20 Jul '07
Blog resuscitation
I’m very pleased with myself right now. For one, I’ve been able to force myself to revive a dying blog of mine, Mission: 6-Pack Abs (http://sixpack.robilloblog.com). For months I’d neglected it (my last post was in late May), and it could’ve gone the way of the dodo, had I not decided to effect a major revamp.
Like Oprah or the Fab Five giving away home makeovers, a redesign is a sure way of rekindling your own interest in maintaining a blog. After a looong time procrastinating, I made myself face the hundreds of WordPress themes available and choose a new one for Mission: 6-Pack Abs. Fortunately, one sprung out and caught my eye. If you take a look at it, it is rather red all over… but I like it. And that’s the important part. You should like your own blog, or you just might get tired of it. So, after several hours (non-continuous, though) of tweaking and manipulating the codes and scripts — voilà! A blog reborn.
Speaking of code-tweaking, I had another minor accomplishment that got me feeling all warm and fuzzy. It’s the Google Adsense for Search script. Months before, I’d tried implementing the option of having the search results come out on my own site. But no go. The page would just turn up blank. Then, by a stroke of luck, I discovered that two lines that contained single quotes weren’t being parsed correctly, because the quotes were being escaped. I thought I’d change them to double quotes and presto! Google search results on my own site!
In case you’d like to do this, too, take a look at the search results code. There are two strings enclosed by single quotes: the iframe name and the Google URL.
So now all my blogs are Web- and site-search capable, with results coming out within the blogsites. I don’t have to tell you what benefits you get out of this, do I? 
My best implementation so far is the one for Mission: 6-Pack Abs. Take it out for a spin soon!
Don’t miss out on this one — Singapore Franchise Opportunity. Check out their list of excellent franchise brands: low-risk, high-potential businesses are waiting for you and your drive to succeed!
