. Comments remain the property of respective author. Powered by Drupal 
. Drupal is a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert.On the third day of Christmas...
Mon, 12/28/2009 - 00:58 — Elliot
…I finally started writing my first blog
I’ve been gently prodded by Andrew Sutton for years about starting my blog. After many a long email discussion on CE, he’d say ‘you should write that on your blog’. Well, now I can!
What took so long?
I’m a procrastinator. A dreamer. I was seduced by the allure of the technology of the social web, but I was more often interested in the inner workings than actually using it. But how can one truly appreciate the social media and it’s technological underpinnings without using it? It’s no good remaining an outsider. Now I’ve started blogging I’m sorry I put it off for so long.
I’ve chosen to build this blog using Drupal, a general purpose CMS, rather than a dedicated blogging system such as WordPress. I want the flexibility to do more than just blogging, and the fine grained control and total design freedom this approach offers. I intend expand this site beyond just a blog and I’d rather use a software platform that will accommodate this from the outset. Of course, flexibility and design freedom come at a price, namely, a steep learning curve, a long drawn out development process, and inevitably, lots of headaches.
I’ve spent too much time pondering which approach to use, instead of quickly getting down to the business of writing.
Trade offs
There’s a trade-off between getting started quickly and easily with an off-the-self blogging-specific solution, and the effort required at a later date to learn another system, then handle the migration of all the content from one to the other. I accept the that latter is sometimes unavoidable whatever system one chooses, but I’d rather plan ahead as much as possible and choose a platform that will allow flexible expansion. I’d prefer to invest in learning one system well, one that I know I’ll be able to make good use of for the foreseeable future, than find myself having to learn another from scratch, a year or so down the line, simply because I’ve out grown the basic blogging facility. I want to embrace the challenge, embrace the learning curve. But now I’ve broken the cycle I’ve been in for too long, ‘learning’ about the systems out there merely by reading up on them, and carrying out a few timid experiments in private. I’ve made my choice. Now the real experience can begin.
Only the begining
Now you should understand why it taken me so long to take the plunge and get started. Web design and development is a passion of mine and this is a longterm project. Sometimes the passion has got in the way of action. I will be documenting the process, the way this site develops, in this very blog.
This is only the beginning…
©2009–2010 Elliot Clifton. Blog posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK . Comments remain the property of respective author. Powered by Drupal . Drupal is a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert.
. Comments remain the property of respective author. Powered by Drupal . Drupal is a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert.
Comments
Welcome
It is very nice to see you in the blogosphere Elliot, I look forward to reading more.
Susie
Congratulations on being the first to comment
Thanks, Susie.
I hope you didn't have any trouble posting. How did you get on with spam filter? Did you have to type in a code? I'm interested in your feedback. (The same goes for any one else posting here).
I want to make the user experience as smooth as possible.
The focus here should be on reading, learning, responding, and sharing. Not fighting the computer to gain access, just to be able to comment. That's why you don't need to register. I'm learning from my mistakes.
This site is still a work in progress. I will be adding a way of following comments, as well as the facility to share post via social networks.
Cheers,
Elliot
See also: Tip to all forum providers, Voices of America
Trouble posting
1). I made my first comment.
and 2). I had a Yahoo address.
I did have to put in a code. 5 letters and graphic.
Possibly the hard part; though does force to think before posting.
Welcome aboard
Nice to see you here!
An invalable addition to the CE-blogosphere.
BTW, don't make one of the mistakes that I did. Stick on a hit counter, right now!
Andrew.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Hello Andrew,
There's already a hit counter running on this site. At the moment it's hidden. I'll make it visible as soon as I can.
Elliot
The Drupal Interface for Commenting: an end user view.
Elliot:
It looks terrific, full of everything I like. (for example: bolds, italics, cut, copy and paste! And lists, lots of lists!)
Sutton is right about a hit counter.
I have been on Drupal-like interfaces for six years and more, but never got so far as you have.
Have lots of fun customising it and making it accessible.
Passion versus action really made me think hard.
What are the non-blog qualities of this site which you hope to expand into?
Thanks for the positive feedback.
Adelaide,
Thanks for taking the time to write. Can I ask, how did you find my blog? I'm curious as to what your interest is. Did you follow the Drupal information trail to arrive here? Or did you find me through the Conductive Education social network?
If you don't mind, I will reply to you in parts.
Part I: The commenting interface
I'm pleased you liked the commenting interface. I think this an area of user experience that could be improved on most websites. Luckily, I was able to get in to this stage with Drupal in a couple of hours. How I achieved it would make a good topic for a future post. It's too in depth to enter into here.
I like the cut and paste feature, too. Don't forgot there's undo and redo available as well. I don't know how well they work, I haven't tried them yet!
Back to the site building...
Elliot
How I found you
I found you from the Conductive education social network.
Which is to say, I was reading Conductive World, and I clicked on your website, and will possibly bookmark it in the near future.
My interest? My discovery is really very recent. I first discovered Conductive Education shortly before Christmas Eve. I was especially impressed with the business model which Norman Perrin of PACES promoted, and that he had a Churchill Fellowship in 2007.
Then I found Andrew Sutton and now I have at least 6 Conductor Blogs inside my bookmarks.
Are your undos and redos step-by-step? Nisus Undo was really something back in the 1990s; most of the Internet Un/Redos I know don't go back more than 5 steps.
I would really love to see this blog shape and evolve.
As for commenting interfaces, it's really the sort of thing you learn from dipping in and getting in yourself! Like doing Visual Basic or similar plugins.
Thanks, Adelaide
Thanks for the kind mention, Adelaide.
I don't know if you know but I've tried to assemble (and try to keep up-to-date) a collection of CE-related blogs at The Conductive Web
My Churchill travel Fellowship was a hugely rewarding experience. I really do recommend every British conductor (and any other British national for that matter - age is no barrier to being granted a fellowship!) to think of applying for a travel fellowship.
The application process is straightforward, the interview completely unthreatening, the fellowship process completely supportive and the demands on you as a Fellow very reasonable indeed.
Nisus?
Adelaide,
Do you mean Nisus software? Then you are or have been a fellow Mac user, is that right?
Being a Mac User
Yes: though it was a long time ago!
Every day I use a little Windows computer which has XP on it.
The last time I regularly used a Mac was in 2002.
My little LC II finally got put away in 2006.
Blogging and social networking with Drupal
Regarding comment editing, it seems the undo does work across multiple steps. I don't know what factor limits the number of steps. There may be a hard coded limit, otherwise it'll be constrained by the clientside resources available. I doubt it will be an issue. These are only comments after all, not great works of literature.
It would be great to be able to save drafts of comments. I don't if this possible with readily available Drupal modules, or whether it would require writing a module from scratch. Anyway, it's not a priority feature.
I often write my comments using my favourite program and copy the text into the comment field. Hence the inclusion of a paste button.
Part II: Non blog qualities
A few possibilities:
To do all of theses would be very ambitious! There's no guarantee any one of these features will appear on this site. Right now I'm concentrating on the blog as the core of this site. The point is I could add these facilities directly to my site without having rely to on external services. I would have complete control of the implementation and the content. Of course this doesn't mean I won't make use of external services at some point. I've just broadened my choices.
Streamlined development
At one point, I was running forums using one piece of software, wikis using another, and blogs on something else. This became unmanageable and unworkable. Even just doing the development environment on my local system was a nightmare -- I was totally unproductive, overwhelmed, exhausted. I needed to consolidate. Hence my choice to use a content management system.
Elliot
Non-blog qualities
There are other sites which do this very well, like the Service Dogs website.
It is called http://servicedogcentral.org/content/ and looking around the features, it is great fun. (I've known about this site a few months).
Slideshows sound like a really good idea. The application I know which handles them is called SlideShare. Scribd also does this.
There was also a site called Bloki which had blogs, wikis and pages. Fizzled out after a short time, so could not make a use out of it.
Your new blog
Hello Elliot and welcome to the conductive education blogosphere.
I began my own blog as a sort of experiment: to find out what I might want to use a blog for. I had some sort of idea that it might reflect my experience and concerns as Chief Executive of Paces but beyond that was the unknown.
For some time now, I've wanted to re-design its appearance and content, yet not found the time to do so. So I'm very interested that you have opted for Drupal as a solution rather than a dedicated blogging package such as Blogger or WordPress or TypePad (which I use). I shall look forward with interest to see how you develop "I, Elliot" with Drupal.
I rather like the 'minimalist', even austere, design. Too many websites and blogs are, to my taste, far too cluttered.
One reason for posting a comment is to give you some feedback on the ease of doing so. If I don't add anything else, asume it was simple and easy!
Have a great 2010.
Norman
Cluttered blogs!
Even when blogs (and blogging templates, which is why I haven't played around with mine at the present time) are ostenibly 'accessible' there are still 'clutters'.
Elliot's is very simple, and yet, powerful, with the tag cloud and topics.
(Amanda Baggs, a disability activist and cat lover, has decided to take all tags off hers so that we can no longer click them. This is because of a new Wordpress theme she has chosen. She is still localising from German to English. I can imagine the fiddly bits and work involved).
Thanks for commenting
Norman,
I also often find blogs are too cluttered. They also frequently suffer from poor font choices and typography. I realise not everybody has the interest or skills I have, but there are relatively minor changes that can make big improvement.
It doesn't have to be a huge re-design job to of improving blog typography, there are few easy and simple ways.
On the subject of re-designs
I intend to develop this site's appearance, or theme in Drupal parlance. At the moment what you see is my 'tweaked' version of Drupal's default theme. There are still a few refinements I plan on making.
In the long-term, I want to develop my own theme for this blog. That will take a lot of time and effort. It certainly isn't something I'd recommend, people without a design background, or experience of web design attempt. Theming is consider one of the more advanced topics when learning Drupal. It's rewarding if you can master it, but it certainly isn't for everyone.
Don't be surprised if you see few changes in this blog's décor.
Elliot
Gotcha - captcha
So it wasn't quite so easy and simple! Captcha gotcha!
"We're sorry, but the spam filter thinks your submission could be spam. Please complete the CAPTCHA."
Wonder if it was because I posted from my googlemail address rather than from my .mac address?
Hope the feedback is useful to you.
"Not verified"
What does "Not verified" mean?
How would one become "Verified"?
Might one want to?
Would that be one way of avoiding the irritating CAPTCHA every time?
RE: Gotcha - captcha
Yes, it's annoying, I don't like them either. But it's necessary, I'm afraid.
Thanks for your feedback, this is one of the areas where I value it most. The security/access balance is problematic. I haven't yet found a way to resolve it to mine or my contributor's satisfaction.
Registration is one way of avoiding the CAPTCHA, but it doesn't eliminate spam. It doesn't suit this kind of site to have registration. My experience from the Conductive Community suggests that it is a barrier to access. I want this site, and the CC, to be as open as possible.
Tackling antisocial behaviour on the social web, usually means websites taking an antisocial tone towards everyone. It's a familiar problem, tackling the troublemakers harms those who play by the rules and have a positive contribution to make.
I will be trying out different approaches to this problem. That means there may be some inconvenience. Please bear with me on this, I'm trying to make the experience better for everyone.
Thanks,
Elliot
PS: I see your another of my fellow mac users.
Antisocial behaviour on the web
An example of anti-social behaviour would be those sites which make you have seizures and don't warn you.
They usually come about on 4chan and similar places.
RSS feed?
Technical question, Elliot: Is there an RSS feed for your blog?
I'd like to add your blog to "Conductive Web" but need an RSS feed to do so.
I get a message that there isn't an RSS feed for your blog's URL.
Can you help?
RSS feeds
Drupal is capable of both generating and receiving RSS feeds.
I've turned RSS off at the moment. I'm going to set up several feeds, one for each Topic, I think. The advantage of that would be, that you could choose only to add the one for 'Conductive Education' to Conductive Web then it won't receive posts from the other topics, unless the are also relavent to CE.
It'll take a while to set up, but it should be available soon.
RSS feeds
I like the idea of having several RSS feeds.
I'm sure you'll want to write about many other interesting topics.
Getting verified
Norman:
I think you get verified by using a Drupal account.
It is the same principle in the Wordpress.* mechanism.
Then Elliot will make a member list.
RE: Getting verified
That's right. Getting verified means getting an account on this site. As this is my personal site -- not a 'community' like Conductive Community, I won't be offering accounts. It doesn't really make sense to do so.
I will be removing the annoying and misleading '(not verified)' label. It is a reflection of the fact that Drupal was originally designed for multi-user sites. It is equally capable of running single-user or restricted membership sites, but doesn't always switch gracefully from one mode of operation to another.
Elliot
Flat and threaded!
I decided to change my settings from 'Flat' to 'Threaded' so that I can see more easily who replies to what.
I understand that 'flat' is the default.
What do other users think?
(Now this is a difference from Blogger and Typepad, though not Wordpress, if you can set it up appropriately. It is much more like the bulletin/forum boards with which I am familiar).
Also, there is an oldest first dynamic.
Flexibility is great, isn't it?
I like flexibility in the user inferface. But you do need to exercise care when you are designing. Providing choice is good, but it has a downside. It can be inappropriate in some places. It can also add to the clutter.
Welcome!
Dear Elliot,
It is good to have you as a new member in our small world of Conductive bloggers. We all have our diverse ways of living, thinking and expressing ourselves, but we have one thing in common… our true devotion to Petö’s philosophy and work.
I have been reading about the technical sides of blogging with great interest in the comments’ section of your first posting.
In April I started experimenting with WORDPRESS, but I am finding it quite hard to use it. I managed to design a heading using Artisteer 2.
Initially I wanted to have a flash version, but that was beyond my capacities. I employed someone to help me, but he could not do it either from the flash template I purchased from an American flash template design company.
I wanted to create a more interactive blog than what I could do with blogspot.
I admire your knowledge and expertise in this field and I am always ready to learn.
I am very much looking forward to reading your blog. Great to have you around!
Happy New Year!
Judit