One drawback of Wordpress as a CMS (content management system) is that it’s a blog that’s been shoehorned to a CMS. I need to create permanent pages that live on the site without any specific timestamp, but Wordpress is designed to display posts on the front page. The Wordpress site gives a nice summary of “posts” vs. “pages”:

In WordPress, you can write either posts or pages. When you’re writing a regular blog entry, you write a post. Posts automatically appear in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page. Pages, on the other hand, are for content such as “About Me,” “Contact Me,” etc. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology, and are often used to present information about yourself or your site that is somehow timeless — information that is always applicable. You can use Pages to organize and manage any amount of content.

- http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages

I need pages for the different initiatives of the club - for example, the Pray for our Priests car magnets or the Monthly Prayer Request for Priests. I don’t want people visiting the site to see “Pray for our Priests” magnets as a blog post that happened in May 2008; I want them to see that it’s an ongoing initiative from the club.

In the past month I’ve made some major upgrades to the Serra Boston web site, including:

• Custom CSS for multiple page types - monthly archives, tag archives, pages, and so on.
• A search box that appears in the upper right of every page, not to mention customized search results using Wordpress’ search engines. An interesting exercise in information architecture (to think about what users want to see in search results), PHP coding, and CSS.
• Search Engine Optimization through Google sitemaps and Feedburner. When I write new content on the site, the site actively pushes the content out to various news feeds on the Internet.
• Web traffic analysis through Google Analytics.
• I’m still getting the hang of the Wordpress engine that powers the site, but so far it’s suitable for my content management needs.
• An About the Site page to track meta-information about the site, such as upgrades or the site’s purpose in fulfilling the mission of Serra Boston. I took the idea from the MoMA site, which collects all the site’s information (awards, credits, etc) in a single link at the bottom.
• Setting up a development environment (as a sandbox to play around in) and a staging environment (to preview the site before it’s pushed live), so that edits have minimal impact on the live site.
• To be released soon: category and archive listings in the right sidebar. The picture of Blessed Junipero Serra was put there to fill in the white space, but could be replaced by more useful content.

The site is shaping up nicely, but is due for an overhaul. I’ve been patching on different elements as necessary (for example, the CSS used to control the search box) but there have been enough updates to warrant

While eating dinner tonight I popped in “Sideways,” which I haven’t seen in a while. I finished dinner halfway through the movie and went to my home workspace to resume working on some web sites.

My workspace seemed kind of quiet, and I debated bringing my laptop upstairs to finish watching the movie. Usually I have the TV going in the background, and sit in front of it with my laptop while coding and checking e-mail.

It then occurred to me that with my new Mac and new Mac screen, there was space enough to pop in the DVD and tuck it into a corner of the workspace.

Marketers have come up with the idea of a “third screen” - the idea that movies are the first, TV is the second, and other screens (like cell phones and other mobile devices) are the third. With much more real estate for my computer screen, it’s easy to fill with multiple media - admin screens for Wordpress, the actual site, coding in Dreamweaver.

I actually started using it with YouTube, catching up on the full seasons of “Spaced” via the Internet. Seems like a logical extension to pull shows and movies off of NBC.com, iTunes, and Bittorrent.

We’ll see how the third screen affects my productivity.

I bought a portable GPS the other day - the Garmin 260W. It ranks up there with LASIK surgery as one of the best decisions I ever made.

Prior to owning a GPS, I would think through a trip, print out dozens of Google Maps with directions, and read the printouts in the car while driving to my destination.  Now, instead of relying on potentially inaccurate or hard-to-interpret Google Maps, I can just type the address in Garmin and let it call out directions.

Best of all, if I go slightly off-track, Garmin starts directing me back towards my destination.  One wrong turn results in a slight detour, rather than a disastrous series of U-turns and three-points.  It also calculates the arrival time, giving me a clear (and pretty accurate) sense of when I’m going to arrive.

The 260W seems to be the best model. The more recent models have MP3 players and FM traffic updates, but why would I want a MP3 player in my GPS when I have an iPod?

The best thing about the Garmin is that anywhere I am (well, in North America) I know where I am and where I’m going.   There’s a certain peace of mind to never feeling lost while driving again.

The Samsung F700 is the latest touchscreen phone that’s supposed to complete with the iPhone. Gizmodo compares the new Samsung F700 to the iPhone, and declares iPhone the winner.

I’ve played with the iPhone, and must admit that it’s the best possible iPhone variant I’ve seen. If not for the Cingular limitation I’d buy it in a second - Verizon has WAY better reception in my neck of the woods.

I’m beginning to see that I need a device that’s a PDA first and a phone second. I like the clamshell feel of my beat-up phone; really the only other thing I need is a device that displays an electronic calendar so I can see upcoming events on the go. I just threw away an unused paper calendar that took up too much pocket room, so electronic is the way to go.