I would like to announce a New Feature! Not a new feature some of us grew used to going to the drive-in or movie theater to see the latest and greatest horror or sci-fi movie. No this new feature (we hope) will blow your socks off and is what everyone has been waiting for. At least all those with Sitebuilder sites! Oooh, the first clue! Now that your fingers are all tingling with the excitement of anticipation. I would like to take a moment to say this would not be possible without Dave and Karl who also work on Sitebulder to make it happen. So what is this new fandangled feature? It's a mix of two flavors. In one hand take the blog you are reading right now, in the other hand take Sitebuilder (some of you may have guessed that already). Mash the two together and you get something like this:
Web Action Team Site
WAT Home Page
I agree with you, very cool indeed!!! Now you may be asking how do I do this with my blog and my Sitebuilder site? But wait it get's better because some of you are thinking... I have 5 blogs that I want in my Sitebuilder site. Can I do that? Yes you can! Here's how!!!
1) Log into your Sitebuilder site
2) Go to "Edit Home Page"
3) On the right hand menu you will see the "Blog Options" section from there select "manage" and you should see something like this:
Example screen from Sitebuilder admin page.
From the sample you can see the "Web Action Team" blog is active on the site. To select more simply click on "Add Blog to my Site" to remove the Blog from your site click "remove blog". Add all the Blogs your heart desires, remove all the Blogs your heart desires. It's that simple!
There are a few other options that are available but that can be left until next time. Until then I hope this "New Feature" is better then the old!
Well, yesterday we ran some security scans...with varied results. One result was that we found some more vulnerabilities- the new scanner is thorough! But unfortunately, we also sent out some email from the Portal, due to the scanner being pretty darn aggressive.
My goal for next week is to run the scan against a few 'private' sites: http://nursing-home.info and http://simplestuff.info/mpg . The goal is to run stress tests, and try to crash the sites. I would like to compare the ANR servers/connection against what is commercially available. I think we will be in pretty good shape.
Well folks it's 4:00pm on a Friday afternoon and the office is eerily silent. Come to find out there is only three of us left from Communications Services in the Office. Dave is at some trainings, Karl is out on vacation, Alex is being artistic somewhere, and the 3 of us from the IT group are slaving away at our jobs. Or are we??? We could be playing games or goofing around. But why would we stay here and do that? This is ludicrous to think about. As for me I've been working away at a new grant system for the Center for Produce Safety who cant wait to give away millions of dollars to willing researchers (don't quote me on the millions of dollars... I'm just a programmer, and don't know all the gory details). Anyways Blaine and I simply noticed is was quiet here... A little too quiet... And I thought all the world should know that the Web Action Team is always on the job to solve your programming needs!
Tomorrow, the ANR Web Action Team will attend a unit retreat for staff of Communication Services. The theme of the retreat is "green." Not green as in great big piles of money. Green as in taking care of our environment.
We decided to conduct some case studies on how converting to web-based systems impacts the environment. Bryon and Karl came up with solid data for their studies. I pulled some numbers out of a bag for mine.
We then created a flyer with our case studies. Realizing that this was a slightly absurd maneuver, bringing unnecessary handouts to a gathering meant to celebrate being Green, Karl and Alex whipped up an activity sheet for the back of the flyer. This gives the handout a little more life (although it will still get tossed into the trash, I mean recycled).
To combat Alex and Karl's blatant wastefulness, I decided to post the flyer on our blog to insure that the only thing wasted is your time, a somewhat renewable resource.
WAT goesGreen
It seems the ANR Blogs are making a big splash. With much interest in blogging, I finally had some time to make some finishing touches (for now) on the Blog system which some have been asking about. I've pulled out all the stops and put into the system a nice Archive list and the ability to add tags to posts. Right away I discovered that the "Post Archive" is great for seeing how active a blog may be. For some it is painful to see last updated over a year ago! Ouch! For others it is nice to see a long list of posts each month. For the most Posted to Blog check out, Jeannette Warnert's ANR News Blog. With 200 posts since April 2007. That roughly 15.38 posts a month or one every 2 days! No this is not an award of any kind, though if it helped people to post more maybe we could start having awards. Most creative Blog, most innovative use of a Blog, most reliable Blog; are just a few ideas. Along the same lines I've also added a fun reminder system to the Blogs. After a blog has been "idle" with no posts for 3 months, it is automatically deleted... Just kidding!!! I wonder if I scared a few of you out there? Actually I wonder who reads this Blog... You know you can leave comments to these innovative posts... Ok, back to the subject... After 3 months of no Posts the Blog owner gets sent a fun e-mail asking them to post and keep their blog up. These get sent out once a week. For those too busy to post they will notice not all the e-mail's are the same. Some may want to collect them, but I doubt they will be worth anything one day.
Something that is much more valuable is tagging your posts! A tag is like a category, label, or term that can be used to help describe what a post is about. So when making a post you can add as many tags as you like to help categorize the posts. Say I'm writing a story about growing grapes in the winter (unlikely I know but I'm a programmer not a grower) you can add the tags "grapes,winter,viticulture" and so on... Separate each one with a comma and that's it! Well there's more but that's all for adding the tags. Once the tags are added the "Tag List" link will show you all the tags listed in both alphabetical order and in the order of most used to least used. Also at the bottom of each post you will see the tags for the post if there are any available. Each tag may be clicked on to see all the posts in the Blog using that tag. So Tags are the to help you organize your posts and to help others find information in your blog faster. Don't forget to look at the tags I've added to this post.
That's it for today. Until next time... Blog Away!
