Questions & Comments
If you have any questions or comments about Island Blogging whether you are an exisiting blogger, thinking about having a blog, or just a visitor please leave them here and we’ll do our best to post an answer.
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109 Responses to “Questions & Comments”
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Eeeh, Les, you have done a great job here….. fast responses again, what a releif! And all posh with rustic views, etc.
The Notify me.. box is tempting but if I tick it, can I un-tick it at a later date? And will 1 ticked box activate e-mail comments on all blogs or only the one with ticked box? (It could just turn out to be too much of a good thing).
Barney - I was trying to get out of doing a tutorial on this! What should happen is that the subscription applies only to the post that you tick. Say FC does a post on ‘Catching ducks’ and you subscribe to that post you get an email every time someone else comments but only on that post. When the next post ‘Cooking ducks’ is published you have to subscribe again to that one if you want. Most posts (except FC’s!) will fade out after a few comments so you won’t get that many emails but if you find you do get too many then you can go back and instead of ‘Notify me’ you’ll see ‘Manage my subscriptions’. From there you can unsubscribe from anything.
Of course if you had subscribed to this then you’d already have a email telling you that I’d answered!
thank you Les, as ever for your time, and dedication, and thank your son Sean too!! can’t think what we would do without you.. xx
Just to warn other not very computer literate bloggers- I had a lot of trouble changing my header- you need to ensure your pictures are 300 x 400 approx, or it just crashes, with no error message- took me AGES to work out what was wrong…
I’m not sure what you were doing, Landlady, or why it should crash. I see you are using the Esther theme - I have just changed the header on this theme on my test site using a 1000 x 600 pixel photo and it worked fine. Mysteries! I’m glad you stuck with it though.
Wonderful, Les, this is a complete makeover. I’m going to have a careful inspection very shortly. Just one thing: where are the blogs? And another: on the first page, the maps on the right are covered by the text. On this page it’s OK. Or is it my computer?
Hi Les, Is it me? Am I missing something? Is there a list of blogs in order of appearance, not just alphabetically?
Wow very Wow
What can I say all your hard work has paid off Les
Thanks for getting us back up n running again
hi Les, Well done again…..I like the blogs in Alpha name order than rolling the bloggers names as the are updated on new comments.
Hi
is there an RSS feed that would get all the entries from all of the islands as opposed to having to get the RSS feed of each of them?
Jill - this page uses the same template as the front page so there is no reason they should appear differently. It sounds like your computer might not be loading the CSS properly. Please tell me what OS and what browser (inc. version) you are using.
I assume by ‘in order of appearance’ you mean which blogs have been updated recently? This still appears on every individual blog so just pick any one and go from there. I am still considering the best way to have these on the front page along with various stats about the site.
It would be useful to know how regular readers reach the site - do they always come to the front page or do they bookmark their favourites blogs?
Mike - there was supposed to be a sitewide RSS feed on the old site but it never worked. Likewise I haven’t yet found a siteweed feed that works properly with the new layout but I’m looking into it.
Les, thanks. The problem is on the home page only - the text area in the centre overlaps the right-hand maps and I can only see the edge of them. The other pages look fine. I just wondered if it was something at your end, I can live with it! FYI I have XP Professional and IE 6.0.
And unlike Fred I prefer “order of most recently updated”. Alphabetical order is better if you’re looking for a specific blogger, but if you want to see all or most of the blogs you need to know which have been updated. Also, a new blogger might get missed on the alphabetical list. Ideally we should have both, I guess. This new site is MAGIC, Les, it’s so fast!
I just logged in again and it’s OK! A miracle of the blogosphere. And I forgot to respond to your other query: I have the Home page bookmarked and go in that way.
All my hard work and you put it down to a miracle! I’ve been busy trying to fix it and you didn’t give me the chance to say I’d done it!
It was a problem with the two photos pushing the centre column out - they are only there as ‘holders’ anyway until I sort out new content. It was also a problem only with IE6 - you really should upgrade!
Wow wow wow! All hail to Les. I shall spend more time than is healthy poking around the new gaff and distributing dragon bon mots all over the place. Just for the record, I too like the home page to have the most recent posts listed! Anyway, the site is fab, it’s very speedy and you are a Prince amongst men. Mmmmwah!
Hi Les.
In my mind the people loggingon to the home page need to see who has logedin recently. Jill & The Dragon has said it for me. If you have not been on this site you do not know which site to go to to keep up with the chat pages. Also it saves a lot of trolling and waste of megs.
May I ask something as a non-blogger? Do you plan to set up the widget “Updated Blogs” also somewhere on the main page here, i.e. http://islandblogging.co.uk ? Every day, this has been my first move on the old site: checking what is new. Now, I will have to go to a blogger’s sub-site first and then look for the latest updates. (Or am I wrong?) I think it would be a very nice feature. Anyway, thank you for your great work and thanks to all the bloggers - I live far away in the midst of Europe and immensely enjoy reading about the islands.
Yes, I vote for that too, if Mr Wonderful Les can do it*. It’s a bit cumbersome at the moment. I do exactly the same as Anita when I log in to IB, or at least I used to on the old site.
*He can do anything. My faith in him is absolute
Roy and Anita - I’m working on this but it will, hopefully, be better than the updates that appear on the bloggers’ pages.
Meanwhile the easiest workaround - requiring just one extra click - is to click on the green ‘Help’ button on the front page and check the Updated Blogs from there.
Thank you, Les!
The tip with the “Help” button works very well, I can bookmark the page which then turns up and will see the updated blogs. I will use that until there is a different way.
Hi Les
Many thanks…but…. I have to say the old BBC site was good in that it had a page with all the bloggers listed, with the most recent contributors at the top, and that was my homepage. You did ask.
Nic - don’t really understand that. The BBC Homepage has only the three latest blogs listed although you can get a listing of all blogs from a link. The front page here has the latest 12 posts with a link (more details) to the latest 20 posts plus the titles of the 5 newest blogs. All of the blogs are listed on the Island by Island page and elsewhere.
The main difference I can see is that the BBC lists when each blog was last updated but do you really need to know that a blog hasn’t been updated for over a year?
Hi,
One of the things I liked about the old IB was that I could RSS subscribe to all of the blogs in one feed. Is there something like that here?
There will be a sitewide feed but I can’t get it working properly yet. There was supposed to be one on the previous site but that didn’t work either!
Les - I’m unable to open some of the blogs, including the links to other blogs. Just treacle in the interweb tubes, or something else?
Cheers……
Well if you will live in a part of the world that the internet struggles to reach! I can open them all without any problems so it’s not the site or the 9,466 mile round trip from here to there so it must be something local to you (or your computer?).
Hehe - clue’s in the name Island Blogging, eh?
I restarted my router, now we’re fine.
I’ve got a mega-busy summer coming up so don’t know how often I’ll be IBing - hope I’ll still have the energy!
Hi Les, I agree with Nic on the question of the list of bloggers. The mega list here only goes back 2 days (obviously this depends on how many people post new blogs), and to find - say - Flying Cat or the White Settler we have to go to the Islands page and access them from there. Since many people don’t blog all that often, it’s easy for them to be overlooked unless recent comments are flagged. Just my tuppence-worth!!
i’ve put a photo to “my avatar” and its still not coming up;any ideas?
tadooe - Assuming you have followed the procedure for signing up at Wordpress/Gravatar it’s usually because of a discrepancy in email addresses. You must use exactly the same address as you use for commenting on IB. Even something as minor as one having a capital letter will cause it not to work. If you still have problems use the one-to-one contact form on Help Me! so we can discuss your email addresses without making them public.
Les - how do I find your own blog? You’re not in Off Island or Alphabetically, and I can only find View From the Helm if it comes up in the recent blogs or comments. Are you hiding? I wanted to check your features and widgets!
I forgot to put myself in Off Islands! I am alphabetical though under V - between Things Go Moo and Whispers of Fair Isle.
Gotcha - alphabetical with capital letters! Cheers, SDxx
WOW!!SD wants to check uncle les’s widgets???
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…
Greatly enjoying Island Blogging. I’m doing Orkney/Shetland in May - any chance to highlight it on your blog system as a ‘visitor’ - in part because I’m off to the Orkney Folk Festival so should be more than just basic holiday snaps.
Warm Regards
JOhn
John, if you can keep it about your experiences on the islands I don’t see a problem with granting you a ‘temporary visa’! Just sign up.
But you could commission a Stromness resident to do a FF feature, surely…
Just kidding…as mjc would say.
I just remembered this is the place to go to ask a question!
Dear Unc,
In VFTH you have a thingie that shows not only how many comments but also how many views a post has attracted. Will we all be able to have this some day? I can’t find it in my widgets…
Yours aye,
EffCee.
Hi Les, Realy enjoy all IB “s. I also enjoy new kiwi blogs and pics.
I find I can’t leave comment for some reason?. Just wanted to let her know how great the pics of South Sea islands were.
Neither can I comment on Taddoe’s blog … understand that she needs to change her settings, but needs an expert ['Uncle Les'] to either do it, or instruct her in words of one syllable.
dearest uncle les,, i need you; HELP!!!
Thanks for the excellent list down the right-hand side Uncle Les. Really Useful.
You don’t need an expert to change your settings. You go into your dashboard and select ’settings’ and go from there. I have tried, as a computing ignoramus, to not pester Les, because I don’t want to loose him, so purrlease try to calm down and work things out sensibly.
(I also appreciate that I do have a lot more time on my paws than some…)
Were those mad sheeps always in the header??? Welsh ancestry???
me has tried,ever so much,fc
I dunno. I go away for a week and look what happens.
Taddoe should be sorted now …. as for FC I’ll deal with you later! It’s a bit late to think straight at the moment.
thank you so much,uncle les.
Right FC - who’s very naughty then? I recently did a poll for everyone to tell me if they would like a thingie that showed the number of comments. Did you vote? No. I also asked if you would like a thingie that shows the most popular posts. Did you vote? No, again. Now you come sneaking in the back door after the poll has closed asking for these very things. Do you think you deserve special treatment simply because you have two more legs (and a smaller brain) than everyone else?
Have to say that the number of voters on the poll was disappointing so I may well do what Nic suggested and just do what I want and let the rest follow or not as they choose. I just thought it would be nicer to get some opinions.
As to sheep. Welsh? WELSH?? These are genuine Hebridean sheep from Lewis. Their names are Calum, Donald and Murdo (okay I made that bit up). They have been looking over the Q&A ever since the site was relaunched and you have only just noticed them? There are 10 different header photos on the HQ pages, how many have you spotted?
I did so vote, I did I did I did!!! I’m not sure I remember what I voted for but it was such a long time ago Uncle Les, how can I be expected to remember…
And I’m a bit worried at your ovine gender recognition skills. Mind you, it certainly proves you’re not in the least bit Welsh. No self-respecting Cymraeg would call his sheeps by masculine names like Calum (?) Donald and Murdo! Unless he was a bit gay…
Taddoe dear, do take your fumb out of your mouf or Auntie Teesh will put that nasty bitter aloes on it!
As for the munificence of headers…I spotted them all oh, ever such a long time ago…honest…
Mmmm. I have ways of checking you know. My behind the scenes non-Data Protection Act protected info doesn’t show any votes from FC unless you were not logged in at the time. There were a few votes from Guest but I assumed that was David.
You mean I was incognito without even knowing it? Is it too late to vote again as me? There must be a bit of Ulster in me…vote early and vote often…no surrender…
is that not ,in plain english calle cheating wink wink
I never speak plain English if a bit of obfuscation can be used instead…
Not something I want to do by trial and error, you wouldn’t like the language…
Thsi is a Real Question. (Thought I’d better warn you). I see I have one draft in my Dashboard, Uncle dear. It is also a published post. If I delete the unnecessary draft, will the blog disappear too?
You should be quite safe in deleting drafts if there is a post with the same title shown as published. Whenever you hit Save a post gets saved as a draft so you may have started the post and saved it and then started all over again. Check the draft by clicking where it says 1 Draft and then clicking on the title of the post. If it only contains a heading or if the content is different to the published post then you can safely delete it.
I’m so impressed. If only all housework was so easy!
I see I can’t spel ‘this’…its a real worry for a cat who is used to 10/10…*sigh*
Hi Les.
Hermit has blocked her site out for some reason, I hope she is alright. As an update comes in and cannot find why.
Hi, I’m trying to change the email address in my account, but I get no email confirmation from Wordpress. Anything else I can do?
I also want to change my password, but don’t seem to be able to find any way of changing it, can you help? The email address notgordondavid@aol.com is now defunct, as I can’t get access to it. I never knew that I p*ssed off so many peoples, now they are p*ssing me off. Cheery…
Roy - Hermit is fine. There are reasons for the ‘blocking’ that I won’t go into here (nothing to be concerned about)
TWS - the email thingie to change your email doesn’t work and is far too compicated to fix. Send me your new email address (use the one-to-one form on Help if you don’t know my email) and I’ll change it for you.
There is a Help tutorial on changing your password - under Getting Started > Password/Settings.
I’m afraid queries are like buses as far as this cat’s concerned.
I’ve just flicked through 211 Akismet-netted Spams and spotted two that may have been genuine, but, as I don’t know what to look for, I junked them anyway. Better safe than sorry… It’s possible only the internet savvy like you can spot a cunning spammer. I just quite liked the idea of having a comment all the way from Latvia…*sigh*
The clever spam ones usually have something like ‘I can’t get the RSS feed to work on your blog … can you help me?’ or ‘I really enjoyed reading your blog and will be back’ followed by some sort of link selling car parts/insurance/fake Viagra/Russian girls in Millport flats.
If you want me to check any out in the future just delete all the obvious ones and leave the ‘possibly genuine’ ones there and I’ll take a look.
Aha…
And thank you…
You think Her Maj imports Russian bimbettes to her Millport flat? I am shocked.
More like bombettes … she has admitted as much in her own words “I have some smashing girls in mind, not one of them under fifteen stones, and they have good sturdy legs, broad child bearing hips”. I just guessed they were Russian. You don’t get girls like that in Glasgow do you?
The sturdy peasant vigour of all those Lewisians who relocated to Glasgow over the 20th century has been diluted by the genes of wee skelfs in big bunnets. Landlady is obviously an exception
Les,
Have changed my e mail address.
Will you need my new one and if so, how?
Cathy - do you have a blog here? If so use the One-to-One form at the top of the Help Me! blog to tell me the new address (that way it stays out of public view).
If you don’t have a blog there is no need to tell us your new email, just type it in to the comment box and your browser should remember it from then on. You might have to have your comments approved once again but once each blogger does that all will be as before.
I’m having problems inserting images into my blog. It has worked OK in the past but now when I try to upload an image I get
Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 42467328) (tried to allocate 11392 bytes) in /home/islander/public_html/wp-content/plugins/resize-at-upload/class.resize.php on line 179
I get the same problem in IE8 and Firefox
Sounds like it’s struggling with a file that is too big but if that were the case you should get a different message. Can you let me know what type of file you are trying to upload and how big it is?
I’ve uploaded some photos today without any problem so the plugin is working. I’d suggest that you try to upload a smaller photo and see if that works then we’ll try to figure out what might be wrong with the original.
The files were under 150 KB (reduced from over 1MB). I’ve tried reducing the files to as little as 81KB and still get the same error message.
Don’t have an answer at the moment. Can you email the files to me (les_at_islandblogging.co.uk) and I’ll see if I can reproduce the error.
Hey Les, Gresslass is getting spammed. Anything we could do? Pull up the drawbridge? Boiling oil?
I’ve left a comment on her blog and deleted the spam. It really is up to everyone to set up Akismet for themselves. It’s the one thing I can’t do since it’s tied to the bloggers email address.
My Akismet spam trap has caught over 800 items, well worth while setting it up!
G’Day Les.
For some reason the Smiley ID is not comming up when the arrow is centred on them. Have changed over to IE8, but that should not cause the problem, maybe. I printed out FC,s Smiley list so its not a problem this end, but thought anybody joining in would be lost to the meaning. Regards. Roy.
Don’t have an answer Roy other than to say there is nothing wrong at this end.
les–okay i’m being stupid but take a look at the latest comments to be put on a blog dating from january–some resemble spam i had before activating askimet:probably i’m wrong but why all this coming–from the other end of world lond after the blog was done??
Not sure what you are talking about. Which blog? There is no outstanding spam on your blog and if you have deleted it I can’t really ‘take a look’ can I?
its not on one of my blogs but on the mulltime one ,written in jan.
That’s because he/she hasn’t activated Akismet. How many times do I need to say it? I have deleted the comments.
Thanks les:
G’Day Les. It may not be a problem at your end and that does not help me out. If Plaid,HarryD and Taddoe do not have the same problem, and supposing they a using IE8 then somehow it is in my own system.
i’ve got a big problem–i’ve suscribed to loads of blogs,but don’t get any feedback via e-mail when new comments appear and have checked m subscriptions??
Taddoe, I’ve already written directly to you to say that I don’t have an answer so it’s thrown open to anyone else to have a think. It works fine for me.
someone got any ideas?????
Hi Les,
can you please retag my blog as being a ‘guest’ on not ‘westray’, so people don’t assume I’m claiming residency when I’m not.
In the meantime I am considering unattaching myself from IB - when I can work out how to do it.
I have appreciated being allowed to continue to blog but only ever considered them as a ‘postcard’ to the IB community for those concerned about MC. I will subsequently restrict myself to commenting and not blogging.
I think you’re doing a fab job and I’m not having any sort of hissy fit (that’s MC’s job!) I just think its time to let go.
Take care.
Following on from madlamb’s comment, is the Guest Blogger option no longer open now the Terms&Conditions are in place? I’m gittin a bit confused, having just been on News&Updates (I think!)
hi les - is there any particular reason why all the island blogs i follow have stopped showing up in my bloglines?
Cloudpurple - no reason I can think of. I have a feed to Island Blogging on Bloglines and everything is showing up fine. Can only think it is a problem with your local setting - perhaps try to delete the feed and resubscribe?
Hi,
I work in the Learning Dept at BBC Scotland and we are making a short film, for kids, about Stornoway Black Pudding.
We want to know what makes the Stornoway Black Pudding special. Do you have a story to tell, or an opinion to share about the Stornoway Black Pudding?
If so, I’d love to hear from you.
A
Is it possible to add an island? I’d be interested in having a Fladda blog.
The islands listed are taken from the Scottish 2001 census of inhabited islands. I can find two islands called Fladda both of which are listed as uninhabited. More info please?
Les,
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/islandblogging/argyllandclyde/fladda.shtml
Okay Fladda has been added.
Islay seems to be missing out. Does anyone have a computer there?
Scotabroad
There were Islay contributors on the BBC site in the dim and distant past, but they just petered out. Maybe they are all in thrall to the big estate owners and daren’t say “boo” or even “hello its a nice day here”
the islay school done a blog when they were in africa but whenthey got back to islay they never gave any more news
hi there i am sending this from southend on sea essex asking four help my mother and father meet in orkney when my father was stationed there in the forties his best mate alan cooper married a local girl who we think had family on orkney her name we think was marion shearer but my father is not sure my father and mother married in 1946 in oxfordshire a small village called chadlington this was the home of the cooper family . we no they had no family but they both died and are buried at a graveyard on orkney . my father thinks at sometime they may have lived in wick but at 89 he is not sure . so next year my wife and i are going to visit orkney and hope to trace some of marions family if any members still live on the island or wick [ marion and alan cooper nee shearer ] possible married 1944 1946 .
What happened to the Ex-Islanders’ new blogs?
I’m trying to use the Jalbum plugin. The handy video guide tells me to use FileZilla to ftp the unzipped plugin using the IP or domain of island blogging then. Any ideas on IP or domain name (and username & password) to be used?
Gale - no idea why they disappeared while I was on holiday but they are back now.
Bruce - sorry for the delay, I’ve just got back from holiday. I’m afraid that you can’t add plugins yourself or use ftp to the site as it’s password protected for security. I’ve had a quick look at Jalbum and it might work on IB provided that you host the album somewhere else as you won’t be able to upload photos directly to the IB server. Not sure if it can do that.
I think it’s going to be a long one to work out and, to be honest, I don’t have the time at the moment, too busy decorating to try and sell the house. I’ll look into it when I can but it might be some time.
No problem, Les. It was just an idea. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Hope your holiday was enjoyable
Hi Les
Happy Christmas and thanks for all your work, I really appreciate it.
Nic
i’ve tried to reply to the new blog”hit the ground sliding” but can’t print anything is it a technical hitch
G’Day Les.
If you still have contact with Hermit. would appreciate passing on my best wishes and hope she can come back on line in the newyear as I miss her postings. Roy.
Me too,Les I miss her blogs–also those by barebraes
What have I done wrong? Did I press a wrong button. My item about my holiday being ruined by the Royal Family isn’t on the main site but I’m getting comments so it must be somewhere? Can you undo any wrong I may have commited? Well done for all your hard work Les.
Calum
Oof–now Im re-assured–I thought I was imagining the post
Calum - you did it as a Page rather than a Post, that is when you came to write it you clicked on the tab Write a New Page rather than Write a New Post. When you do this the article appears as a tab at the top of the blog rather than a post in the main blog.
I’ve changed it now to a Post and it should shortly appear on the Latest Posts on the front page as well as in your blog.
Hi Les, good to hear your ‘voice’ again. Hope that things are going better for you now. All the best for 2010.