Moving the blog again, perhaps

Google/Blogger will be discontinuing its FTP publication option on the basis that few people use it.

I only tried it as an experiment in the first place, and I agree. If someone needs to run a blog from a specific domain, installing a blog app like Wordpress makes so much more sense.

So, I'll probably move this blog back to its "blogspot" location. I'm not sure what the result will be, though.

Catalog Problem fixed

The IE8 error messages have been solved, after LOUIS moved all of our design elements to their own server. I also fixed a small button color problem in the CSS. Please let me know ASAP if anything goes wrong.

Just to let you know I'm aware of them, there are also 2 things I'd like to fix, except they aren't CSS-related so I can't do anything about them myself. These are:

a)
When you get an error screen from the catalog about a search, the screen that appears has a stray HTML comment tag on it " --> " and our logo disappears. The easiest way to trigger it is to try doing a search without entering anything.

b)
I'd like to make the text in the top banner click-able so that it restarts the search (goes "home", if you will) because many websites behave this way.

Small probelm with OPAC

There's a low-satus problem with the catalog. When you try to enter "my account" in IE, the browser asks about displaying "non-secure" items (you know the kind). However, the obvious thing to do is click "yes," and doing this stops the custom CSS template and images from loading.

It doesn't affect actually using the site in itself, but it is a problem. The error breaks up the browsing experience and makes the page look and feel "broken." Error messages about security suggest unpleasantry, also. But, of course, I am the sort of person who gets too 'excited' over these things. Most internet users are IE users, so that's the browser people experience our web pages with the most. I suppose I can't blame IE or anyone else for the "problem," but it's just one of those things that happens and you can't do anything about it, like a tornado.

It is helpful that not everyone uses the account feature. In fact, I did not know about it until people from LOUIS told me. So things should be all right while we try to get this resolved.

Historical Newspaper DBs

I've added the 2 new historical newspaper DBs to the DB list, and I've placed them other appropriate places too (the Quick List pop-up, the site map, History subject DB list)


African American Newspapers

America's Historical Newspapers

Edited tour, Gale links, etc

Today CH told me that our links to Gale resources needed to be changes so that they could collect statistics. I did it, and the links should behave exactly as they did before. Let me know if they don't.

I've edited the reference collection out of the library tour. It still says that the McNaughton collection is "near reference," but that's not entirely untrue; it's near the side of the building where reference is (right???).
I'll make more changes to it when more changes happen to the library.

I also fixed some links on the site map.

New hours + Louisiana Digital Library

Last night before I went to bed, I added the new hours to the home page. Do let me know if anything is wrong with it.

I also added the Louisiana Digital Library to the DB list. It probably should've been there sooner, but I thought it was a Special Collections thing then. If anyone thinks it doesn't belong in the list, do let me know.

EDIT:
I've also changed a few room names on the library map. I am also aware that some pop-up info boxes get covered up by other text. It doesn't hurt, but it looks messy. I may change that someday.


(I'M WITH COCO)

new newsletter, new news, new catalog

A new Special Collections Newsletter is out so I placed that on the home page in the news box, removing the holiday message also.

The catalog's upgrade appears to be complete. If anyone has any problems with it, contact me and I'll see what can be done about it.