Beta Questions

[Houston Retail]

I like the layout. A few thoughts:

Can you make the page wider? It might be my resolution, but it doesnt get much of the blog on my screen, which makes all of the text smaller.

Its not attaching my name properly. Once it does, would you have my name linked to my email (you can use abrackman@wulfe.com )

And how would i put carriage returns in the blog itself?

Anyway to have the title go across the length of the field and the picture below? It lokks crammed on the left side right now.

I made a few posts, take a look.

Another question. Is the blog supposed to be a compilation of news stories reposted or personal facts / rumor postings or a mixture of both. If a mixture, what is a healthy mix?

[editor]

Right now the blog page is 750 pixels wide. I chose that because almost 40% of the visitors to the web site are using 800x600 as their screen resolution. Personally, I'm at 1440x900, so I would love it to be wider. Maybe once it's running smoothly I can make some adjustments so it will fill out the space on larger screens.

At the time you tested the blog, it wasn't attaching anyone's names properly. It's on the list of things to fix. I have a temporary patch in there right now.

The blog Body accepts standard HTML commands. So, you could put in a carriage return with <br>. You could also make your text bold by putting <b> on one side of the text and </b> on the other. Italic text between <i> and </i>.

The blog should be a combination of news tidbits and insights on what is going on. Great pains should be taken NOT to reprint newspaper stories. I've had enough problems with lawyers threatening copyright lawsuits this year, I don't need any more. I prototyped the Houston blog on the Chicago web site, so here's an example from that one:

"According to Chicago Sun-Times real estate scribe David Roeder, two more towers are coming to Streeterville -- a neighborhood with so much promise, and yet so many empty lots. In the December 22nd, 2004 issue of the paper he says the lot on McClurg Court between Ohio and Grand is going to get a two-tower complex thanks to Golub & Co. Nothe towers are expeced to be in the 50-story range.

With any luck, these residential towers will have some kind of restaurant or retail space on the ground floor to give some life to the pretty sterile neighborhood."

Further down, there was a link to the Sun-Times article. On the Houston blog, you could paste the URL of the full article in the Reference One section. Ignore the media sources in there right now. I'm going to try to figure out a way for it to automatically detect the source. Reference One, Reference Two, etc... aren't just for newspaper references, either. They can also be links for more information at other web sites like Emporis or SkyscraperCity.com -- anything you might think of that could be helpful to the reader. Don't kill yourself trying to find stuff for these fields. But if you have them, it's OK. I would avoid linking to specific stories on KHOU.com because of its draconian registration system. But you could link to the main page.

Here's a quick, and very incomplete rule of thumb for the blog: If what you're writing is a fact that most people won't know, try to mention the source, or somewhere people can look it up. If you're stating your opinion, make it pretty clear that it's your opinion. Let people know outright if you have to. Don't present opinions as facts. Optinion posts are more than welcome, but they should be well-reasoned. Think of it as the editorial section of the newspaper.

Also, I'm putting together an Author page where people will be able to see all the recent activity by a particular author, and send that person an e-mail.