I have joined Blog Network on Facebook

This means that if you are a member of Facebook, you can click on the link, and join my fans. Yipee. I know you are excited. So am I (yawn). I'll just duck behind this bush to avoid the stampede.

"triptych": Experiment in poetry and photography

"triptych" is an experiment that uses two WordPress plugins: "Post Tabs" by Leo Germani, and "Grey Box Integrator" by Ajay D'Sousa. The one allows me to set up as many tab links as I want so that a clickable verse appears in each tabbed page, and the other allows me to set up words in a verse so that when you click them, a photo comes up in a rather impressive frame.

Here is what the post looks like:


All the words from "leaves" to "signs" are links; that is, the verse above the tabs is a link, each tab is clickable, and the verses below the tab are links. If you click a tab, you are taken to a new verse, and if you click a verse, you are taken to the relevant photo. In all, there are four photos, one for each verse.

Click on the title of this post to go to the wordcurrents post.

New wordcurrents theme revisited

So I was noticing that two of my stats collectors were showing zero visitors to wordcurrents, even though readers were still commenting on items and Google stats was showing a continuing readership. As an experiment, I went back to my old theme*, and right away, my blog stats all started working again. So I guess there is something about the theme that does not allow stats from most stats engines, including WordPress stats itself.

So now, although I have a new visual direction for wordcurrents, it appears that I cannot use it without losing statistics, my main feedback, since most people do not comment.

One other thing: I am using HTML redirect code on my root home page so that anyone surfing to riverwriter.ca will be directed automatically and almost immediately to wordcurrents.

*theme: a program that controls the blog's appearance. That includes page and background colour, frame outlines, number and size of columns, fonts, consistent graphics.

Blog problems and twists and turns

The new look at wordcurrents has come with more than one price:

1. My usage tracking services are not working, even though they indicate they are: according to two stats services, I have had no visitors since I made the intital change, even though I have had comments on the blog's new look.
2. Although I like the appearance of the blog, I prefer a three-column layout (which the new beta versions of the theme have, without the same colour choice). So I believe I will give the beta version a shot when I have worked out the wrinkles. (see below)
   
3. I have had to downsize the wallpaper to decrease loading times. The wallpaper loses something with the smaller file sizes.
   

This is a view of what the beta version looks like. The background wallpaper is also available on the current site; just click the buttons in the header to change wallpapers. The wallpaper in this screen capture is a photo I took of snow in the flaming bush beside our garage.

wordcurrents' new look

Here is a screen capture of one version of what my blog now looks like. I am using Vistered Little 1.6 by Nik Iliadis, a theme that allows me to upload backgrounds that the reader can select using the little swatches (in this shot, there are 29) at the top of the screen. Cookies keep each reader's choice so that the reader's view stays consistent no matter what I or other readers choose.



It also means that text is displayed against a black background, as I have always thought text should be. We see light, not dark.

I have provided a sticky post for reader comments. The blog is at wordcurrents

Traffic in my theatre reviews

Although I started wordcurrents as a poetry blog with occasional theatre reviews thrown in, the reviews have become the most heavy traffic on the blog. My review of Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad has had hundreds of viewers. Today the total count was over 750. Other popular reviews feature Talking With . . . by Jane Martin, Departures and Arrivals by Carol Shields, and Swollen Tongues by Kathleen Oliver.

One of the reasons for the reviews having more hits than the poems have is simply vanity searches: people search for their own names or they search for the title of a play they are thinking of seeing or producing. The only way my poems will have that kind of traffic is if I write a key word or tag that people are searching for. Should I pander to that tendency? Not easily.

Computer Interface

As I have already posted in wordcurrents, I am attempting to dictate my posts instead of type them. While dictation has the advantage of allowing me to rest my poor aching hands, it has the disadvantage of creating barrier to my imagination. I have noted in the past that my handwritten work is different from my typed work. Learning to dictate without this barrier is a little bit like learning how to drive on the opposite side of the road in a foreign country, or learning how to draw with your foot controlling the pen instead of your hand.

I believe that dictation will take over as an interface for computers particularly when the computer is a handheld phone. It just makes sense. The fact that we still type most of our entries into computers makes clear in the fact that we really are in the Model T age of computers.

In another about-face, I have decided that I will no longer attempt to post every single day, as this is getting in the way of a novel I am working on; however, I will still post fairly often, perhaps more often in prose. Perhaps this will improve the level at which I am writing poetry in my blog.

One interesting thing that has occurred during my hiatus over the summer while I was not posting at all, is that I note I have had pretty well the same number of visits to the website as I had when I was posting on a daily basis. Not surprisingly, most of those visits were to my theatre reviews. Of course, people search for what they already know: they don't know that my poems are here (at least, they certainly are not pre-aware of the titles of my poems to search for them, unless I start using titles that are already in the public awareness).