BootsnAll Travel Community

I'm back in Texas, sigh, but not quite ready to give up my trip yet, so I spent this morning figuring out a way to create something between a table of contents and an index to my blog. Some of my friends wanted the blog in chronological order; others complained they didn't want to start in June and have to click forever to get to the interesting bits in northern Portugal and Spain. They were fussing about how to find this or that posting without having to keep on clicking forever. So I figured out a way. I created a page called "Navigating the blog" and installed links to an alphabetical list of places I visited. It only took about an hour. Somebody else might find this system useful. I also took Pete Teoh's advice and tried Smugmug for the photos (Gallery was too technical for me). I don't know if it's worth the $40 a year, as my photos aren't much to look at; I'm more of a word person. Still, for 14 days the pix are out there, and maybe I'll spring for the $40 just to have a backup set for myself that will be safe, even when my computer crashes and the tiny digital disk ends up on the floor.

That's a great suggestion, GG, thanks for sharing it.

Well, it would have been a good idea, but it isn't working. The links are crazy. The only one that works properly is the first one. After that, they link to all the wrong places. I've tried putting the link both before and after the line in the navigation blog, and nothing works. Why would that be? In the "Edit" version, the links are correct. But on the published version, what you click on has no relation to the link specified.

Hmm... Good question. Would you let me know the URLs of the link you want it to go to and then where it ends up instead? I'm not the one to figure it out, but that information (and any other info you think might be helpful) will probably assist whatever lucky tech person gets to this question first...

Thanks, Jessie. I made myself crazy trying to fix it, and finally I just gave up. Maybe BNA blogs can only have so many links and then they get weird. I just deleted the whole thing and tried a different approach. Thanks for being willing to help.

If you have trouble like that again, with anything, the more information you can provide the better - actual URLs and/or error messages - so we can attempt to recreate the problem ourselves. Otherwise it's hard for us to really know where the error stems from.

Thanks, Jessie. I'm sorry I just didn't have time to do that. I'm gearing up to teach five courses starting next week.

If you would like some pointers regarding the code I can help you. OR if you want someone to do it for you, I can do that as well. You may contact me here or via private message.

I was looking at your *messed up* page when I was at work the other day and the code was all over the place. Sadly you'd deleted it by the time I got home so couldn't have another look

However, there's no real limit to the amount of links you can have. Essentially its just text. What may have been a problem was if you were using the fancy text editor the blogs (wordpress) have (lots of icons and things to click for adding pictures and links) instead of just a plain old box for typing in.

The 'fancy text editor' is nice for simple typing and maybe adding a link here and there, but anything more and its a shambles and makes a nasty hash of everything. If you were using that i'd suggest turning it off and just using the old style editor to add the page and *should* work out better...

How do you turn off the Wordpress editor?

If its working how normal wordpress works there should be an option under your profile page in wordpress.

So if you goto where you admin pages, there's hopefully a 'users' option. If you click on that it should goto 'your profile' where at the bottom is a tick box under 'Personal Options'

"Use the visual rich editor when writing"

untick that option (if its already ticked).

Then try again, and it works simlilar to how these forum text boxes work.

<a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info">link text here</a>
<a href="http://www.travelbloggers.org">link text again here</a>

would be how it would look.

But start small, try a few links at a time.

Hope that works

OK, I found it. The visual rich editor was NOT ticked, so I couldn't untick it. Sigh. I created a new post, a "Trial Index," and the links don't work there either. It seemed an easy thing to fix, but it isn't proving to be that way.

Its not the editor its the link expression. See above and my email for how the links should be written out.

I didn't get the email, but I did read your blog. Congratulations on turning in your resignation! The problem between now and Oct. 6 is to deal with your feet, which will be itching to get on the road so much it puts bed-bug bites to shame. If it helps to offer assistance to hapless blog writers who can't make links work, then I am one lucky old gal. I await these missing links with more anticipation than old man Leaky searched for fossils.

Thanks, I cant wait to get a move on.

Ill post msg here as I think my emails are getting stripped before they get to you.

As posted above proper link format is
<.a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info">link text here</a>

You have your links entered as
Alcobaca<a href="http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/?p=30#more-30>

<.A HREF="http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/?p=46#more-46Finisterrehttp://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/?p=46#more-46" TARGET=_blank>http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/?p=46#more-46Fini...nygold/?p=46#more-46


So your links need to be changed to proper format which would look like this

<.a href="http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/?p=30">Alcobaca</a>


without the period between <.a

Does this mean that the "Link" button on the BNA blogs doesn't work, and the only way I can do this and make it work is to type in that long, long list of letters and symbols, exactly as you have shown it? That is really daunting. Jessie, are you looking in on us from your star up there? Did you see the "Trial Index" page and the links I made using the "Link" button, compared with the links as Dusty says they OUGHT to look? I might manage to copy all that code correctly, letter by letter and mark by mark, for one or two entries, but it really would not be much use as a way to create an index for the entire blog. Too much margin for error. On the other hand, if the BNA blog link code is not quite right, and if Dusty has solved the problem and a programmer gets in there, maybe the link code could be made to work. Apologies to anyone who doesn't know what this is about. It might end up being helpful to all of us. Or not. I'm not sure.

If you're using the link button and its messing up then its interesting. However typing it all directly in isn't that difficult. I do it all the time as i'm actually too lazy to use the link buttons, and with a bit of copy and paste its all quite nice.

For example, in the past 5 mins i've just done something really straight forward which I think is along the lines of what you would have done with your blog enteries (apologies if not and i've misunderstood).

http://www.gonewalkabout.info/bna-sample/

This is the code

--------------------------

This is a sample of a links page manually created. This should be a paragraph by itself and the links below seperated by some non alpahebtical things...

<strong>A for Apple:</strong>
<a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info">Home Page</a>
<a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info/gallery/">Take a look in the Gallery</a>

<strong>C for Carpet:</strong>
<a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info/gallery/map/">ooh a world map</a>
<a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info/2006/07/30/the-countdown-really-begins-fifty-days-to-go/">Neally time for the trip</a>

<strong>M for Mouse:</strong>
<a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info/movie-slideshows/">Some Slideshows</a>
<a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info/tags/australia">posts about australia</a>

The links are above - click away

-----------------------------------

And yes I know my alphabet is a touch random

Your index is definitely cool. It is what I had in mind. But I'm having a brain problem here. You think you are too lazy to use the link buttons? For you it is easier to enter 50+ keystrokes of code, being precise about where the periods and carrots and spaces and letters are, than clicking on ONE button? Have I fallen through some kind of looking glass? Are you serious? I don't ever think of myself as lazy. I think if you asked all 20+ ex-lovers of mine, plus thousands of former students and friends, and all my kids and surrogate kids to describe me, not one of them would use the word lazy. But entering every space, dot, and digit of a long, long line of code for every single blog entry I have made, knowing that if I get a period in the wrong place the whole thing will not work: this is, as I said before, daunting. To me. My mouth is hanging open. I am going to force my jaw shut manually and take my daughter to the store, but I just can't get how doing it all manually (I can't even figure out what the pattern is!) could possibly be easier than a link that actually works.

You have to understand that i'm basically a geek and find just using a keyboard and copy and paste quicker than messing about with a mouse and buttons.

All I did was take one link

<a href="http://www.gonewalkabout.info">template link</a>

copy that and paste it x amount of times. Then (in a different window) open the page i'd want as the real link and copy and paste that pages location from the address bar over the first bold part and type the text I want over the second bold part. Repeat that process for however many links you want.

The only typing involved was ctrl+c to copy, ctrl+v to paste and typing the actual discription text for the link. For me, thats quicker But I do understand that my method if you're not used to it could be more confusing which is why those editors exist.

However, at some stage what you are trying to do is more than the editor was intended for. I think what you are trying to do is maybe where that limit begins as you are generating a lot of code, not just text, and one misplaced element of that code has dramatic consequences...

Template customization would save you all the time in the world Granny. I don't think they allow actual code modifications ( read: php code ) on your blogs and for good reason. If they did All of this could be done automatically for you and with only a few lines of script. IIRC wordpress already has the function builtin like calling categories, pages, links, etc. Permalinks would be nice as well, not sure if those are implemented.