Lantern, You Have to Call It Lantern

Coffee was in the New York skyline mug, "Animals" by Nickelback on iTunes. It's only 9:45 and I have been rockin' this am. Yesterday I made it through the main Dreamweaver tutorials and created a webpage complete with images, flash elements, a nav bar, cascading style sheet (CSS), and tables. Also did three kiln loads and read 2/3 of a novel... sleep is for wimps.

This morning I am going to finish up the mouse-over tutorial and designing from a CSS and then I am going to lay out my own tables on paper and start doing my own redo. I thought about just editing the pages I have in Dreamweaver with all the EZNet code, but it looks like it'll be easier and faster to redo the pages, make a template or two along the way, and just re-use the images. With luck I'll have the new site up by the end of the week (at least to the level I already have content on the current site--the first page I make today after the "Home" page with be the "Under Construciton" page). It's an ambitious plan, but the kiln work is light for the rest of the week (one last fuse today and then all slumping and shipping) and the tutorials are really giving me the grounding and info I need to power through.

One last thing before I go off to code. Yesterday I asked JY and JYK about running my own blog, forum, etc. from my site as opposed to linking to my own page on other sites (Blogger, Google Groups, Flickr, etc.). The main reason for putting it all on my own page is navigation: if I link to an external site then I lose all my site navigation. E.g., there won't be a nav bar on the Google Groups page to get from the forum to the series page on my site or the blog site on blogger... If it's all on my site there is the same nav menu on every page. And isn't the good web credo, "Don't let them leave your site."? So Once More With Feeling: Are there good technologies for running your own blog and forum for your own website? If no, I could always use frames.... (UGH!).

PS--The blog title this morning is from the spouse who looked at the new green series last night again, and said (again), "Lantern, you have to call it Lantern." Apparently the greens are the perfect match for the colors used in the late '70's era Green Lantern comics.