I just got self distracted, not in twittter, but twiddling here with the blog. For quite some time, I have rigged together a ‘Page’ in WordPress that uses a RSS feed with info on all the presentations I’ve done going back to 2003. This was generated by sending the feed to the Feed2JS site to dynamically make the page.

I’m writing up notes here how it was done- the new thang is up at http://cogdogblog.com/best.php

What I did not like was that it grew rather long, so I decided to make it be a PHP script that would dynamically do the right thing per year. The first step was breaking up a long single XML file into smaller files, one per year, e.g. 2003, 2004, … 2007. Just cut n’ paste.

The idea is to have a web form in the page that presents a menu one can choose from- the thing with a WordPress page is I do not know of anyway to send it a PHP variable to represent the value for the year selected from the menu– as WordPress has its own way of shuffling variables around. So I took a backdoor approach, actually copying the code from my Indy Junior setup.

The CogDogBlog has been un-snapped. Back in December I experimented with adding the capability offered by Snap.com that with some additional calls to a remote JavaScript library in your blog templates, it adds a small web site preview when you mouse-over a link external from your site. I found it interesting, sometimes in the way […]

Hang on to your full content news feeds, this post might be a long one. I hope to try and document the under the hood as well as some of the exterior chrome work on a new site NMC just unveiled this week. This is as much for my records as anything.

But first, start with the demo, the final piece. The new site is for NMC Virtual Worlds, our new arm that provides consulting and buolding expertise in Virtual Worlds, right now focused n (but not forever) Second Life. Take a peek first at http://virtualworlds.nmc.org/ which looks almost like:

if you reload the front page, the banners as well as the case study in the lower right will change. The banner rotation is easy, something I’ve already put into the other WP power site, the NMC Campus Observer.

The needs for the site were provided rather simply as a Word document, with 6 of the present 7 major tabs. It was presented as primarily static content, but they left me room to dynamic it up, toss in some randomized aspects as well as use syndicated content. Actually, they left most of the decisions up to me, and someone else took care of the text writing (they know of my poor typing skills). I envisioned having some regularly published “news” via the blog page type, but most of the content would be static (or semi-static) WordPress “Pages” (capital P). I was also provided a logo, which gives some direction on important colors.

So the first step was looking for a template to use as a starting point.