Sunday, July 30, 2006

Blog of the Week!

Blog of the week for this week is Svodoba. The award goes to this blog this week because, the author, "svodoba" was the person who made the best suggestion for a way to spruce up my blog of the week/ month section, by replying to my question in the thread; "the blog that morris built." This is where I enlist bloggers to help me out in improving my blog, your help would be much appreciated.

Svodoba is a blog about weird and interesting photos and includes commetry on these photos. Unfortunately the blog is in Spanish, yet the photo's are still cool to look at even if you can't read the text. If you can read spanish, then all the better. Svodoba encourages people to leave comments even in English because he speaks English also.

So go on over and check out Svodoba, and if you leave comment, let him know that The Greatest Blog Experiment sent you. Enjoy!

Random Link Button

If you've had a look over in the sidebar to the right ----->>>>>
you may have noticed that I have added a button called 'RANDOM LINK.' If you click on this button you will automatically be redirected through one of the links on my site at random. I do mean ANY link. This is a great way to browse through the blogs I have listed on the site, however it will also take you to previous posts etc. as they are links on the site too. There is a way for me to limit it to only the blogs, but it's slightly more complicated and takes a lot longer- I will probably do this in the future.

Now I'm sure you're probably wondering how the hell I did it, right? Well, what I'd like to tell you is that "I wrote an extremely complicated super data code in Java Script which was only possible because I am an expert computer programmer," however, this is not that case. What happened, was that I came across a website that provides FREE Java Script codes for people to use. This stuff is really awsome, and there are tonnes to choose from that do all sorts of amazing things, and best of all its so easy even a beggining blogger can do it. So if you want to check out the awsome amazing free java scripts, simply click on the link in the sidebar.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Check it Out...

Check out tutor's blog, Window's XP Tips for a bunch of great tips for enhancing and improving the running of your computer. This blog was one of the first 10 blogs I added, as you can see by looking at the link category in the sidebar called 'First 10 Blogs Added.' Tutor's blog has a special index page which makes navigation of all his tips and tutorials so much easier.

One particular tip that I thought was pretty cool, is one that tells you how to make Star Wars play in your run window. What The? I hear you say... Thats right, someone has somehow gone to the trouble of recreating Star Wars (actually only half of it) out of little computer script characters, its really pretty cool. A Great little bit of excitement if you're bored. If you are a Star Wars fan, or just want to see something different and interesting, you should really Check It Out...

Enjoy!

Monday, July 24, 2006

Check It Out...

Yesterday I added the blog of Bill Stormont, called 'Listening for Thunder,' you can find it under the heading Photo Blogs in the sidebar. I find that photo blogs are great when you're browsing through blogs because they're a good rest for the eyes after reading lots of posts in text. I'd encourage any blog browsers to check out the photo blogs I have listed for something different.

Anyway, it just so happens that Bill is running a competition over at his blog, you can check it out at his post here. The prize is a print of the photo at the top of the post. Entry is quick and easy, and anyone can enter, Check It Out...

Sunday, July 23, 2006

BLOG OF THE WEEK!!!

Congatulations to Lisa Hutch for winning the first 'Blog of the Week' for her blog 'Lisa Hutch - The TRIALS (heh heh), and adventures of a new Law Student.' I have given Lisa the blog of the week for this week because she was the first person to help me out with my blog building program.

Lisa's Blog is relatively new and it follows the TRIALS (heh heh), and adventures of someone embarking down the path towards a career in law. She is entering first year law ... Sept. 2006. Its a blog to document the CANADIAN student's perspecitve on being a new law student; what it meant to her life, what the first year course load was really like, and what to expect ... to help those pondering going down a similar road.

As she hasn't actually started law school yet, not until Sep 2006, the posts so far have all been about building up to it. However there are still many interesting posts in there. One post that I thought I should point out is the rules of a drinking game adapted from the checkers (drafts) drinking game. The game is called 'Shooters Checkers Squared,' and it looks pretty fun, yet skillful at the same time and likely fun even for the non drinker.

You can check out Lisa Hutch's blog by clicking on the link in the sidebar under 'Personal Blogs.' If you happen to drop by let her know that 'The Greastest Blog Experiment' sent you. Thanks.

BLOG OF THE MONTH!!!

Congratulations to Michael for winning the first 'Blog of the Month,' with his poker blog, Counting My Outs. Michael's blog was the very first link exchange I did after starting 'The Greatest Blog Experiment,' and now I've linked up to over 50 blogs.

Counting My Outs is a blog about the poker travels of Michael, a semi-pro Internet low limit Texas Hold'em poker player. This blog is a great resource for low limit poker information. At this blog you will find links to many different online poker sites, many of which offer good bonuses and links to other great blogs which are rich in poker information. Every couple of days, Michael posts the 'Hand of the Day,' where he details a recent hand he has played where he had a certain decision that was difficult. He asks other people to comment on what they would do in the situation and why. Then he writes what he believes is the correct play and his reasoning behind it.

You can check out Counting My Outs by clicking the link in the sidebar under 'Poker Blogs.' If you happen to drop by, let him know that 'The Greatest Blog Experiment' sent you. Thanks!

Since this is the first 'Blog of the Month,' and it isn't the end of this month yet, just for this once, Counting My Outs will hold 'Blog of the Month' for the rest of this month as well as next month.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Blog of the Week & Blog of the Month

You may notice that I've added two sections at the top of the sidebar called 'Blog of the Month,' and 'Blog of the Week.' Every week I will pick a blog from all those listed on the site, and this blog with be put under the 'Blog of the Week' heading in the sidebar for one week from that date. Each month I will pick an especially good blog which will be the blog of the month and will go under the appropriate heading for one month from that date. Blogs of the month and week will be chosen based on a range of things including: an interesting post, picture, link, story, help I have received with my blog improvements or the winner of a competition. Blogs of the month and week will be seen by everyone who visits the site, and hence will the benefit of the extra traffic.

Check back soon for the first Blog of the week and Blog of the month... It could be you!

Monday, July 17, 2006

This is the Blog that Morris Built (with a whole lota help)

As part of my experiment, I have decided to build onto my blog using tips/ help/ info and resources from only other bloggers and blogs. Hopefully this will stand as proof to the grand amount of information there is out there amongst the blogger community.

I am going to keep adding to this thread, and link to it in the sidebar, as I improve the blog bit by bit. I will also give credit to those who have contributed in some way, i.e. the bloggers, here in this thread. Feel free to use any of the ideas expressed here in your own blogs, and drop me a comment if you have any questions. Also please visit the blogs of my contributers if you have the time.

The way this thread works is that I will post a question about how to do something in particular, and I invite people to help out if the can by leaving a comment in the comments section. However, I welcome any ideas people might have for additions to the blog. Enjoy!

Question 1:
You may notice at the bottom of the sidebar I have added a section called 'Blogger Tools,' and under that is a sub heading called 'Blogger directories.' I am wondering how I can make the sub heading different from the main heading, ie. make in smaller or not as bold or a different colour etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer:
It's all about moving the "ul" tag.
Set-up should look like this:

MainOrArchivePage
H2...your title...end h2
your subtitle (I added two br tags for spacing)
ul tagli tag with your links
end ul
end MainOrArchivePage

If in doubt, you can view the source code on mine (or lisa's) blog.
To view the source code of any website got to the browser menu bar > View > Source. It will come up in a seperate window and show you the html code for the whole website.

Thanks to Lisa Hutch, for supplying the answer to the problem, you can visit her blog 'Lisa Hutch - The TRIALS (heh heh), and adventures of a new Law Student.' by clicking on the link in the sidebar.

Question 2:
Following on with the blogger tools section of my sidebar, you can see that I've started listing some blog directories, however they are appearing next to each other instead of on a seperate line. How can I get them on a seperate line?

Answer:
To separate each section I recomend you to insert in the html code a label (replace the brackets with <> to make is work):

(br)

This is to get a new parragraph.
Then use the - or the _ many times like:_______________

Thanks to svodoba for supplying the answer, you can visit svodoba's blog by clicking the link in the sidebar, under 'Personal Blogs.'

Question 3: How can I get a little bullet next to my blog directory links like on all the other links in the sidebar?

I worked this one out for myself by playing around with the html template. To add the bullets, simply put the following tag in the html code (exchange the brackets for <> to make it work):

(li) and (/li)

The one without the slash '/' goes at the beggining of the link and the one with the slash goes at the end (in the html code).

Question 4: I've recently launched my Blog of the Month and Week section which is at the top of my sidebar, however it looks rather plain at the moment. I would like some suggestions on how to spruce it up, such as changing text colour or putting it in a seperate box etc. and an explanation of how to do it. The best suggestion will win that blogger BLOG OF THE WEEK for next week. Thanks.

This is the suggestion that Svodoba had, which also won him blog of the week for this week. You can check out his blog, Svodoba here.

I've got an idea to do it really fantastic.You can us a program like Photoshop. Create a banner (calcule the size on the column. The save it as a jpg file.Upload it to http://imageshack.us/ for instance (there are a lot of host sites). The get de html code. Put it on the rigth place int your code (you can try different places or sizes). Add th link, you know with htnl tags aref.Finally you will have a very different link and it will be emphasized. And, th best: it is very easy and it will give you a lot of choices related to the design.

Question 5: As you can see, I've decided to put the blog of the week/ month awards in a seperate column at the top of the sidebar. I've actually cheated a little bit by using the profile box to do it. This might be the reason for the problem I'm having. I'm getting the little curved corners in the middle of the left and right edge of the box, can anyone help?

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Onwards...

First of all I would like to thank all those bloggers who have linked up so far. There are over 30, and you are the foundation on which I will launch my Experiment.

For those new visitors who have stumbled accross this blog from the 'next blog' button, or from a link on someone elses blog, The Greatest Blog Experiment is a link-exchange project I have created to help with the free flow of information from bloggers to bloggers and beyond, read more about it here. There are million of blogs on the world wide web, imagine if you could get just one new fact from each blog... how many new facts would you have? The answer is: A LOT.

My point is that blogs are an information sharing medium like no other and there are no limits to the amount of knowledge and understanding that can be gained. All you have to do is seek out that information and The Greatest Blog Experiment will help you do that.

This brings me to the next stage of my Experiment. As you can see my blog is somewhat plain and simple at the moment, as I don't have much knowledge of html, but I would like to see that change. Over the coming weeks, months and beyond I want to make this blog much more interesting and complicated, and I am going to use information gained ONLY from other bloggers to do this.

For starters, I welcome any suggestions that anyone may have to help make my blog better.

Thanks