including a blog in my design

[anxiouskittie]

Hello

I know this is not shop site related.. but I get shopsite through my powweb account, and at powweb it seems my posts won't show up after I add them, so I am trying here, and I hope you don't mind..

I have a website that has the same look all over, and it uses php include to make it easier when updating and so on. I am not that experienced with this, so please keep it simple

Okay, the thing is I want to include a blog, a very very very simple blog MAYBE with an image function (only one image at the beginning of the blog, to the left, I guess you know what I am talking about. it is not NEEDED, as we have a separate images-section so it's not that important. i guess you could also add this through html if it is possible to add html when adding a post in the blog), and it has to be fully customizable and easy to update. I want it to go smoothly into our already made design, so as it is almost only the blog text and the newest post goes on the top, and the previous ones are displayed below, maybe only with a page2, page3.. no other text, no search, no nothing..

I cannot seem to findt this.

I could just make this myself, but it would be real nice if I could make this possible for my brother who is going to blog on this site, so that he can blog any time. Main thing is that we want it to look like we are not leaving the website when looking at the blog.

Sorry bout the poor english skills. Hope someone can help.

Oh, and yes it needs to be free :S

Silje

[anxiouskittie]

oh btw, I read somewhere about "diary-x", that it could be something for me? But then again I could not find it for download anywhere, so I couldn't check it out

[BFChris]

The simplest way to do this for someone who isn't tech savvy is probably to set up a blog with a free blog website (such as www.blogspot.com). This would make it very easy for the blogger to add content in a simple format.

Then, you can include an RSS feed from the blog onto your Shopsite webpages using a custom page template. The RSS feed would just include a snippet of code--I believe blogspot shows you how to do this--that you insert in your webpage and it will continually update with the latest headlines from your blog.

Of course, this would leave the Blog somewhat independent of the website, but that may not be a bad thing. For one, you would be able to link the blog to the website, hence generating more links for the search engines. Plus, my experience shows blogs tend to get a good amount of traffic on their own, which you could then direct to your website.

Some webhosts also offer free blog software, just as they offer free Bulletin Board software (such as the phpBB used here). You may wish to check with your hosting service about this.

Sincerely,

Barefoot Chris
BarefootChris.net Web Design
www.barefootchris.net

[anxiouskittie]

Ohh, I did not realize it could be done that easily! I have always wondered what rss is.. cool. I think you just made me discover a totally new world Will check this out, might come back with more questions if I am stuck. Thanks for helping me out!

[BFChris]

Happy to Help.

Further information--it looks like you may need a Feed Reader in your webpage to add the feed on your page. You can find one at feedburner.com which provides further instructions for setting things up.

~~Barefoot Chris
BarefootChris.net Web Design

[anxiouskittie]

yup, I actually got there at last! feedburner works nice, and i have already included it. wow I am so happy thank you very much again, very much apprecciated!

[BFChris]

Glad you got it worked out. What is your website so I can see?

Meanwhile, RSS feeds are a great way to publish store news and new product info--if you can get people to subscribe to the feed--as they avoid the spam-filtering issues that plague e-mail based mailing lists.

~~Barefoot Chris
BarefootChris.net Web Design
www.barefootchris.net

[anxiouskittie]

(as I said already, it is not shopsite related, tho I own a shopsite account:)


Okay, so I put it here:

http://www.ionisationband.com/blog.php

But it seems to be showing not only in the "box" (limited to so and so many px width and height), so it is pushing the width. Hmm.. I used blogspot (blogger) and feedburner. I do not understand how to make this adjust to the width that I already set in my css for my site. Hmm.

I am sometimes kinda messy, so I might have just done something wrong somewhere, but any advice is apprecciated..

I can't really find anywhere in blogger either. Hmm

not sure what I am doing, I guess :S Humm.. help? please?

[Jim]

Viewing the source for the page there are multiple head, body, html tags. The browers probably have no idea what to do with the souce. Make sure you just have one each Html , head, body tag along with the appropriate closing tag.

[anxiouskittie]

Hmm how can that be. I just deleted all the multiples (created by mistake when using php includes.. I'll look at it again and see what i can fix

nevermind, i found it. will fix and take another look!

Edited after removing doubles:
Okay, that did not fix this problem... :S

Edited after doing even more stuff:

Seems that i am getting somewhere now.. slowly but getting there

[anxiouskittie]

now I have fixed the errors that I could see, and the doubles.

but I cannot seem to place the #home div where i want it to be. also, the page scrolls (not the div, but it all)

any ideas?

I am this close to changing to iframes...

EDIT:

I did it I did it I did it I did it! No idea how, as I changed too many things at once, but yes I did it And I cleaned up some mess as well on the way (which was probably why it didn't work.)

Yey!