Collapse It!

Okay, now I've figured out how to use collapsible posts. I hate when a long post has a "read more..." and when you click it it opens up in another page. Then you have to go back to your original page if there is other content you want to read. I've see a few places, like Ace, and Ricochet, where clicking on the "read more..." simply opens up the rest of the post in the same page, leaving everything else in place. So tonight I've implemented my version and I'm using a long post from yesterday as my test case. So here it is. Click the "read more..." to expand and collapse. read more...

Yesterday I learned how to have a separate home page using Wordpress. The idea is you have a main page that shows up through your www.xxxx.com link, and have your blog page as a menu selection. I quickly implemented it. While walking this morning I realized that I didn't want to have a main page. My main intention here is to blog so that's going to be my home page. So I'm switching back this morning. Below is how I set up my home page. As you can see if you look around the site, a lot of it has changed already. Anyhow, this is what I wrote yesterday for the now defunct home page:

Hello.  This is my web page.  Everyone has to have one nowadays, right?  I've had a blog for years, over on blogspot, but I decided to take more control of my content so I've moved it all over the Wordpress software and it's hosted over at Dreamhost.  I'm using the virtually brand new Twenty-Ten theme, which I love the look of, so clean and elegant.  (I never liked any of the themes I tried over at blogspot.)  I've also learned all about plugins and already have installed a few and put them to use.  In short, I now have total control over the page to make it look and feel the way I want and I've had a lot of fun lately building this site.

So who am I?  As I said in the old blogs About page, I'm a middle-aged man living in the Washington D.C. area. I love old music and old movies, politics and sports, reading and traveling. I'll post on all these subjects as the mood strikes me.

Below is a picture of me and my wife at the carousel near the Eiffel Tower in Paris in May, 2009.



Rather than have the blog as my front page as before I how have this introductory page.  The blog can be found on the menu above, and that is still where most of the action will be.  I also have menus of books I've read since starting the blog. (I'm always reading a book.  It may take me a day to read it or it may take a few weeks or a month, but I always have a book in progress, pretty much since I was a teenager.)   I have ideas for other sections of the site too, which will be revealed in time.  There is also a slideshow built with the Featured Content Gallery plugin that you can find above under the "Some of my favorite things" menu.  FGC is normally used by businesses to highlight their most important features on their home page but I decided to use it to build a nice slideshow.  If you hover over above you'll see a whole lot of submenus, which can be ignored.  No matter which one you click on you'll end up at the same place, watching the slideshow from the beginning.

The sidebar to the right has links to my most recent blog posts, the most recent comments I've received.  (Though they are ages old.  Sigh.  No too many people know about my previous blog but I'm hoping to get more traffic on this site.  We'll see.)  There are also archives of blog posts by month and by category, though I've yet to categorize my posts.  That's coming.  So is a blogroll of my favorite blogs.

So why blog and run a website?  The answer to that can be found in one of the earliest posts I wrote on the old blog.  Here's an excerpt:

The general idea right now is to blog about whatever interests me at that moment. While I do have a lot of interests – music, old movies, politics, history, sports, finance and investing, reading – they tend to rotate in importance day by day. One day I may want to discuss who’ll get the nominations for next year’s general election, the next day I might want to discuss whether more great movies came out of the 1970s than the 1980s. Another day I might not want to discuss anything, just lie down with a great book and read all day, away from the world. Anyhow, I’m thinking writing about my interests may deepen my understanding of them. Pauline Kael once wrote, in her introduction to Deeper Into Movies, that “I write because I love trying to figure out what I feel and what I think about what I feel, and why.” I guess I’m thinking something similar for the blog, though I’d be more comfortable saying “I write because I want to figure out what I think, and why.”

So that's why I blog.  I want to run the website because I enjoy it.  I don't play as much golf or watch as many sports as I once did so I need something to keep me busy.  So while I hope you read this I'm really doing it for myself.  I find it fun.

Finally, on the old blog I had Helen Merrill's version of "What's New" on the sidebar where it could be played at any time.  Now I'll just keep it here on the home page, where you can get to it whenever you'd like.  It's kind of our theme song around here:

[audio:03 What's New.mp3]