Just opened the door after about six hours straight of working on the soon to be official Hunterdon Central Web Log Manual which my fried brain tells me is probably about 87.2% done. Since I have literally been accosted with requests over the last two days to create dozens of sites in the next two weeks, I figured it was time to try to set it in stone, the policies, the procedures, and some of the philosophy. No doubt this is a work in progress, and if any of you out there lead boring enough lives to give me some feedback on what you see here I would greatly appreciate it. As long as I get it by tomorrow…;0)

Not to revisit all of this yet again, because I am loving Manila the more and more I get into it, but it still surprises me how convoluted some of the configs are to set these up. I’ve been waiting patiently for Jake and others to come through on promised upgrades, and I know they are working as hard as they can. But I swear it feels like I could cut at least a third of this manual if we just defaulted to news item sites, could create news and story pages in the same space, and could add editors and members in a more streamlined way. Then again, if all of that stuff happened, I wouldn’t have anything to keep complaining about.

A final note…I launched into my aggregation nation spiel with one of the teachers who was wanting Web logs and I have to say it made my day when I saw the lights go on as to what I was talking about. We spent more time on Bloglines than his site…And from the manual, this is my attempt at a Mom’s definition of RSS type stuff. Tell me what you think:

Teachers who use employ student Manila sites can make their lives much easier by understanding the syndication aspect of the software. In a nutshell, every Manila Web log generates a behind-the-scenes script that is constantly updated as new content is added. This script allows interested readers to “subscribe” to the Web log using what is called a news aggregator. In essence, this news aggregator checks the script on a regular (sometimes hourly) basis and displays any new content to a Web page. The great thing is that news aggregators can keep track of as many of these scripts as you enter, and they bring the content from all the “subscribed to” Web logs into one place. That means if you have 24 students with 24 Web logs, you DON’T have to visit 24 sites to see what they’re up to. You only need to visit one!

I feel like a cheerleader…