, but does another.)

2. Turkeys.
(Something that is working as it “should” but which is not well designed or helpful, and thus perhaps it can be improved)

3. Requests.
Just that. Your requests. Pure & Simple. The new T19 is still a tabula rasa in some ways (example: the side bar). There are many features we haven’t even begun to work on or set up because we’re still working on the basics, and at least for us elves, still learning the software and what’s possible. What would you like to see here? What features would enhance T19 and make it the truly helpful and powerful resource that we would love it to be?

Many extra pairs of eyes and suggestions will be helpful to us. So, go to it. Many thanks!

— Elfgirl