Category Archives: Cindee’s Learning Blog

This blog is about my HTML and CSS class

The Back Story (Christmas letter 2014)

Christmas Letter:

OUR SHELTER SYSTEM

For the past six years we have lived in our bioshelter home, trying to learn from nature how to live and thrive more naturally. We get great water without well or septic system, heat with great efficiency and low pollution, rely on earthworms and other creatures for our compost and water systems, and otherwise love our home life!

Our Food System:

CurtHaulingDirt
Curt hauling dirt.
DirtinBox
Roof Top Gardening

Everything has a beginning point. For us it began with a decision to reduce our use of fossil fuel use as much as possible. Reducing fossil fuel consumption challenged us to grow our own food, because that would minimize the fossil fuels used in fertilizer and transportation. Growing our own food called for a greenhouse. The greenhouse needed some monster cottonwoods cut to bring in the sun. Those cottonwoods begged to be used, as did the rooftop deck on our garage—which meant milling the lumber and building some rather artistic garden boxes for the deck. The garden boxes asked for soil, of course…so we bought soil, guaranteed to come mixed with the right balance of minerals and organics, and NO WEED SEEDS. What we didn’t know is that “no weed seeds” meant they had sterilized the soil, which eliminated the entire community of organisms needed to transfer nutrition from soil to plants. Who knew? It took the whole growing season for the soil to fully recover.

Last year (2013) Cindee and Curt spent the summer hosting classes of people wanting to learn how to build a clay-straw building. This, we hope, will work as a 3-season greenhouse, though the process works great for many Alaskan homes and structures.

In 2012 we added indoor apple trees to our food system.  They continue to produce really yummy apples of various kinds:  red harrelson, state fair, lodi, and honey crisp.

THE PEOPLE IN THESE SYSTEMS

Curt continues to serve as executive presbyter and owl (hovers to get the big picture) for the presbytery. In past years the presbytery has been exploring what makes a strong “indigenous” Christian church (indigenous leadership!), and how the church can take more leadership in Earth Care. Also, alot of energy has also gone into exploring the shape the church will take in response to changes in society. All these things have been preparing the way for what is happening now, and what will happen later.

This was also the year when the presbytery began to give legs to the Indigenous Church movement, forming a village ministries oversight committee led by village folks, and designing a process for five of the villages to receive coaches for indigenous church leadership.

YPEC Outdoor Classroom
Climate Change Conference at Portage Glacier

The Earth Care ministry team was also busy, hosting a Climate Change conference, bringing Presbyterians from the Lower 48 and Alaska to meet with U of Alaska science profs, Alaska Native leaders (Aleut and St. Lawrence Island Yupik) and religious leaders (Presbyterian, Lutheran and Russian Orthodox). This, in turn, planted seeds for a multi-denominational effort for next year. This effort also spawned a new worshipping community that Curt is working with. Busy!

CindeeKarnsHeader2

Cindee started the Alaskan EcoEscape Permaculture Learning Center to teach skills for sustainable living (everything from goat cheese to Permaculture Design).

In May Cindee and her colleagues finished teaching their first ever, winter-long Permaculture Design Course. The class was held one weekend per month at the UAF Experimental Farm in Palmer, Alaska. Seventeen students lived on campus monthly for a weekend of very intensive, experiential learning. Permaculture Design teaches observation, research, collaboration and practice as a way of life, designing how to thrive in sustainable relationships that nurture land, biological life systems, individuals and societies.

Keith:Courtney

Keith and Courtney have been staying busy in Denton,TX. Courtney is a truly gifted music teacher, working at Ginnings Elementary School. She also sings and acts in community theater, and keeps her in-laws happy just knowing her. Keith is working like mad to finish his Doctor of Music degree this winter. He also directs a UNT jazz band, TA’s and teaches in the UNT Jazz department, and managed to win two composition awards along the way, the Herb Alpert Young Composers Award last winter and the 2015 JEN Student Composer Showcase this winter. Go, Keith!

Tycho
Tycho Harold Talbot. Google Tycho Brahe for the back story of his name.

JeanDanAuriDan and Jeanie have their own rewards living in Fairbanks. Aurie turned 2 this year and blessed her Alaska grandparents by spending time charming them off-and-on all year. Big sister Aurie helped her Mom and Dad welcome her new little brother, Tycho, into the family.

Dan is studying to be an electrical engineer, and served as an intern to the Fairbanks North Star Borough, helping them explore ways to make Alaska’s interior region more energy efficient! Jeanie loves her work as director of the University of Alaska Physics Lab, though she is on maternity leave, just now.

My own tutorial

  1. Start a new Composer page in Sea Monkey.
    • OR (use TextWrangeler, save. Open in Chrome to see what it looks like. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO LOOSE YOUR PLACE in the HTML code, this is the easier way to go.  Once you save, you switch over and refresh in Chrome and when you go back to fix the code, you are still in the place you are trying to fix.  This saves a lot of time if you are doing lots of code.)
  2. Always start with the required stuff:
    • <!DOCTYPE html>
  3. Things between the <head>and the </head>  are the title and the styles (only if you are leaving the styles in the document)
  4. Write the opening style like this:  <style type=”text/css”>, closing: </style>
    1. Next write body styles like this:  body {   or paragraph styles like this:  p {

Now let’s start moving this around to make them fancier.

If we want to move the BODY over to the left, it would look like this:  padding-left: 11em, and you’d put it at the top of the CSS Style  body {. (em is how many letter Ms it is over, in this case 11)  If you use a %, I THINK the page can be fluid instead of firm.  So trial and error 5% if that doesn’t look right, change it.

HOOKS

“When I was first learning this stuff, I heard over and over that you should only use ID’s once, but you can use classes over and over. It basically went in one ear and out the other because it sounded more like a good “rule of thumb” to me rather than something extremely important.”  from HERE.

Using the example above, let’s move the “navbar” to the left and give it specific sizes.  You can do that with any element you name.  To name all the elements of that kind use:  class=”name”.  You would have to tell it <p class=”allp”>.   In the CSS Style Sheet you would write p.allp {

If you only want to name ONE element, you’d use ID after the kind of element you want to look for, something like <p id=”para1″>.  That paragraph is named para1, so that I can tell CSS Style to do something special to para1, not all the paragraphs.  When you do that, you will need this in the CSS Style sheet:  #para1 {  (don’t forget to close the directions with } on the next line.   Make sure this is absolutely unique, so the browser will know what to do at ONLY that spot.

Just a note:  CSS doesn’t care. They are interchangeable, but in order to keep things orderly, it’s best to make ids unique and classes as universal.

 

THE STYLE SHEET

Once you get so many commands at the top of the page, it’s getting ridiculous, you should move them to a style sheet.  That means that you don’t have to redo these for all the pages in your site.  Everything will be consistent.  Just make sure your names all all unique.

To save your CSS styles to a sheet–go to TEXT EDIT and paste everything between the style elements.  Erase everything in your HTML doc between the style commands INCLUDING those <style> and </style> commands.  Save your text edit doc as xxxstyle.css.

To do that with TEXT EDIT:

  1. Go to FORMAT and pull down to MAKE PLAIN TEXT.
  2. Next click SAVE
  3. There is a tiny box at the bottom of that screen that you click to be able to save as .css  or .html or anything except .txt.  Make sure it’s checked.
  4. Save it in the same folder with your project.

Now make sure you link to that stylesheet:

  1. Go to your html code and right in the head below the title, you can tell the browser where to find your style sheet.  It might look something like this:
     <link rel="stylesheet" href="finalstyle.css">

I’m having a lot of trouble here, so these are detailed notes:  (make sure both files are open in the side bar in Text Wrangler)

 

 

This morning:  Here is CSS inline :  http://canyonartsschool.com/FinalProject/Test2.html 

Here is CSS in it’s own .css file.  Obviously it can’t find it.  I just don’t know why. It’s in the same folder.  You can see the link I wrote right above this.  I’m guessing I have to add a backslash somewhere.

http://canyonartsschool.com/FinalProject/CindeeKarns.praticeCSSout.html

 

 

Ah the Query of it it all

Okay…..I have mostly remade my new web page as per my clients specifications.  I am totally not done with it.  It took forever to find teaching pictures of me and figure out how to load them up in an orderly fashion.  I really like the plug in:  PlugNEdit, but there are some downfalls.  I picked a whole new THEME for WordPress with Fluidity!  Yippee for me.  I really liked Zinnia too, but as soon as I started plugging stuff in the easy way, without going to find the code to put in percentages, etc.  It became fixed.  That made me so mad.  I tried and tried again and since Zinnia didn’t have a side bar, just a foot bar, I decided to go back to my Church Theme.  That was about 90 min. wasted.  Although what I’m learning is I really don’t want to do all this stuff, I just like it when it works the way I want it to.  I’m having an integration melt-down between WordPress and just getting a template and uploading stuff like I did yesterday for the Citizen’s Climate Lobby.  Oh what to do?  What to do?  I decided to keep plugging along with WordPress.

I finally (after a quazillion attempts) figured out how to copy and save the html script and paste it into WordPress myself, because I think I just had too many pictures or something for it to work.  So….before you press CONTINUE SAVING, copy the html and then create a new page and paste it into the HTML (text) tab of WordPress.  It’s a lot easier for the poor ol’ plug in to paste into nothing, than to figure out the changes that need to happen and just change those.  It could cause one to get bald spots from ripping out hair by the roots!

So I’m onto trying to upload JQuery.  I spent about 45 min. trying to figure out how to link to the library at WordPress since the new 4.0 wordpress touts that it has it.  I decided that was too much for me today as midnight is getting closer by the minute.  So now…..I found out (and this may be very important to note for the next time you give these directions), you have to rename jQuery.fdjaklfj.js (I forgot what all the letters were) to simply jQuery.js or your site can’t read it.  This news from :  http://learn.jquery.com/about-jquery/how-jquery-works/   I just noticed that you just used the whole jquery address.  So what does this guy know…

CindeeEating
We keep our house at 60 degrees to be environmentally conscious, which is too cold to just sit, ie wool hat/scarf!

I’m swearing at the computer…seriously….so my “client” takes pitty on me (it’s 8pm) and brings me dinner.  What a great client!  For dinner I got the newly smoked salmon, creamed cheese, crackers and merlot!  My favorite!

I’ve uploaded the jquery stuff, but I can’t get it to find the library.  Trying AGAIN.

Notice I had the bright idea to upload my wordpress site.  BUT, there is so much HTML, I’m having trouble finding the right place to put the commands.

I may be discovering the downfall of SeaMonkey.  Here’s what itScreen Shot 2014-12-06 at 8.22.27 PM looks like on my WYSIWYG site: under the leaf header and above the picture.

 

When I upload it to canyonarts, it looks like this!  With nothing below the header!!!  Maddening.Screen Shot 2014-12-06 at 8.24.38 PM

I’m starting something new:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/CindeeKarns/styles.css">
<script src="/cindeekarns/jsquery.js"></script>
<script src="//cindeekarns/jsquery.js></script>
<script>
$(function() {
$( "input[type=submit], a, button" )
.button()
.click(function( event ) {
event.preventDefault();
});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<button>Workshops</button>
</body>
</html>
I’m adding that.  Now it could be that I’ve done something wrong, but my eyes are crosseyed.  I’m quitting.
Okay……maybe the wine was a secret ploy to get me off the computer and watching a movie with my “client”!  :0)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with my “Client”

Okay, so when I told Curt it was time for the client interview he rolled his eyes.  Great start!  After 34 years of marriage we have a bad track record of critiquing each other’s stuff, so he was understandably nervous.  He didn’t relax until I told him I was thinking of throwing this whole site out and starting over.

The first thing he did was to minimize the whole screen so it went from that  ……. to this, so that he could see the whole thing.  Interesting.  Men are from Screen Shot 2014-12-06 at 9.50.58 AMMars, right?  What that told me is that I really need to make the black stripe at the top smaller and maybe get ridScreen Shot 2014-12-06 at 9.52.52 AM of the logo, or put it at the bottom, so that the viewer could see more of the screen.  It also told me I had a fixed page.

Then he asked about the side bar.  He really didn’t understand that each line was a link to be clicked on.  The template in wordpress gives it a green color—I think I can change that to blue, but he wants a button format.  Hmmmm.  At the very minimum he wants ticks so folks know it’s a list and then the words:  click here or something.

He liked the video, but said it didn’t match the mission statement right above it and that I needed a different video or picture to go with the mission statement.  (I don’t have one).  So he offered to film me the next time I’m teaching.

That brought up a whole new topic for him.  He asked me what the purpose of the site was?  (I said he should tell me because he’s the client, but that didn’t fly.)  I said it was to drive business to us.  He said then I needed to just have business stuff in it and not bioshelter stuff.  I was really happy he said that because I own two web sites:  cindeekarns.com and alaskanbioshelter.com and I half own alaskapermaculture.com.  He said that I should separate the consulting, teaching, and community building from the historical house.  I can link to it from cindeekarns.com, but I should not try to put both things in one web page.  I agreed and wrote those ideas down.  I asked him where food should go and he said it should probably go under community building.  Nice.  I like it.

He stopped to feel guilty that he’s telling me all this stuff right when it’s due, but I encouraged him to continue.  It was no big deal and it was really helpful to hear what he thinks.  (He is funding the business until it really starts going, after all.)  As we moved on, he told me to get rid of the silly bubbles that floated down the side!  I agreed.

We went to the workshops and courses page.  He said it was okay that the side bar followed as long as the top nav bar also followed and it did. Screen Shot 2014-12-06 at 10.08.04 AM He liked the picture and thought it was fine that the links were under the photo instead of on top of it.  The links aren’t done and I plan to use jQuery for that later today, I think.

So I have my work cut out for me today.  I’m going to change this site.  What I really want to do is to create a fluid template to use, but then I have to learn how to upload my own template to wordpress and that, I think, is too much for today since it’s due at midnight.  Maybe I can learn that for my final??? Or how to move something from the Uni’s server to my own web space???

So, I think I covered what I learned, but what would I tell future students?  Hmmm.  I guess I would say that this is not an instant gratification class.  You have to hold that marshmallow all semester in order to get another one (see video).  I am not that patient.  I want it all NOW!

I think I would teach it backwards (probably because of my learning style) so that I had a template I could plug things into and see immediately.  Maybe that template would be introduced in Week 3 or something.  That would mean teaching Text Wrangeler first.  I think I would also just pick one for everyone to use (mac version and PC version), that way you would eliminate a lot of time searching around for something you like.  I wasted WAY too much time on that.

I would also make them pick a web page they want to design and just make it one track.  Merge the assignments (they pretty much are already because of the 2 assignments A and B) into designing for someone or some organization.  Warn them that it’s too hard designing for yourself—it takes way too much time.

I think I would not allow students to use Word Press or any other template at all, unless it’s only to blog about how each class went.  That way you could listen for frustration levels, etc.  At the end of the class you could have folks do an extra credit wordpress page.  Note:  I may be saying that because I already know wordpress, well, sort of.

I do appreciate the discovery learning style that all good teachers know is valuable.  I think the best one of that was when we looked at all the web sites.  In fact, that could be the very first assignment!  So people like me see what really looks good and don’t get carried away with every single bell and whistle that moves (note my cool sidebar).  I also like the amount of choice there is—but really it’s too much for people with little or no knowledge.  It’s almost like you need to teach this as a tic tac toe class where the basics are on top and then there are more advanced alternatives below each one for more accelerated students.  There’s a word for that, but it escapes me.  I always didn’t like that because smart kids would always choose the easy stuff and not challenge themselves.  But adults???

Well….I’m stalling.  Off to the coal mines!  I think I see a bird gasping for breath down there!  🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning the bones last

Okay—Spent the morning on JQuery.  Now it’s Friday afternoon.  Cloudy.  No more sun comes over the mountains now until January 10th or 11th, so it’s just white outside. Inside, my solarium is calling for Christmas decorations, lights on the apple trees and lanterns hanging in place of geraniums.  I’m doing my best to ignore it.  Who needs decorations yet, right?  I’m still full from Thanksgiving. Calming Christmas music is playing in the background thanks to Pandora One.  I should be calm and open to learning.

I discover that today is the day for the bones of the web site.  Oh how I wish I would have learned this first. Oh tidings of comfort and joy!   Could I have learned it first?  This is a chicken and the egg subject that could keep me awake at night.  So ever onward.

Side note:  I am deciding that I will work on a web page that doesn’t mean much to me.  It’s much easier than doing something that I have to live with.  This is why I tell my students they should never design their own property.  It’s like god-awful decisions of choosing every single little thing.  It’s too much.  For today only. I’m doing this because it’s faster.  Tomorrow I will have to return to my own site and see what Curt thinks of it.  

Little did I know that there are both fixed and fluid web page templates available to steal from many different places.  The first site I went to was Dynamic Drive.  I saw a page that might work for me and simply copied it from <Developer —>View Source> under the VIEW column in Chrome.  Turns out I didn’t need to do all that, they had it ready for me to copy at the bottom of the page.

I pasted it into Sea Monkey so that I could see use WISIWIG instant gratification.  🙂  I added my own header.  It was WAY TOO BIG, so I had to look in the page’s html code to find it.  I started scrolling from the top and noticed in the code that this fixed page had a column width at the top of 840 px.  So I made my header 840 wide as well.  I also tried it bigger, but then it wasn’t centered and I vetoed going back to figure out where the centering code for the header was.  (Probably that decision was due to Pacabell playing so sweetly in the background).

It came with two columns on the right.  The colors were yellow and green and I didn’t particularly like those colors. Well……it came upon a midnight clear that I could NOT find out how to change that at I went on. I’ll bet I could if I had more time.

By the by…..I’ve heard others complain about not being able to get info from folks to put a web site up.  This time it’s even stranger.  I think people in Fairbanks might not want to be identified speaking out on the Climate Change issue.  Anyway, they are just a little uptight about giving me info.  So I’m waiting…..

Links?  You want links too???  Oh gosh….  how ever green your branches!

Screen Shot 2014-12-05 at 5.05.46 PM
Fixed

Okay….sleighriding along over the river and through the woods, I have already repeated this whole process using a FLUID web template.  Interesting, considering a fluid skeleton!  I hated it at first.  But, I figured out how to resize the fluid boxes.  I added a fluid header so it too scrunches down.  First, notice this fixed version.  This is what happens when I shrink my screen size–you lose all of the Fairbanks column and the header is 1/3 gone.  Granted it it in 840 px so most browsers can see it in its entirety. If I’m teaching web classes in the villages, I’m going to want to have fixed pages just because (I’m guessing) they load more quickly.

Now for the comparison in Sea Monkey at least.

So, I made the banner at 80%—I suppose I could actually make it bigger, but I’m dashing through the snow…  The one on the right is with the screen squished down.  Notice how it squishes and still reads no matter how small the box gets.  That’s cool.  So….I did notice that some of the templates had combinations of fixed and fluid boxes.  That’s an interesting idea.  I guess I really need to know for sure if loading speeds are different.  AND, I should wait until I upload to make sure it works in real time.

Screen Shot 2014-12-05 at 5.06.07 PM
Fluid
Screen Shot 2014-12-05 at 5.06.29 PM
Squished Fluid

There is a slight issue—one of the boxes is longer than the other.  ARG.  But….hush hush the Christ Child is sleeping.

One other P.S.:  the 3rd link is in the footer image at the bottom.  It goes to the national site.  If I cared more, I would put some visible link.  I MAY end up caring if these folks really want this web site.

*******************************************

Okay….this is what happens when you don’t read the directions.  Pacabell is playing again.  Interesting.  I was supposed to do 2 websites from scratch and a 3rd one was supposed to be a template.  Ahhhhh…..it came upon a midnight clear:  the text book is on the web.  Go to Chapter 15 and copy that!  Ha!  I’m learning too much!

JOYFUL AND TRIUMPHANT!  Glory in the highest…..well, maybe not the highest.  You’ll see.  I just threw some stuff in there, but, I’ll have you know, I DID change the column widths to match the other sites.  I don’t have time to get the columns left justified, so……   blue satin sashes, these are a few of my favorite things!   P.S. This one doesn’t have any links except the banneScreen Shot 2014-12-05 at 5.56.44 PMr.

Oh my gosh, it’s Pacabell AGAIN!  Thumbs down.

So the answer of fluid vs fixed?  I’d say what I usually tell Permaculture students:  IT DEPENDS.  I really like how the fluid bones move, but I can see how much easier it is to just have a standard size.  So I’m sure whatever I choose, it will be for very good reasons.

My question is:  what about copyright.  I left the text book’s copyright at the bottom.  I didn’t leave the Dynamic Drive copyright on the other two just because they are there to be used.  Should I put my own copyright on those???  I really have a hard time with copyright.  I don’t think I would care as much if my son weren’t a musician.  Wanna hear his music? Click here!

Back to work!

Ah…I found the answer while uploading to the server:  http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/csslibrary/tos/  I’m supposed to leave the credit notes within the source code.  Hmmm.  Seems nice enough.  It won’t bother me again.

OH MY!  Pacabell is being WAY overused today–this time in harpsichord.  When did Pacabell and his canon decide it was a Christmas song anyway?

Here are my links!

Fixed

Fluid

TEXT BOOK afterthought

Ah….comfort and joy!

God rest ye merry, gentlefolk!  🙂

 

Afterthought:  How am I ever going to remember this process if I don’t start building websites for a living? Question:  will I still be able to access this stuff for a while????

The reason I thought of that is that I’m composing on Sea Monkey, copying it over to TextWrangeler and uploading it from there to the server.  The reason that’s important to note is that I forgot to link the header to the internet source it’s from.  Instead I had uploaded it from the desk top.  It of course didn’t show up.  So—since I had saved everything in Sea Monkey, it was easy to go back and fix it.  Sea Monkey is my back up incase I save on top of something I needed on the server.  A true Permaculturist would have THREE  systems: 2 back ups.  I’ll work on that!

 

 

 

 

Whew! What a week!

I sat down yesterday (Friday) afternoon and today to see if I could learn how to use HTML and CSS inside of my chosen WordPress theme, so that I could complete the assignment inside of WordPress.

I was feeling panicky about actually getting something done for my client before the end of the class, so I needed to just start.  Let’s take a short min. to client bash.  I wonder how many clients actually say: ” just come up with something.  I’ll let you know what I think.”   Not helpful.  So, I was basically on my own.  I had my vision and my wireframes and I was off and running—–albeit alone.  On my shoulder sat a little version of Janene, my professor, telling me to slow down and not do so much work.  Nice as that felt, I was still set on getting a skeleton up by week’s end.

I did it!  Check it out here!

calla lilly pondThis is my favorite picture. It’s a reflection looking down into the pond at the calla lilies.   I really want that to be the background, but so far, I haven’t been able to get WordPress to accept a smaller picture.  It’s so pixalated out, that it’s hard to even make out that it’s water.  I tried SO MANY different backgroundsScreen Shot 2014-11-15 at 1.25.34 PM.

In the theme I chose (Church), there was a CSS box at the bottom of the customize menu!  I typed in the image I wanted to use.  You may wonder where I found it!  Simple!  (Well, now it is)  I was SO proud of myself that I found (in the Gallery) how to tell Word Press to find that picture!  Whoot!

Next I wanted to add my cool business icon that I created a couple weeks ago.  The problem was that I wanted it at the top of the screen on the right.  I went to widgets and added a TEXT widget.  In fine print it also says HTML, so I used my recently acquired HTML skills and typed in the HTML to point to my icon!  IT WORKED!  Hallooo!  Hallaaaay!   I’m hoping that this coolness will still earn me points toward a grade—even though I didn’t FTP it up to UAF’s Screen Shot 2014-11-15 at 2.14.05 PMserver.

 

I even canned some jars of homemade green tomato and apple salsa while I was at it!  Now that’s what I call AMAZING!

 

I checked out a lot of different widets and plug-ins this week.  The advise that my professor gave me was very helpful:  check out the screen shots and other info BEFORE you download something you don’t really want.  It’s really important to find out how many people use it and if they get their questions answered when there’s problems.

I wanted a plug in for my “wire rim” or whatever it’s called.  There wasn’t one like Moqup that was suggested in our readings, but there was PLUGNEDIT!   I’m still not sure if I like it, but I used it on my pages this week.    It only guarantees that it works on a fixed screen.  The other screen views are still forth-coming.  So, I could still use some time looking at it in different screens.  Not today.

I spent a LOT of time on my

Ultimate Social Icons and Share Plugin!

I like how it floats on the side and it’s pretty darn easy to move around.  I linked all of my social media sights to it, so folks can find me all over the place.  I assume that’s a good thing….

 

Lastly, I feel like my site is straight-forward and boring.  I totally get how it’s supposed to be simple and sweet and nice, and that I can link into other stuff through blog posts, but I feel like I need to work on that side bar a lot more.  I created two menus—one for the body of the site and another for the side bar.  Customizing it more than I have might be a good thing.

The last thing I needed to do was to work on <div>.  I know it works in the TEXT side of a post, but I still haven’t figured out how to add it to a page.  It may work in the CSS section at the bottom of the Customize menu…..I just don’t have time to try it out tonight.

I also think I need to have a FOOD page.  Sustainability is all about food….so I’m adding I think.

Please tell me what you think so far!  I’d appreciate any and all feed back.

PS  My mom says to drop the crazy background.  I will probably do that after this assignment.  Gosh, here’s a picture in case I change it before the assignment is graded!  Screen Shot 2014-11-15 at 4.32.16 PM

 

Your lucky day!  A recipe:

4 cups green tomatoes, cored and chopped

2 cups yellow onions, chopped

1 1/2 c. sweet red peppers, cored and chopped

1 c. tart cooking apples, such as Granny Smith, cored and chopped

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 cup 5% acidic organic raw apple cider vinegar (or less, see note below)*

1 Tablespoon kosher or sea salt

4 jalapeno peppers, cored, seeded if desired, and finely chopped

2 Tablespoons chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon ground cumin (optional)

Needs/Yields Web Site

To figure out where to start, I used Dave’s, from Food Forest fame, template:  Value Trees.   I brainstormed all of the things I value and those values became the roots of my trees.  They fit into 4 different trees:  growing and eating my own food; recycling all of our water; living with nature inside the house; connecting with others. I simplified them into one word roots:  Food, Water, Shelter, and Sharing.  I’m considering if those should be my pages?  It’s interesting that those are the basics of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs!

 

SHELTER BIOSHELTER PAGE

Needs: (great info)

1. to entice:   architects, do-it-yourselfers, villagers, schools, greenies, water-starved states

to invite volunteers?

2.  to give ideas of how  folks can change their lifestyles?

3. to teach the history of….

a. funny stories as well as cultural stories (why I live this way)

Yields:

1.   virtual and real time tours

2.  Capital:  social (make connections), financial, cultural (transmitting knowledge for future generations)

WATER PAGE

Needs: (great info)

1. to entice:   architects, do-it-yourselfers, villagers, schools, greenies, water-starved states

to invite volunteers?

2.  to give ideas of how  folks can change their lifestyles?

3. to teach the history of….

a. funny stories as well as cultural stories (why I live this way)

Yields:

1.   virtual and real time tours

2.  Capital:  social (make connections to ), financial, cultural (transmitting knowledge for future generations)

FOOD PAGE

Needs: (great info)

1. to entice:   gardeners, do-it-yourselfers, permies, interns, woofers, to invite volunteers?

2.  to give ideas of how  folks can change their lifestyles?  STOP buying at the grocery stores.

3. to teach methods of preserving and food security in Alaska

Yields:

1.   Financial:  workshops/courses

2.  Capital:  social (make connections), cultural (transmitting knowledge for future generations)

SHARING

Needs: (great interest)

1. Great Workshops and Courses

2.  Volunteer opportunities 

3.  Why there’s a need for permaculture in Alaska:  why change?

4.  Get people to want to join the group

5.  Sign up page

6.  CONSULTING AND DESIGNING

install confidence in the designer (me)

what it looks like for schools

why you need a design

Each page needs to have multiple functions and each function should be on multiple pages, creating redundancy = sustainability.

My vision

So I’m on my first step!  Define a Vision.  What result do I expect from this web site?  Hmmmm.  Screen Shot 2014-11-09 at 7.14.30 PMAbout the house:  I want people to see what’s possible, to be inspired, to try something at their house.  About my consulting/designing:  I want people to schedule a design consultancy, to see that they need a design,   About workshops:  sign up for workshops, sell the idea of needing permaculture knowledge.

I would like to have them stop in once a month—once a week would be better, but I’m not sure I can keep up with that.

My audience:

House:   architects, do it yourselfers, environmentalists, landscapers, etc.  People who want to tour it

Consulting—people who need help designing systems—properties?

Workshops—people who want to learn how to do things.

 

BUILDING UP MY CAPITALScreen Shot 2014-11-09 at 8.03.17 PM

 

SOCIAL CAPITAL:  Can I build connections between the people who visit my site? I can for sure build loyalty.

FINANCIAL Capital

I need $10,000 a year profit or more…..

LIVING CAPITAL – What needs to be nurtured?  I guess if I did a weekly blog that would be nurturing?

Intellectual– I will need to give quality info on the site

Spiritual Capital?  Interesting.  Should I be looking for spiritual capital?  Maybe that means making people care about my website???

Cultural Capital: nothing like a good story.   So….what does that mean?  I really like telling funny stories about what happens while living in the house.  So…I wonder if I need to have the funny story blog and then the teaching blog??? Interesting.

Where are the edges?  Where’s the creativity?  What do I want to learn next?

 

PERMACULTURE ETHICS- Care of the earth needs to be on the front cover.

Care of people needs to be inbedded

Sharing the surplus needs to also be evident and the surplus is knowledge.  Be the elder.

 

 

 

 

 

Which Theme???

Because I had read the Permaculture Web Site Design book, I was able to scroll through themes like no body’s business.  I just needed one that fit the format.  That saved me TONS of time.  Let’s see if it allows me to do what I want!

 

Climbing the mountain after dark

I felt I had a good vision of how I wanted my client’s web site to look like.  I decided to try working on it in WordPress and not on the University’s server.  Guess what I discovered?  I had purchased a domain host on “wordpress.com” and not “wordpress.org.”   OH SO SILLY.  Wordpress.com doesn’t let you do ANYTHING.  When I realized that my cindeekarns.com was hosted at the .org site and that’s what I was expecting to use for my business web site, I had a plan.

I thought the easiest thing to do, would be to migrate my domain name over to wordpress.org.  I was following simple instructions….really…I was.  Suddenly I could get into neither web site.  ARG!!!

I spent about 2 hours with the support team at WordPress.org and even THEY couldn’t untangle the two sites.  The only option was to blow up my wordpress.org site and start over!  Yes, from scratch.  Luckily I had exported files before I started messing with things.  Turns out all that really saved was my blogs.  The rest is toast.  🙁

My wordpress.com site (alaskanbioshelter.com) won’t let me leave and migrate over to the .org site until the last day of November.  Apparently there’s some law that you have to stay with a host for at least 60 days.  So I’m waiting to have both sites on the wordpress.org hosting site.  I have to report that GO DADDY support was overly helpful and funny and patient, etc.  I had to talk with them since they are my cindeekarns.com hosts.

In the meantime my alaskanbioshelter.com site has a lot of wierd stuff on it since it tried to merge with the cindeekarns.com site.  I will have to try straightening that out today.  Did I ever tell you how much I LOVE doing this???  Egads!

NOW……maybe I can start again?  (I’ll work on my cindeekarns.com later.)