Ithaca Garden Network

The weekend saw the year's first garden action with a chance to rake up the hordes of maple seeds that had fallen off the trees over the winter.

"Garden time" then shifted to my new virtual garden, this web site. First thanks to everyone who has joined and sent input. After years of being a professional web developer, it is a great pleasure to be able to serve a community of my own that I have a stake in.

Building a web site is not unlike gardening. Some days you want to dig a new garden, but there's weeding to do. Internet Explorer bugs, bugs from switching JavaScript libraries - their being called "bugs" highlights the analogy to gardening. Sometimes you want to DO something but there is not much time or energy for large projects, so you pick up one of the many little things that are getting there but not quite finished. For example, Ask an Expert.

Today a few things did get done. Following a user suggestion, I added "user name" back in, so you no longer have to expose your real name to Internet public if you don't want to. However, instead of asking for some crazy name like "davethewebdoctor" (my AIM moniker), we simply want "your name as you want the Internet public to know it".

Another user pointed out some IE7 bugs when editing his user profile (now fixed!), and pointed out that it's not very clear how to add an event. (Go to Events, look for "Add new event" link.) So in the pipeline is a spot on the user dashboard (where it takes you when you log in) that has quick links to add new events, photos, and blog posts.

Please keep the great feedback and bug reports coming!

DF

Tags: technical, web development as gardening