Real Estate Blog Lab A Laboratory for Real Estate Bloggers

Tweetboard Annoying

By Dave Smith Friday July 3, 2009

5 Comments

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The Fly on the Wall

Maybe Not So Annoying Read the Comments

I put Tweetboard alpha on the Tucson Real Estate site as a lab experiment. It would do no good to put it here. Bunch of Geeks and Twitter Tweeps hang out here.

I wanted to put it some where it would produce a valid response negative or positive.

I just got that first response a few minutes ago.

“Dave, I always appreciate the info on your blog, but this Tweeter thingie on the side is REALLY annoying! One can’t read the text…”

It is annoying in the sense of a fly in the room when you’re trying to do something else. It might not even be moving, just sitting on the desk while you are reading the screen but you know it is there and you keep looking at it. That’s the same kind of emotion Tweetboard seems to invoke in some. (Me included).

But this user I’m quoting above seems to be viewing in a very low resolution meaning the fly isn’t simply on the wall it is covering up the blog content itself.

It seems more a gimmick than anything useful especially for a RE Blog. Maybe your personal blog where you are talking with your friends about the party last night or the Arrowsmith concert you are going to later in the month, but why would you want it on your real estate blog?

It might also be tied to your approach to RE Blogging. But that is beyond the scope of this post.

Anybody out there using Tweetboard? What kind of response if any are you getting from your readers?

Post Tags: fly on the wall , lab experiment , Tweetboard annoying

Slide Panel Plugin

By Dave Smith Thursday July 2, 2009

0 Comments

Sliding Panels (Yes it's a Garage Door)

I mentioned Sliding Panel briefly in the last post on Upgrading to Wordpress 2.8. You can see it at the top of this site. I changed the word “Open” to “Extras” using the Plugin Editor.

Installing Sliding Panel

You have to read the readme.html file that comes with this plugin. The author for some unknown reason didn’t put the short simple install instructions anywhere but in the readme. READ IT.

If you want to jump in and skip reading the instructions, I thought so. Put this in the header after the opening body tag

<?php if ( function_exists( 'get_sliding_panel' ) ) get_sliding_panel(); ?>

Populate the Slide Panel

Now go to the widget page and you will see a widge section “Slide Panel” insert a text widget, or any other widget in the panel section. I found I can have three panels. I also found you can’t put much content in each. Save and go “Open” your slide panel.

It isn’t being utilized here at the lab as you can see if you open it. More a “Test” to see how it functions. It is “interesting” but I’m still trying to think of ways I would use it on my business sites. You can see for yourself if you open it, there are some pretty lame uses. It doesn’t provide room for a lot of content as mentioned above. Keep it Short and to the point. On my theme I can fit three widgets sections in the panel.

The plugin author uses it on his site for user login to the forum section on his theme’s and plugins. Not sure I would want to hid that information. A new user might never find it.

I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions I don’t have the clicky gene. I don’t just start clicking the mouse around a site to see what happens or what will open. Make a graphic a button and I stand a good chance of missing it.

The same is true for Slide Panel. Just because it says “Open” I wouldn’t unless I had a reason to open it.

Maybe what I lack is the Curiosity gene. I admit, I’m not very curious. Bait me with a leading question and I’m likely to not take the bait. “I was hooked a lot as a child.”

What Uses for Sliding Panel

I’m very open to suggestions on how you would use sliding panel on your RE Blog. Start throwing those ideas out there. If you are already using it, tell us how and what content you have on your site in the sliding panel. YES, you can put a link to your site in the comment.

Post Tags: Dropdown Content , Sliding Panels Plugin

WordPress 2.8 Now I’d Upgrade

0 Comments

Yesterday I upgraded all my main blogs to 2.8. At least I think I got all of the main ones. I backed up each of the databases before doing the upgrades, (not all of them but the main ones, I backed up).

WP Clickcha for those of us Captcha Challenged

3 Comments

Hi My Name is Dave and I’m Captcha Challenged.

I hate most Captcha applications. Sometimes I don’t even bother leaving a comments when I see the captcha. I always check that first before I even start writing a comment.