Recently, it crossed my mind that while BBB readership has spiked in the last couple of months, I've never really taken the time to explain what the different pieces of the site are and how they work. So, without further adieu, the Bleeding Bruin Blue Website Tutorial (insert feigned applause here)!
At the top of the page, there's a blue bar with a search box and a "Flag Blog" button. I certainly hope that this blog will never need to be flagged (not sure what that is, but pretty sure it's more than a man in a striped shirt throwing his hanky and gesturing), but if it does, that's a pretty good sign that something here needs to go. On the right side, you'll see a sign-in link and a create blog link. That's fairly self-explanatory.
Down the left side of the page, you'll see the posts making up Bleeding Bruin Blue. The green thing at the top of each one is the title, and the gray words are links. To e-mail the post, click on the envelope icon at the bottom of the post; to leave a comment, click on the text that says "0 comments" or something similar.
The right side of the page should start with a sports scores box, but this gave out Saturday night so I had to take it down. Will look for new one.
Below that, temporarily leading off the column,
the second baseman, number one, are links to important BBB pages like the main page, This Week in Bruindom, and sports' previews. Come mid-November or so, the fall sports previews will crawl into their den and sleep until August while the basketball previews take their place.
Hitting second,
the center fielder, number five, you'll find links to relevant external sites, like a Google calendar with Bruin sporting events (currently just thru basketball season), the Bethany athletics page, the BC tennis blog, and some basketball sites.
In the 3-hole
, catching, number fourteen, is the archive. By clicking the hierarchical arrows, you can get a link to any post ever published on BBB, save the deleted ones.
In the cleanup spot
, pitching, number seven are the team and opponent labels. By clicking on these you can find all of the posts pertaining to, say,
middle school girls soccer, or
Wawasee.
Finishing off the right column, eschewing the baseball lineup references, is a doppler radar/weather warning widget. Put your mouse over it and it grows. No, I don't know why the box is too small for the image. On the top are any active warnings for Elkhart County (this may or may not be where you are as you read it), and below that is the radar. If you really want to see a large version, click on the image and drag it up into your address bar.
On the bottom of the page is a counter showing how many times this page has been visited since I installed it, which was August 22 give or take a couple days.
Below that is a banner showing the temperature, conditions, humidity, wind speed, and visibility (in both traditional and metric units) for Goshen. Click on it and you get a full report.
That's the tutorial. Questions? Comments? Leave them in the comments or
e-mail me.
