1/24/2007

We've had about 600 unique visitors to this site in January - not bad for beginners.  After notifying our friends, relatives and camera club members, we're calling the site "launched" but that doesn't mean "finished".  Today I've added a few images and notes.

 

Jean has another photogallery, http://members.cox.net/jeanbuck1/.  This week I've changed the format.  This gallery was made automatically using Photoshop's web page generator.  It would be nice to include those images directly in HornerBuck but I can't quite accomplish that within Microsoft Office Live Basic.  The link works quite well though. 

 

 

1/12/2007

Google wins! Today, for the first time, I was able to “find” this website with a Google search. I then tried a Microsoft search but no luck. Strange that Microsoft would not immediately place every website from Office Live into its search engine. I’ve even completed the information forms for Microsoft (and Google) about the site.

I’m doing a bit of light editing and touch-up work on the site tonight but still no extensive changes. 
 

 

 

12/24/2006
I found the original negatives for some of Jean’s photos of Ocean Springs and have re-scanned and edited those for the site.

Sitting at my computer on this Christmas Eve, it is time to remove the “Under Construction” note.

 

Once again, everything is bolded as I paste into the blog - even though it first displays as regular text.

Looks like about 140 visitors to the site in December but still no recognition from any search engine.

 

 

12/16/2006

Not exactly tomorrow, but I’ve added text for my Swiss Army knife and High Dynamic Range images.

 

The automatic bolding of this entire page everytime I paste something into it is terrible!

Google and Microsoft search engines still don’t know about HornerBuck.

 

 

12/9/2006
I’ve added a new page of my own photographs. No text yet – I’ll do that tomorrow.

Since the site hasn’t really been “launched” yet, I’m not changing any of the weekly photos, etc. But I am attempting to place images on every page.

Since images can’t really be placed where you want them, it is necessary to make an image that “fits”. I just created a composite, using Photoshop, of several images because the individual images could not be arranged as I wanted. On the other hand, I like the composite much better!

 

For some reason, when I make the date bold for an entry, the entire page of text becomes bold!  Not a good feature!

 

Neither Google nor Microsoft search engines know about the HornerBuck website.

 

 

12/1/2006
Not having an “undo” feature in editing can be very frustrating, especially when trying to learn the system. The “undo” would be especially useful when attempting to move images around the text. I’ve deleted an image far too many times! Which reminds me, why can images only be placed on the left of right sides of a zone? Surely anyone would have thought to allow left, right or centered in the zone!

Today I removed all the defaults and template words and images. In the “What’s New” page, I’ve included two photos – one for Jean and one for myself. These will be the “Photo of the Week”. Now to see how frequently I will actually change these images.

 

When signing up for OL Basics and initiating this website, I created various user names, email addresses and passwords but everytime I've attempted to log in as one of those users, the Microsoft procedures force me to change the password.  This is not pleasing to me.

 

Another oddity it that this blog is actually first typed into Microsoft Word and then copied and pasted onto this page.  Some formatting, especially bolding, is not carried along with the pasting. 


11/30/2006
Google search engine still does not know about HornerBuck website.


11/29/2006
Today I filled out the forms for the various search engines by entering keywords, phrases and a description. Of course, I had to immediately check to see if Google would find this website; it does not.

 

 

11/27/2006
I’m getting faster at adding content! Since the templates for OL Basic are rather limited, a bit of creative thinking is sometimes required. Also, it is best not to get locked-in to one way of thinking. Today, I wanted to add a hyperlink from a photo. Apparently this cannot be done directly but by adding a caption (well, any bit of text nearby), the hyperlink can be easily done from the text.

On the other hand, another problem comes up when resizing an image. All that is necessary is to select the image by clicking on it, then grab one of the corners, click and drag. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to maintain the correct proportions of the image. As a result, all resizing must be “eyeballed” in order to get the correct proportions. Maintaining proportions during resizing is now common to most programs that I use. In Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, the correct proportions are automatically maintained during resizing – but not in OL Basics!

 

I tested the “Contact Us” page and it seems to work. I decided to omit all contact information except for email. All this was easily done.

 

 

11/26/2006
No un-erase! But the cut and paste editing works as expected with the keystroke commands CTRL-X and CTRL-V. Also, just right click on some word or phrase and the pop-up menu will allow an easy hyperlink within the website. I used the hyperlink to connect the Home page “What’s New” summary to the full What’s New page.

 

 

11/25/2006
For our photo based website, the OL Basics header cannot be customized to include one of our photos! Instead, we must use an image contained in one of the OL Basics styles. What a bummer!

I’ve made a tentative decision to make a “Blog” on a text based page in this website using MS OL Basics. The Blog is first created as an MS Word document just in case Office Live loses all my documents.

Another decision is to make use of slide shows to show off photographs. That is, when there are enough photographs to illustrate a theme, I can add text to a slide show. I may still try to link to another website to show off the bulk of our photos.


11/24/2006
After agonizing all day, I finally signed up for OL Basics. My hesitation was because of lack of information about the details of OL Basics. Remember, it is OL Basics that is free. It seemed to me that that OL Basics might not be set up very well for photo galleries much less uploading a gallery derived from a Photoshop template. As it turns out, this is definitely true.

The only way to see the OL Basics templates is to sign up. I just didn’t want to sign up in order to check out the templates but I finally did so. No doubt Microsoft realizes this. The signup process isn’t exactly a few clicks but doesn’t take too long. Apparently (from reading messages in the OL Forum), having to enter credit card information is the most disconcerting part of the sign-up process to new enrollees. Having read those FAQ, I was prepared to enter credit card information for a *free* account.

The templates and styles contained in OL Basics are just as limiting as I had feared. Now I don’t know what to do. I’ve used my preferred domain name in the process. Sure, the domain name can be transferred but apparently that takes some time.

There is no real template for a photo gallery although there is a slide show. But, I’ve never particularly liked or used slide shows while browsing other websites. My first thought is to post the Photoshop web galleries on another site and provide a link from my MS OL Basics site.

There is no provision for a Blog? My favorite Blog is The Online Photographer (http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com). It is provided through http://www.blogger.com. Perhaps I’ll do the blogging through blogger and provide a link from this site. But then, what is a Blog? It would seem to be very easy to regularly update a “blog” page on this website using MS OL Basics.


11/23/2006
I accidentally came across Microsoft Office Live Basics while using my Hotmail account but immediately realized I should have been aware of OL Basics previously. In fact, I’m not sure how I could have missed it. I’ve been considering making a website for several months and was even a bit aggravated to discover that Microsoft was ceasing development of FrontPage. I have an old version (FP2000) and made a valiant effort, with some success, to use FrontPage several years ago. I had thought about upgrading to FrontPage 2006 – assuming that such a package was available -- only to discover that no such further development was planned.

My goal for a website was and is simple: a nice (well, elegant is more what I had in mind) website to show off the photographic endeavors of my wife and mine. I want to create photo galleries easily, preferably by using Photoshop, and upload those individual galleries to a personal website. I want a descriptive domain name with email capabilities. I want to tinker around with a Blog. Business transactions are not so important, especially initially.

Creating a web gallery from Photoshop is easy; it’s just not exactly what I want. I also use BreezeBrowser (http://www.breezesys.com/) a lot – probably every day. BreezeBrowser will create web gallery pages but again, not exactly what I want. I checked out JAlbum (http://jalbum.net/) and found it very nice but limited. Looking for a website development package, I checked out Nvu (http://www.nvu.com) but realized I’d have to learn more than I wanted to about website development). DreamWeaver (http://www.adobe.com) is probably what I need but is rather expensive. It seemed that, no matter what path was taken, I’d have to learn some sort of development package and invest at least a couple of hundred dollars per year to meet my goals.

Then I stumbled across MS Office Live Basics. OL Basics looks pretty good – and it’s free!