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JerseySmarts.com

New Features at JerseySmarts.com

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You may have noticed some new features around JerseySmarts.com. Below is a listing of what has changed in the last week or two. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

  • Subscription: Using the sign-up sheet on the right side of the website, you can now “sign-up” for JerseySmarts.com and receive regular mailings from this blog. The mailings will be general recaps and links to previous posts over the last week or two. Not sure how I want to handle that yet.
  • Related Posts: At the end of each individual post page you’ll find a bunch of stuff. Under the comments box you’ll see something that says, “More On This Topic From JerseySmarts.com.” That area should contain some recent posts that match the topic of the one that you’re currently reading.
  • Random Quote: A little bit underneath the subscription form you’ll find a random quote generator. There are only a dozen or so quotes in the system at this point, but this little widget allows you to flip through whichever posts are in the system without surfing to a new page. There will be new quotes added periodically.
  • Search Engine Welcome. Those guests that make their way to JerseySmarts.com by way of a search engine will now see an in-page welcome box directly under the headline of the individual entry on which they land. It asks them to subscribe to the site’s RSS feed or for them to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. this site based on where they came from.

Hopefully, some of these additions and changes will help to make your browsing experience a bit more enjoyable. Additional suggestions and comments are always welcome!

Joe’s Journal & JerseySmarts.com: Merge?

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Hey everyone. Just looking for some advice with this post. Most of you know that I own JerseySmarts.com in addition to a number of other websites. The original purpose of purchasing JerseySmarts.com was to eventually make THAT site my main blog and have this URL simply forward to the new domain name. As we can plainly see, that has not happened.

In order to streamline my daily website updates and create (hopefully) a higher visibility site, I’ve been thinking about finally making this merge. Both sites get about the same amount of hits (given the story, time of posting, relevance of my meanderings, etc), though Joe’s Journal currently sits at 1,106 posts while JerseySmarts.com sits at 368 posts. Joe’s Journal also has some 1,011 comments while JerseySmarts.com has 111. None of this information would be lost during the merger and it is likely that both designs would be thrown away for a new, more up-to-date design.

Thoughts?

Slightly Augmented Design for Joe’s Journal

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By now I’m sure that you’ve all noticed the slightly augmented design for Joe’s Journal. The header is a little bit bigger (and my mug is a bit bigger in the picture above). I have a few more pictures that I want to wedge into the graphic above, but what you see is pretty much what it’s going to look like in the end.

I also darkened the background of the site because I didn’t really care for the bright off-white color any more. It’s boring, you know?

Plus, you’ll notice the stagnant “JerseySmarts.com” 468×80 banner has been moved from right above the first blog entry to the bottom of the main page. That site (which is essentially this blog in a different format) is ranked higher than this blog by some rankings! What total BS! I think that Joe’s Journal is hurt by not having a specific “.com” name, but since joesjournal.com appears to be owned by a marketing company, I think purchasing that domain is out of the question. Anyway, the Google ad above is an adequate replacement and what’s better – it pays!

For those of you who are tech-heads out there, Joe’s Journal is still operated on the WordPress 2.3.3 database system. JerseySmarts.com is operating on the new 2.5.1 system and the internal Control Panel is a complete disaster. The engineers at WordPress ruined the posting page so that you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find certain options. Garbage. I have no intention of changing the Joe’s Journal internal structure until WordPress fixes the debacle that is 2.5.1.

The only other change that I made was to make one of the stock text advertisements at the very bottom of this page a little bit smaller. Truthfully, it looks better with smaller text. I might set it off in it’s own box, too.

I hope you enjoy. 🙂