I’ve been playing around with some settings in the wordpress dashboard for this site. The first thing I’ve done is changed the permalink structure. Now, instead of the url for each post being http://www.jonjolly.com/?p=120 they are something more memorable such as http://www.jonjolly.com/2006/10/08/Wordpress-internals. This may mean that some links to old pages have been changed, so let me know if you find any broken ones.
Apparently you can also hack the url when permalinks are set like this. By deleting the end part to http://www.jonjolly.com/2006/10 you will get all my blog posts for October 06.
The other thing I did was work out what’s slowing the site down! Most of you have pointed out that the blog doesn’t load - either timing out or showing an error message. It seems the new widget plugin is the culprit as when I deactivate it, the site loads like a dream. This causes some problems however as I’ve set up a few widgets that I particularly want to keep. Hopefully I can find some documentation on how to speed it up again.
Since I decided to focus this blog on the field of youth work back at the weekend, many different links have started appearing in the sidebar to the right as I’ve found relevant resources.
I use the excellent del.icio.us for all my bookmarks and have started tagging links with ‘youthwork‘ for all related pages (and ‘youthministry‘ for Christian pages). You can subscribe to an rss feed of any del.icio.us tag or user and my latest ‘youthwork’ tags are displayed directly in the sidebar for your convienience.
I’ve also started using Google Reader to compile all the rss feeds that I read into one location. Thankfully, Google also allow you to place the reader directly into your personalised homepage so I can get them all wherever I go. The best links or stories that I find are ’starred’ and I’ve placed that feed into the sidebar too.
If you find other links or resources that relate to the topic, let me know so that I can add them. Pretty soon we’ll have a useful list!
Whenever we have a team meeting for the church youth group, I constantly have to remind the leaders to focus their attention. This is somewhat difficult to achieve as there is around 18 leaders each week, all of whom want to socialise while I’m desperately trying to ascertain exactly which young person broke the light fitting.
When I thought about this, I realised that perhaps more than anyone else, I’m the one who needs to focus a little bit more. Now I could give many examples, but take this blog for instance, it’s never really had a purpose other than it was there, so I did it. If you look back through the posts on this site, there is no coherant theme or over-arching principle to the topics, just random ramblings!
After playing around with the website settings for most of this weekend I’ve decided that I need to give this site a mission or a reason for being, so I’m announcing my intention to start writing about that which I know well: Youthwork. Of course there’ll be other things thrown in here too; life, love and laundry, but hopefully I’ll start to offer some reflection and insight into the practical work that I do with young people and my own development within that. Of course, my focus may well wander at times so feel free to comment-away asking awkward questions regarding youthwork practice and theory to get me back on track. Or as I do with the youth group leaders… shout at them!
Ok, so the website’s got a bit of an overhaul thanks to the thoroughly excellent WordPress. I’ve seen a number of WordPress sites in the past, but it was Dan’s Blog that prompted me to finally install it on the server. It’s an incredibly powerful blogging tool, so it’ll take me a while to get it exactly how I want it. Be prepared for some subtle changes over the next few weeks! For an example of how it could look Click Here
In case you’re wondering, my DJ Company has moved here.
The blogging phenomenon has been exploding around the globe for years now giving reporters a run for their money. Even insignificant events and personal musings in blogs have been scavenged and re-worked into major news stories, not to mention actual breaking news posted online as it happens.
The recent trend of podcasting has also shown that people are keen to gain their own audience and inform or entertain the masses, but here in sunny Sussex my friends have all decided September 2005 is the time to share their thoughts with the online community!
A few more links have appeared to the right of the page as my mates have all set-up their own blogs. I’m actually learning quite a bit more about them through their posts which is quite exciting. I’m not sure though if blogging in this way is a useful form of communication to explain things you would never say, or merely an excuse for not saying the things you ought to face-to-face…
Interesting thought, let’s see what they have to say about it!
Kirsty’s made a great start to her new Blog. It seems she actually has something interesting to talk about, instead of just rambling like me!
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