Fun With Websites: The New Scribble Designs
By Gerard McGarry on 11th July 2005, filed in Web Design & Standards. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Welcome to the new Scribble Designs website! We’ve redesigned so that we could have a bit more fun with our website, while still showing off our Web Design skills!
The new site is built around a WordPress blog, which allows us to update it more regularly, from anywhere we have an internet connection! We’ve also included a few other cool things, such as our Flickr photostream which shows digital photography we’ve taken at events and places in Northern Ireland. We now also have an RSS feed, for those of you who want to be notified of updates to the Scribble website!
If you didn’t understand the technical bit above, don’t panic! I’m about to explain:
Blogs, Blogging and WordPress
Blogs (or Weblogs) have been taking over the world for the last few years as an easy way to manage your website. You have a control panel that you can log into to create articles for your site. You can use categories to organise the articles so that your visitors can focus on the things on your website that interest them! Information can also be organised into date archives, so that you and your visitors can easily refer back to earlier articles if necessary.
Blogs also allow your visitors to leave comments on your articles. Used properly, this can be a great forum for creative discussion.
While blogs initially started out as personal online diaries, they were quickly adopted by savvy businesses and hobbyists keen to prove their expertise in a certain area. We’re even seeing blogs entering the local media market. For example, the Slugger O’Toole blog provides political commentary on the situation in Northern Ireland. It is also a good example of a team blog where there are a number of authors contributing articles.
Using a blog allows us to update our site more regularly and to categorise the content! We’re hoping to post not only web design articles, but also photographs and information about Northern Ireland for those who are interested.
Flickr, and online photo albums
Flickr is an internet service which allows people all over the world to share photos. Signing up is free, but you must subscribe in order to access more advanced features.
People can go and visit your photos on Flickr. If you have a website, you can display images directly from Flickr. You can see an example in the right-hand sidebar. Again, Scribble will be using Flickr to store all our digital photography online, and you can click here to see the entire set.
RSS: Or How To Find Out When A Site Is Updated
RSS is another emerging technology that is changing the way people use the Internet. Let’s say you have a favorite website that you visit regularly. Wouldn’t it be nice if that site could let you know when it has new articles? Well, RSS can help you out.
RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, depending on who you listen to. All blogs carry an RSS feed, and some of the larger websites are starting to provide these. The BBC news website, for instance, has an RSS feed.
To take advantage of RSS feeds, you need to install an RSS reader. There are a growing number of these, both for your PC and online. Feed Demon is a software-based reader, while Bloglines is a web based version. The advantage of bloglines is that you can catch up with blogs and news sites from anywhere and it keeps track of what you’ve read.
I’ll provide more information on all of these later. In the meantime, enjoy the all-new Scribble Designs website!
