Imagine that ...

I have no idea why, but replacing the Yahoo videos with identical YouTube videos fixed the sidebar problem. Now I'm satisfied and will relax this evening watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on ABC family.  It's another Harry Potter weekend and there are to be clips from the Deathly Hallows throughout the evening.  Even though I am fairly certain they will be the same clips on the Half-Blood Prince DVD set, it is enjoyable watching and amazing to see how they have grown.

Once more with feeling

I spent time this evening again re-arranging blog elements, tweaking colors and sidebar placement, even adjusting the size of videos within the last few posts. Pleased with with the overall look of things, especially since the text blog is a bit larger over all, the sidebar oddity still confounds me and I spent a bit of time trouble-shooting posts currently displayed on my main blog page.

When looking at the blog in its entirety, the sidebar remains at the bottom of the page. When looking at individual entries, the sidebar displays normally on all with one glaring exception, the Super Bowl ad post. It contains a bit of blathering and two embedded videos. The only thing different about the videos in that particular post is they originated on Yahoo as opposed to YouTube.

I'm tempted to switch out the existing videos with the same content found on YouTube instead.

Trying Something New

Forty five minutes later I have a new blog layout, courtesy of new templates in Blogger Draft. Oddly enough, the sidebar works fine in Mozilla Firefox, but still displays in an annoying manner in Internet Explorer 8.

For now I will just be annoyed.

So, why?

For the last few days, my blog sidebar has been displaying below the posts instead of in it's usual position on the side regardless of the computer or browser used for viewing. Why?

If I choose individual posts for viewing, the sidebar is in it's correct place. When I click on the header to return home, the sidebar moves again. Why?

I've also noticed the template arrows next to the date at the top of each post are displaying mashed together. Why? It's certainly not attractive.

Since changing templates no longer strips all sidebar information, it might be time to log into blogger beta and take a look at newly available templates and make a few changes.

New widget, old statistics

Blogger Buzz, news about Blogger, is strategically located directly below the blog dashboard after login. I do not pay close attention to everything posted there, sometimes it is simply part of the atmosphere, but lately there have been posts regarding Google, Feedburner, and Blogger in Draft that have snagged my attention - especially the new search box widget. Since the navigation bar at the top of each blog has a search box that allows users to search the web and/or search the displayed blog, I wondered what the widget would have to offer.

I logged into my account via Blogger in Draft and added the "beta" search box (it was simple, just follow the add a page element directions as if adding any other blog widget) to the sidebar below above the blog labels and did a sample search. What I like are the search result display properties; within the blog, above the most current post. It appears to actually be a "box" and includes the proverbial "X" to close it when finished and return to the basic blog layout. A more visually appealing option than the navigation bar as well as more efficient. What I don't particularly like is the specificity needed for the search. For example, I searched "cambridge whos who" and did not have a hit but searched a second time with cambridge who's who" and it retrieved the three posts pictured to the right. Overall I'm satisfied with the widget and may move it farther up in the sidebar for ease of use. This brings me to the second portion of this post, statistics.

While posts on children's literature, ALA, recreational reading, and dailing post information continue to be popular, far and away the most frequent search continues to be for Cambridge Who's Who. A quick look at my Statscounter account this evening reveals out of the last 100 search terms (keyword analysis, information rolls over and the log remains at 100), 48% of them are in some way, shape, or form looking for information on Cambridge. Sixty-six terms were used leading people to the blog, thirty-two of them were as follows:

• 11 cambridge whos who scan
• 6 whos who among executives
• 5 whos who cambridge edition
• 3 cambridge whos who
• 2 cambridge whos who among
• 2 cambridge whos who fee
• 1 reviews cambridge whos who
• 1 cambridge whos who among executives and professional women
• 1 cambridge who's who

It is the topic that does not go away, a never-ending-story (if I may). If their mailing budget is any indication of profit, they must be doing well. But I would guess for every person who purchases the service, there are an equal number of potential customers searching the web for information.

Tags: Blog widgets, Blogger draft search box, Blogger draft, Widgets

Blogger Beta features

One of the new features Blogger offers with the "beta" version is labeling. I'm a librarian. I like order and organization and the whole concept behind labeling posts. However, in order to have the labels show as a sidebar feature, bloggers have to change over to the new template organizational theme. I have been delaying this procedure since Blogger mentioned it would mean losing what the current sidebar (just great).

This afternoon I succumbed to the lure and am in the process of rebuilding my blog sidebar. I knew it would take time because I practiced the concept with one of my work blogs. As I whine about the need to save my old sidebar template tags and reinsert them, I have no one to blame but myself (don't you hate when that happens?) and am trying to convince myself it is a good time to remove things I maybe do not need any longer.

Later that same day....

An hour has passed and the sidebar redesign is complete. With the exception of the Technorati search and my LibraryThing search, I kept most of the original sidebar information and widgets. Now the question remains, do I keep using the Technorati tags in addition to my own blog labels? I'm thinking, yes. Technorati tags connect my blog to other blogs in the "blogosphere" and the internal blog labels connect only to my postings. Though the two may muck up the ending of posts, I'll keep both since they perform different functions.

A quick look outside to the library patio reveals two divergent winter phenomenon; it is snowing (no big surprise) but at 5:10 it is still light. While winter is rearing it's snowy bearings late this year, the signs of spring are evident as daylight lasts a bit longer.

Tags: Blogger Beta,Blogger labels, Blogger sidebar, Widgets