I really need to get back to writing again, maybe I’ll get more visitors then

and yes, I know, StumbleUpon is known to bring a huge peak and after that only some visitors. Still…

P.S.: Some friends of mine started a German website called Projekt Datenrettung (no frame version of Projekt Datenrettung).

Well, let’s start at the beginning:
A couple of weeks ago I finally got time again to take care of my blog. I wrote a few articles and wondered how long I’ll stay active here again.

I believe by now I’m known among my blogging friends as someone who is active like hell and then suddenly vanishes for quite some time.

I thought about the reasons which made me “vanish” and that’s what made me find my very own tagline:

“…when coding passion, gaming addiction, Internet surfing syndrome and the real life collide…”

As I read that tagline a few times I figured that I can’t stick to my theme as it won’t fit anymore. Also, I’ll have to change a some things to make my blog work with the tagline.

So here it is, my new design:

A white-blueish theme (yes, I wasn’t able to say goodbye to my blue) which is looking very clean and which is easy to read. Actually, way easier to read than the previous theme(s).

What changed? What stayed?

• The basic frame of my old design stay: a two column layout, with the content on the left and the sidebar on the right.
• I added a short menu at the top and tried to use the page foot a bit more.
• I got rid of the categories and use the Tags instead (why they are better)
• The trackbacks are no longer shown (except under “Recent Comments”). Maybe I add them later again. (HowTo: separate trackbacks and comments)
• My Advertisement section got reviewed and I’m now testing Matt’s WP125 Ad plugin
• Some plugins are gone or will go pretty soon, speeding up the loading time a bit.
• One or two plugins where added or re-implemented. (e.g. NicEdit)

Although the list is pretty long (or short), there are some things I don’t mention because they are still in the works. One of the things is my “play with me” sidebar. I’m working on making it remember which “box” you left open or which you closed, so it will show you said boxes the way you left them. Also, I plan to allow you to arrange the boxes the way you want (and make it remember it).

There are also a few bugs and some of my categories (no longer shown), tags and pages need to be updated.

Last but not least I’ll have to get a better header image. Right now it is the worst looking part of my new design, but I just have nothing better right now. I hope to get a better one, but maybe I’ll have to find a blog contest solution although I can’t offer much

that’s all for now, I hope you like the new look

Marco
P.S.: I have to admit something: I stole some of my ideas from Slevi.net and ProBlogDesign.com

Image by belljar

So far I finally got all plugins updated and even got the time to fix an issue with the menu on the right:
If you visited the “Tutorials” or “About Ruelicke.net” section of my blog, you may have noticed that the sub entries got messed up a bit. It is fixed now, but my “friend”, the Internet Explorer, messes it up now.
I’ll see if I can fix it, if not, you may look for an alternate browser

I even got the time to finally align my Firefox advertisement properly at the bottom so it fits a bit better to the design than before.

It seems to me as I only have two or three things left which need my attention, then I can start blogging again. Two of those things are the Internet Exploder bug with the NicEdit WYSIWYG editor and the, currently missing, Gravatar avatars in the comments.

Enough for now

Marco
P.S.: I hope Germany wins the UEFA cup…

A lot happened in the world since then. Quite a few updates were released for Wordpress and now I have to take care of getting up to date.

Also, my feed reader collected a few thousands of articles which I couldn’t read due to not having enough time. At least there is a button which marks them all read with one click

So, what happened to me which prevented the posting of new articles or at least regular messages on twitter?

First of all my real life got quite busy. I had to concentrate more on school (though some grades won’t be better this half year either) and then I got somewhat World of Warcraft addicted. I believe I have to blame my friends on the Warcraft part as they convinced me to start playing in September last year.

Aside that I was forced to reformat my computer about 2 or 3 weeks ago. My computer catched something nasty and since it had already had a lot of bugs I decided to take the opportunity and make a clean installation of Windows XP, including Service Pack 3.
I still struggle with installing a few missing programs, but my computer is more or less back to normal

Well, that’s enough for now. I better see to it that I update my blog, have a look at that new NicEdit and start writing more often on here again. I guess some of you remember that I had one or two good ideas. Of course I plan to continue them when I have the time.

So long,
Marco

P.S.: I hope Germany wins the UEFA cup

Influenced by their articles I decided to review and optimize my own blog. Some of the mentioned plugins and optimizations I had already in use, a few I added as result of reading said articles:

• Installed WP Super Cache to replace WP-Cache 2.0
• Added a visual text editor with NicEdit
• Added CommentLuv
• Added FreePress Recent Comments
• Added NoFollow Free to make sure that DoFollow is enabled
• Last but not least I also added Gravatars.

You could call this some kind of heavy maintenance, so I’m now interested on some feedback. How do you like the new comment plugins? Does the site load slower or faster or did it stay the same? Any reply is much appreciated, especially feedback about the loading time of my blog

Update:
I moved all javascript used on my site to the foot which should reduce the loading time a lot more.
Please let me know if something is now broken

Matt at Webmaster-Source started a new project which adds to his blog. This project is a podcast about blogging and webmastering as these podcasts are quite rare. After searching for a name and volunteers for his podcast he choose BlogCast as title.
I don’t know how many other people volunteered to be a guest in his podcast, but I do know that I received the honor to be his first guest in the pilot episode. I guess this is the right place to say thanks to Matt!

Back to the headline

It is easier and faster to quote Matt right away:

What Do YOU Want Us to Talk About?

Marco of Ruelicke.net and I will be talking about a blog-related topic on the upcoming pilot episode of BlogCast. The only problem is neither of us have decided on a topic yet.

So, here’s my question for all of you: What do you want us to talk about?

Is there something that you want to know more about? Leave a comment, and we’ll consider your idea.

Of course you are welcome to leave a comment on my blog, but it would be a little bit easier for us, if you also leave a comment at Webmaster-Source.

Halle/MZ/jam/Ruelicke.net
A 17 year old female student of the Blindow-Berufsakademie was seriously injured by an 20 year old male classmate after a confrontation at the private school. As police spokesman Siegfried Koch said, the victim suffered from multiple cut and stab injuries at body and face. Also, the offender has to be treated at the hospital under observation – he has taken sleeping pills additionally to alcohol, after his own statement. It is still unclear what led to the bloody confrontation.

The principal of the Blindow-Akademie heard the screams of the 17 year old girl from the corridor in the school, so the police. “As he wanted to help her, he found her lying and bleeding in front of the entrance. The offender, who was standing next to her, had a firearm and a knife in his hands” said Koch. The police reacted to the emergency call at the vocational school at 13:00 local time with a large squad. The officers were equipped with bullet prove vests and machine guns. Koch justified: “We take such emergencies very serious.”

My part of the story

I myself (fortunately or unfortunately) didn’t see or hear what happened. At first my friends, classmates and I didn’t even know what was going on…but let’s start from the beginning:

We had our German lesson as suddenly the janitor showed up. He talked with our teacher who then told us that the lesson is over for now. Obviously she didn’t know what was going on either. Anyway, as we tried to leave the building, we were stopped by an police officer wearing a bullet prove vest and carrying a machine pistole, a MP5 if I’m not wrong. All of us were confused and as the class president I tried to find out what was going on.

One floor above us was a girl, shocked and saying something about a girl friend being stabbed. Then I talked with the janitor who told me the same. As I shared my information with my classmates, we calmed down a little bit, however, we were still confused. About 15 minutes later we were told to leave the building through the back entrance.

Since I had to get my bicycle, I walked with a friend to the main entrance, entered the school yard and got my bike. There we even got a few more details on the event. These details are more or less mentioned in the part above. Well, I thought about getting a hold of my class teacher, but as I saw he was busy, I decided that I can wait.

I went home and dug through the net to get more information which I now presented to you. I will keep you updated on what is happening at school during the next days and weeks.

Update #1:
Latest news revealed that the condition of the girl is critical. Also revealed was the fact that the offender was a former student.

Editorial Note:
Images are courtesy of mz-web.de and Jan Möbius. I translated the article of the MZ to provide facts additional to my own experience of the event.

Happy Holidays…

…or vacations, which ever word you prefer.

This week I had vacations and I tried to enjoy them. I didn’t really succeed, but I didn’t fail either:
Originally I intended to stay away from the computer as much as possible, just to get some distance and to prove once more that I’m not computer or gaming addicted. At the end it turned out that I spent some time at the computer, mainly playing World of Warcraft and working on the homepage of Thorsten Kramer.

My vacations also helped to come up with some more ideas for articles, so stay tuned for them.

That’s all for now, I need to write some articles, if you excuse me…

Wait!

I almost forgot something:

Matt at Webmaster-Source announced that there will be a Webmaster-Source Podcast coming soon. He is currently looking for a title for said podcast and he is looking for a blogger willing to give an interview through Skype (or talk about some blogging-related subject). So have a look, maybe you are the one with the perfect name for the podcast…or you are one of those “on-air” with the podcast. (Yes, I told him I would be up for it.)

As I’m already talking about Webmaster-Source: Thanks, Matt, for having my blog on his list of “The Coolest Web Designs On The Planet“!

I‘m trying my best but school takes up a lot of time right now. I just thought I let you know before you start to worry…

Or as Michael Martin from ProBlogDesign.com described it in his article “Does Valid Code Help Your Blog?”:

The W3C is the internet’s daddy. They created HTML, CSS, and dozens of other specifications that govern the use of the technologies that makes the internet thrive today. Valid code is code which meets their guidelines, and can be tested in a validator, such as the HTML and CSS ones.

I don’t want to discuss if using valid code should be used in a blog or if it is actually helpful for a blog. To be honest, I had it in mind, but somehow ProBlogDesign.com beat me to it, which is actually helpful because I can skip this part

To sum Michael Martin’s article up I dare to say that it is useful to use valid code, or better: Web Standards, in a blog.
His reasons are all great, but I have to add one more reason why you should use Web Standards: chances are higher that your blog is accessible by all humans, especially those with disabilities.

Less known among the Internet users is the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C. Although some webmaster and “webcoder” know and follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) put together by the staff of the WAI there are way more webmaster / “webcoder” who are not following these guidelines.

I’m aware that these guidelines are not a must have for a website, however I try to write templates and websites following the WCAG as closely as possible. I’m not perfect on this part and I know that my blog template still needs to adjusted to follow the WCAG, but I’m working on it and I’m using one of the many WAI validators.

So, why I am talking about the whole accessibility thing?

As you know, there are many different browsers out there. Most of them showing the nice designed content of your website, however, there are text-only browsers like Lynx. These users won’t be able to appreciate your nice layout, but they are able to either enjoy your website or just ignore it because of it’s structure. Have a look at your website without the usage of images and CSS, does the “layout” show up in an order which allows you to easily navigate through your page? If not, I’d guess that text-only browser user will ignore your website.

I’m aware of the fact that text-only browser users are a minority, on most page statistics they won’t even show up, but do you really want to loose the few percent of possible customers?

Aside the text-only browser users there is a minority which most people tend to ignore if not forget. I believe it is really sad and of course wrong.
I’m talking about people with a disability. Yes, believe me or not, there are people browsing the Internet who are suffering from blindness or they are deaf or they have epilepsy…I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

It doesn’t require much additional time to make your template more friendly for this target group. For instance, you can avoid using animated gifs so a visitor with epilepsy can enjoy your website. Also, you can avoid the excessive usage of Flash. I know, there are people who would like to lynch me, but be honest. Can you easily navigate through a flash animation without the usage of a mouse? Not really, additionally the animation could prevent the visitor with epilepsy to visit your website at all. Last but not least, (I’m pretty sure that I missed many examples) are the people with some kind of color blindness, like the Red-Green-Blindness. If you use a red-green template you should make sure that either the colors are ok for people with red-green blindness or that you have at least an alternate design available.

Everything I mentioned here is my personal opinion. I know that it can be difficult to maintain a accessibility friendly website and I’m also aware that many major websites like Amazon or Microsoft are not accessibility friendly, but maybe you can make a change.

Whenever I discuss this topic with other people, I hear many excuses for not following the WAI. In return, I always have a solid argument against the excuse.

Bad vs. Good – The Accessibility Discussion

• It will take more time to finish my site!
  Not really, if you follow the WCAG right from the beginning, you will be done at the same time as you would without following it.
• It will make the page more ugly.
  Sorry, but you are wrong here. Actually even the average visitor can benefit from the accessibility optimized website because of the clearer navigation and so on…
• Those disabled don’t have to visit my site and/or shouldn’t use the Internet.
  Ignoring the fact that this is really racist, you should keep in mind that one day you could also suffer from some kind of disability. Of course, it is up
• Major websites like Amazon or Microsoft are not following the WCAG either, so why bothering?
  True, but you know you could make a change? Just because “famous” websites are not following the WCAG doesn’t mean your website wouldn’t help to spread the word and encourage other people to optimize their own websites.

Of course at the end it is your own decision if you try to follow the guidelines or not. I myself will continue to optimize my website(s) into this direction.

What about you?