It looked much better full size because of the header photo and the delicate scrolls that like a squiggle in the above photo.

I’m still trying to think up a new Blog Title and Tagline for this page. I’ve tried The Silver Fox speaks up, and currently it’s The Chain Saw Man speaks up – but I want a name that doesn’t bring millions of Google results.

The Silver Fox currently brings 22,100,000 results and The Chain Saw Man brings 94,100,000 results.

I’ve thought of “John’s Journal” but that brings 23,700 results.  Another one I’ve looked up is “JT’s Journal” – 4,900 results and one the top results is for guess who?  Justin Timberlake.

Back in the late 1960′s to mid 1970′s when I used to do real 35mm slideshows with music, they used to start with “John T Hill Himself Presents” .  Now that gets 0 (zero) results when searched for in quotes.  But I think it sounds pompous, and I want a Blog Title that doesn’t sound pompous.  In fact, I’m look for a name that reflects on the blog page itself, and not on me.

I’ve asked readers before if they can think of a title, but I’ve had no suggestions, which is perhaps a good thing, as some people might get upset if I don’t adopt their suggestion and they’ll forever think that what I do eventually adopt is not as good as what they suggested.

I am, of course, talking utter nonsense. After writing the above, I’ve just done a Google search for “The Chain Saw Man speaks up” in quotes, and it brings only 4 results – and they all relate to this blog page.

But how often do people do Google searches in quotes?

So I decided to browse around for a new theme that would dramatically change the look of this page, for one day only, and this is the one I chose:

Well, Reno made a comment on the new theme, using my last post to do it, as I hadn’t made a new post to go with the new theme.  The problem is that his very enthusiastic comment would make no sense after I reverted to the Thesis theme today.  So I’m adding this post with a record of the theme he was writing about, and as you can see it  looks totally different.  Not only the colours and header, but also the layout and the number of posts you can scroll down in full.  Thesis only allows the most two recent posts to be displayed in full.

One of the reasons that the appearance of the page can be changed with a mouse click is because of CSS.  My website has a long page devoted to my experience in learning CSS, where content and design are separated.  And the content is in one box, so to speak, and the layout and design instructions are in another box – and this includes fonts, colours, lines, and so on.

I’ve adopted another new theme today.  I really like the look of this one, and it has some neat features like tabs for categories.

I’m looking forward to Australian Idol next Sunday, because the guest mentor to the contestants, guest judge and performer is the legendary Liza with a Z.

For me, Liza Minnelli is an extraordinary singer and performer, and it amazes me that such a great legend is alive and visiting and performing in Australia – and she’s no stranger to our shores.  She married an Aussie.

Until today I didn’t even know what a permalink is, let alone how to modify them.

I’ll explain.  Whenever I create a new post on my blog page, WordPress creates a new page for that post, and gives it a unique Id, so that it can find the page when needed (such as when you click on its heading, or search for it, etc.).  The default way that WordPress names the page is /?p=345 where 345 is the numerical Id of the page.  This is the permalink (permanent link) by which the page is named.

If you don’t quite understand the “new page for each post” concept, just click on the heading of this post, and you’ll be taken to the individual page for this post, with the comments (if any) and the option to make your own comments.

Until today, the URL in your browser would have shown the permalink of my blog pages as http://www.jthonline.com/WordPress/?p=345 or whatever the numeric Id is.  That’s unfriendly and meaningless.  It doesn’t tell you or me, or more importantly, search engines, anything about the content of that page.

Today I adopted “friendly permalinks” which give the date and subject in the URL addresses that you can see in your browser.

As a result, the correct  URL for this post is now http://www.jthonline.com/WordPress/2009/08/24/friendly-permalinks-on-my-blog/ instead of http://www.jthonline.com/WordPress/?p=396

If you look at the URL now, all you’ll see is http://www.jthonline.com/WordPress/ and that’s because you’re looking at this post on my WordPress blog page at http://www.jthonline.com/WordPress/index.php

If you’d like a bit of fun, click on the heading of this post, to open its own page; then go up to the URL in your browser and delete all the text after the date of this date of this post.  Then change the day (24 in this case) to another date.

Pick a date highlighted in blue on the calendar, when I made a post, to take you to the post for that day.  Be careful not to remove the “/” when selecting dates.

When you’re happy with what you can do with all that, pick a date when I didn’t make a post.  You’ll then get a 404 message because you’re looking for a page that doesn’t exist.  But this time it’s a 404 message with a difference.

It’s a personal 404 message, dude.

This page is powered by WordPress and it’s so easy to use that anyone can use it as I have done, without any books or formal training.  This being the case, you may well wonder why I ordered these books.  The answer is, that being a retired and single person without a family, I need things in my life that I want to get involved in.  Currently this page  is it.  So I wanted to delve deeply into everything about WordPress, which powers this page.

The Thesis theme

Today I’ve added a new theme to this page, called Thesis, and it’s going to be my normal theme from now on.  But now and again I might throw in another theme just to remind you how flexible WordPress is.

Apart from a new layout, you might notice some new features.  One of them which you might like is that you can write and publish a comment to any of my posts, and then you have 30 minutes to edit your comments and details of your name  and email.  You can in that time, edit your comment to add a request for me to delete your comment and not post it.

Today I signed up with wordpress.com and created an account.  I can now create and publish a blog page on that site.  But my reason for joining was to get a code to enable me to activate some plugins on this page, such as the one above.

Images

The panel on the right is currently for images I created in a 3D program.

I notice that WordPress has automatically begun a new page for my older posts, with a link at the bottom of this page.

I’m up and running now with designing my own WordPress themes in Artisteer, and have posted a new theme today.  I’ve got a totally different looking design ready to post on Saturday, for the weekend.

Digital radio started today in Australia.  The 7PM Report commented on it in their program this evening.  Charlie Pickering advised, with a straight face as I recall, that listeners with digital radios will be able to listen to broadcasts of Parliamentary proceedings and be able to choose between the Senate or Representatives houses.  I don’t expect that will cause a stampede of people rushing out to buy a digital radio.

I didn’t create the design in Dreamweaver, but in a program called Artisteer that’s very easy to use, and is great for whipping up a design very quickly.  Or it can create a far more individual design if I give more attention to each aspect of the design.  It doesn’t give total freedom in design (as Dreamweaver does), but it allowed me to the create the design of this page as it appears at the time of posting, in an hour of trying this and that, in every aspect of the design.

When I wrote a post last night with the heading of I’m gonna get a chainsaw, da da da da da I had a tune in mind that I couldn’t remember.  But today it came to me, and I’ve attached the tune to yesterday’s post.  Give it a play (by clicking on the link to the Joshua Rich song).