Well, this has been quite an experience to say the least. I am a pretty competent html programmer, IMHO, but it has been quite some time since I have actually had to go through and ftp client and a bare bones web shell. It is all coming back fairly quickly, yet the progress of adding my existing poetry and stories is kind of going slower than I had hoped. I said in the original message that I posted here a couple of days ago that I was avoiding using frames. This is making the website have a much more professional feel, but it is also keeping me from adding too many things too quickly. I am going to have to go back and add the links to every single side bar on every single page, every single time I add a new link.
I am pretty sure that if I was using some sort of web page creation software that they would have a way to do that on a macro scale with micro effort, but, I am still pretty stern about being a notepad programmer. What this means to you (that being me as my only site traffic) is that there will probably never be any amazing shockwave flash files, or any other such eye candy. You should be thankful though that you never (probably) had to see the site that I put up on angelfire. I will put a link to that here for the hell of it.
If you dared to look at that link, I think that you would kind of enjoy the humble simplicity that I am going for here. I mean man, the amount of images and garbage on that site that does not really deliver any sort of a message at all…Alas, I was young, that was back in my stage of doing things just because I could. Whether or not the things I did were logical seemed to take a backseat to the ability to do them. Fear not, dear reader (that being me) I will soon scrap that entire site and move the usuable content (that being the poetry, and a few of the speaks his mind segments) over here.
Back to the point about the file addition a paragraph or so ago. I have a pretty good idea of what exactly is going to go in my little navbar on the side, I am even doing well to get a directory setup that is easy for me to use. I could, in theory, just put links to all the pages that I plan to have on the site over there, but that would result in a lot of dead links until such a point as I actually got all of them written/uploaded. I have always found it quite unprofessional to have dead links to pages on one’s own site though, and I don’t really know how long it would take me to write a main page for each link that was there. I guess I will find out before long though, as I am itching to get more content on this site than just the one arthur witles story.
Of course I could be doing that now, but instead I am typing about it here. That way, thirty years from now I will be able to look back at this page and say to myself, “Dear God, did I really not have anything better to do?”
One other thing that I will mention here, for no particular reason, is that with site hosting comes a unique email address. I had never really looked at that as a reason to set up a site, and now that I am monetarily obligated to maintain this site I guess I better go ahead and take advantage of it. I have used only web based email for a very long time, and I have done well with it. The major ones all have integrated anti-virus software that help to put my mind at ease. Of course, when the shit hits the fan and I get every virus from here to hell and back it may change my view. I actually tried to open a message through a web based email server (who shall reamin nameless until someone sends me a hefty check to endorse them) that I KNEW was a virus, and it would not let my system download it. Now that is the kind of security I want from an email server! As it is now, I am going to go back to using the base Outlook Express for receiving site email, though I will definitely NOT be sending any mail through it. I will also not be adding any addresses to the book there. Hell, to be frank, I might not read most of the messages for a horrible fear that they are virus infested, but, the upside is that I can forward them to the tried and true web based email that will scan them for me first (he says as his tower is slowly melting).
Well, damn, now it is time for the big game, I have not got a damn thing done that I was hoping to, and I don’t know if I will be coherent enough to give it a go later.
Oh well, there usually is a tomorrow.