(revised 2007-06-27)
Alaska Public Radio Network
has just started its own efforts at two-way communication via WordPress.
This joins several of us in Alaska trying the WordPress weblogs, such as this one, Grassroots Science, the siblings Biocultural Science , and the Cerebral Odd Jobs (blogging in education)
I notice Kuskokwim Campus http://community.uaf.edu/~kuc/blog has joined the experiment as has Far North Science http://www.farnorthscience.com/
There are certainly limitations to any effort to convey and generate knowledge and information across time and space. But I think having several interactive Internet experiments going will help us all improve our voices and consequently our communities.
The tree-based news media are lagging behind, but what can one expect from those of us not living on the tundra?
Pay a visit by clicking on the nifty logo 
Site Search Tags: APRN, newsmedia, radio, wordpress.com, wordpress+tips, weblogs, Alaska
click logo for Grassroots Science projects. Join us
Wow! Thanks for noticing APRN’s web changes (in progress). I didn’t expect anyone would notice for quite a while.
We’re actually moving several sites to a locally-hosted WordPress platform, including APRN.org, KSKA.org, KAKM.org and a site for the parent nonprofit company, APTI.akpm.org.
And down the road, we have an interest in creating an Alaska blog index of sorts, perhaps helping to organize a blogging community — if the community would have us. I don’t know if we’ll be able to follow through on the project, but that’s my dream.
Anyway, thanks for the post, and thanks for also introducing me to your own blog.
–John
This is exciting news for all WordPress fans, of WordPress.com and the full version. We love the company and this is a great group.
I did have a question though about why you use the Pipe around your links. That’s very odd and makes it hard to read. The _About Me is odd, too, and not something found on WordPress.com blogs unless put there intentionally. So you have my curiosity up. You must have reasons for this unusual usage and I’d love to know what they are. Thanks!
The piping (the vertical bar, | ) is my effort to overcome some themes not demarcating hyperlinks very well. I needed a quick symbol to indicate there was a link to another webpage. I’m assuming a lot of people may not be familiar with hovering a mouse all over the text to see what pops out, up, or in the status bar. I like best the tiny superscrpt squares some sites use to indicate links. Maybe I can find a better symbol, until themes get more consistent. I haven’t tried using the code function such as
this text. I try to stay away from simply using text without also indicating the URL link from the text, but this post is inconsistent (pipe, bold, active text only, forgot to add the http://aprn.org spelled out). | Pipe and bold | is distracting; may I blame it on not having a preview pane where I need it?The underscore About me (_About Me) was my way to trick the pages which are listed alphabetically. It was important for people to be able to judge my background for starting this blog, but not more important than finding out what the blog was for and how to locate what was needed (plus, it seemed a little presumptious to put me first.) Maybe I should use numbers like the sidebar?
Actually, you do not have to do anything to demarcate a link. People do know about hovering over a link and whatever you do DO NOT do the preview link popup thing like Snap Preview as that has been banned by many bloggers and is considered bad manners by many others.
People know what links are. The color of the text tells them. You don’t have to do anything else. Focus on the content and make it easy to read. People know a link when they see one. A good trick is to not use the here technique but spell out what the link is in the link text like links found on Lorelle on WordPress. Folks are pretty up on how web pages work. :D
If you go to your About Me Page and click EDIT, on the right hand sidebar at the bottom you will see a box to open (click the +) for Page Order. You set the order of how your Pages are displayed there, other wise they are alphabetical. Traditionally, the About Page is called “About” not “About Me” as your blog may not be about “me” but about your subject.
Traditional Page names are About, Contact, Schedule or Events, Site Map, and then anything you want, in whatever order you want them in. You can also do subPages, such as a Copyright or Policy Page under your About Page.
Keep it simple. You have wonderful information to share, just keep it easy and don’t try to rewrite the system. It works as it should. Focus on the content and keep blogging.
I hope that helps!
Thank you so much, Lorelle, for taking time to make suggestions.
I had been trying to clean up my act by eliminating links which open new tabs or windows and by double-checking I have titles to links for people who use computerized text readers (to listen to web pages). Now I have homework for summer ;) This is a good thing as it has been awhile since I thought about how to structure the Pages. At one time, not all themes allowed sub-Pages, or rather, the sub-Pages were not distinguished from the parent Pages.
Any time, Lorelle, you are very welcome here– cama-i
http://members.aol.com/glincoln45/Cama-i.wav
more Bethel folks, too. Pamyua – http://tribalfunk.wordpress.com/
Anyone else? or let John know at aprn.org