Wow! I Just Discovered the New Social Notes Tools!
 

Embedding, blogging, facebook! All from the NEW Fodors forums. Brilliant! And have I said how much I like the orange and white zebra striped progress bar?

Thanks ,Fodors, for bringing 21st century web tools to your great, new site.

What are social notes tools and how does one access them?

when you hit "share with a friend" above, you have many options of how and where to share.

Orange and white progress bar - that one I don't see?

When you click on the submit button to post a response the bar turns orange and white and the stripes appear to move. Rather like a horizontal barber shop pole.

Actually the stripes are orange and gray.

Sorry. Orange and gray.

The Social Notes Tools let you do this:

http://web.me.com/sshephard1/Travel

The look of my quickly created web site isn't that great, so ignore that. Also, the YouTube videos don't come from Fodors, obviously.

You can also use Social Notes Tools to do this:

http://sshephard.wordpress.com/

It is a quick way to put a link to a topic here in your blog.

sshephard - that's very cool! What software do you use? I think I have to stop being cheap and buy some software for my web site. It looks OK using IE but awful with Firefox. I can't wait to go back to IE (once I have the spyware taken care of).

BTW - I wasn't trying to correct you on the colors; I wanted to clarify for Momliz so she wasn't confused.

I am using iWeb, which is part of a suite of tools called iWork. These only work on a Mac.

However, there are other tools available that allow for RSS feeds and embedding. For example, Google Sites (Google's free web page tool) and Wikispaces both allow for embedding and RSS.

Most blogs (I have used Wordpress and Edublogs) allow for the same kind of things. The good thing about Google and other web-based tools is that it doesn't matter what kind of computer you are using or even which computer you are using. As long as you have a good internet connection, you can edit your web page. Oh, and they are free.

<< I think I have to stop being cheap and buy some software for my web site. >>

Or use Joomla - - like WordPress - - only better... and free...

Best wishes,

Rex

Thanks to both of you. I'll look into your suggestions. Free is my new favorite word!

Having looked into Joomla, I'm curious, Joomla looks like a fairly sophisticated web content creation tool. Open source and free! Very interesting.

Rex. Do you use it?

thanks adrienne, but my confusion is beyong help :D

And, for any websites the DH (and I on a small scale) do, it really helps to have Firefox, IE, Safari and maybe even Opera installed so that you can see and tweak your site so it looks good in all of those. Although why anyone would use IE when you have Firefox, I have no idea.

joomla - is that like Mambo? for content management?

another free html editor is bluefish, open source.

And, Word Press is the way to go in a blog, from what I know.

Momliz - I'm sure you're not that confused. Looks like you're managing and adapting just fine!

<< Although why anyone would use IE when you have Firefox, I have no idea.>>

I can't wait to get rid of Firefox.
1. Links are opened in the same window so I have to start another browser session to see what I was originally looking at.
2. It makes my web site look like I was drunk when I created it. OK...maybe I was drunk some of the time but not every time! :)
3. There were some other annoying things about Firefox but I can't remember then right now; but they will happen again.

I looked at joomla last night and my eyes glazed over.

I'm going to look at bluefish. I have a site (my ISP gives me plenty of room, especially as my photos are on shutterful), I just need an easy, free editor.

adrienne - go to Options (Preferences in a Mac), under the Tools (Firefox in a Mac) drop down up top and you can set how links open - I have them set to open in a new tab. Firefox is (almost) infinitely customizable. Play with it before you give up, it really, truly is better.

30%, I think, of people on the internet use Firefox, and that is getting bigger every day, with each new virus and trojan horse that comes out, so your website HAS to look good in Firefox. Sorry, but that's the way it is. :(

Joomla - from their site <i>"A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don't have to." </i>

sounds pretty nifty, but there is likely a learning curve, which would make it hard for me...

here are some links in re html editors, if you need some - do you know html, or do you need a wysiwyg editor (what you see is what you get, more limited but easier to use)?

http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmled...htmleditor.htm

http://tinyurl.com/cabvfd

http://tinyurl.com/2rpsme

I hope I'm not insulting your intelligence by suggesting what you know and have done already...

Momliz - you're the best! I've set my Firefox options to open in a new window. I never played around with it as I had never intended to use it long term but perhaps I should adjust my thinking and move with the times.

I've done my web site all in html but it's a pain and when I saw how it looked on Firefox and thought about all the work I would have to do I decided I needed something easier. I was never really good with html and rather blundered through my home page creation which looks really bad now. The other pages seem to be fine except my last Paris trip report which I can fix quickly. Firefox doesn't seem to like the html code for non-breaking spaces. Guess I'll have to find something else to use to replace &nbsp. Not a big deal.

I will look at the sites you've so thoughtfully provided. I'm gonna have plenty of time since in a week I'll be out of work again. That's when I really spend time on the internet.

Thanks!

Happy to help - tabbed browsing is THE ONLY way to go - Firefox was using that long before IE copied it.

Yes, html coding can be a pain if you're not fluent(I'm not at all), but if you go here:

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/

or here: http://www.w3.org/2002/03/tutorials

there is a lot of really good info, and great tutorials.

Sucks that you'll be out of work!!! I hope you find something quickly, if that's what you want. But that can be a great time to brush up on skills.

Good luck!

Joomla does seem to have a bit of a learning curve to get started (it was a help to me to have someone work out the choice of a template for me) - - but once set up, the addition of new material couldn't be much easier - - it's vaguely like a blog, but I view it more like a newspaper - - you add any new copntent to the front page, and everything else just automatically pushes back depper and deeper into the archives. New content ("articles") are created with a fully WYSIWYG editor, so you don't have to learn any HTML if you don't want to).

It's a particularly good fit if you have your website hosted on godaddy.com (best value on the internet, unless you have some other free option - - as many blog sites are) since they are set up to do the Joomla software installation on your (virtual) "server" pretty painlessly.

For reasonably painless blogging, our daughters seem to have good results with tumblr - - you have to fit their mold - - but if it's just text and pictures in a continuous stream of newer-to-older entries, then I think they do it pretty effortlessly there.

I guess that the tools here would work there, in much the same way as the sshepard examples denoted above.