[Helpers] FST links - structurally

[Mystress Angelique Serpent]

At 02:38 PM 4/23/2005, you wrote:
>Hello Mystress - would you please provide me a little discussion on
>your http://www.fire-serpent.com/fstlinks.html page? I see that not all
>indiv. topic links are duplicated here (or vice versa). What do you
>desire? I like the idea of 100% syncronicity....

   Yeah, I gave up trying to update all the links on all the pages a couple 
of years ago, instead made one page with all the links for all the lessons, 
and put a link to it at the top of the lesson links, via search and replace 
(which missed some pages.)
   Anything you see missing or out of order, it is my screw up, feel free 
to fix.  Whether it is that links page, or the lessons that are out of 
order, is open to question.
    FST is really too big for me to comprehend all at once!

   There was also a consideration for the CD... which cannot be updated, 
once someone has it. Linking the CD off site links to a master page on the 
website that could be kept up to date, (theoretically!) just made sense.

>I also notice the indiv. topic pages are sometimes numbered, sometimes
>not. For example: we have www.fire-serpent.com/tantra/aspects.html (not
>numbered), with 8rgender.html (numbered yet out of order). Is this ever
>anything you think might be helpful to go in and clean up (without
>possibly causing cascading broken links elsewhere...)?

    Be my guest. As I recall, I put anchors to some of the lesson link 
topics, so the link went right to the section of the big links page... but 
got too impatient to do it with them all... I think, after I screwed a few 
of them up and got lost in it.

   But you are reminding me, if I am going to have all the lesson links on 
one page from now on, why did I make a box for them in the template? Sigh. 
I already knew that links box was really too small..

>If I were handling this code, I would assemble the master page (all
>topics listed in order) from many mini-pages (links for an indiv.
>topic). This way, when I'd want to update say, Lesson 12's mini-page -
>then the 2 pulls (the FST topic page & the master page) would update
>themselves simultaneously....

   Well, you lost me on that one.
   Are you talking about some kind of server side include? Popups with the 
links would be good... anything so that the links can be updated 
separately, without opening and resaving every lesson page!!

   The off site links have been an ongoing problem, especially keeping them 
up to date. There are days I regretted having them at all but the 
temptation of having a handy reading library that is the WWW was too much 
to resist, and easier than asking people for copyright for quotes... which 
I am sort of ending up doing anyway, with the mirrors...

   Having some of the pages mirrored will help, I hope.
    I am completely open to suggestions. Automation is good!.... when it 
works... !


>Right now I see you have single (and huge) code files (.TXT) for your
>topic pages.

    I do? Where? I don't understand... please send a link to the files you 
mean.

>  What I'm suggesting would be a somewhat radical
>ground-level change in your organizational structure.... with the
>understanding that I'm all about automating actually - I'm looking
>further ahead too.

   Is this php?
   If we are going to do it, the time is now! :)

<snipped for a separate topic email.)

>  With all
>these Helpers emails between you & Sachiko though? Whew - it's a lot of
>nitty-gritty detail.

   Some sites I designed with web helpers in mind, like the 
Kundalini-gateway.org and the new KSN site... they are laid out 
differently. The templates are more clearly labeled, and there are big fat 
comment tags in large whitespace telling people where to plug in the page 
title, heading and content.

>What I can see is setting up a way for stuff to
>run itself - like there can a) structural changes that will reduce a
>lot of the hand-coding hunt & peck, b) FTP areas already established
>with how-to instructional files for any new rounds of volunteers, and
>c)... well... I'm good at what I'm suggesting here. I'm a good
>earth-shaker for a better foundation - what exists after my shaking is
>good indeed. *grin*

   Yes, please!!! ... but before you begin, I have some questions/ concerns:

   1.)  Do you really have the time and freedom to complete the job?
       a.)  If you become unexpectedly unavailable for some reason, will 
someone else be able to take over easily?

    2. Will it make my pages unfriendly to old tech browsers and computers?

    3. Can the new shape be transferred to a CD or does it only work on a 
web server?

    4. Will it change the filenames so links to us on search engines or 
other sites go out of date?
    Side note: I would actually love it if all the course filenames were 
changed so that they sit in order in a directory, instead of being all 
mixed case and mixed up numbers...  but it is a nightmare job, and I am 
still considering rearranging the lessons, a little.
    I want to keep all the preview filenames the same to preserve search 
engine listings and reciprocal links.