[Helpers] Stuff & things...

[Mystress Angelique Serpent]

At 12:17 PM 21/03/2006, Sachiko M wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Mystress Angelique Serpent" <Mystress at fire-serpent.com>
>To: <Helpers at fire-serpent.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 1:21 PM
>Subject: [Helpers] Stuff & things...
>
>I have Copy&Paste essay that was sent out to this list. PLease check
>and see if I have done correctly.
>http://www.fire-serpent.org/fscnew/current/tantra/02introk.html
>http://www.fire-serpent.org/fscnew/current/tantra/03matgod.html

  looks good to me!

>For the 03matgod essay, I wasn't sure what to do with the new link
>so I left it out.
>
>Do they supposed to be added on popup link file?

Yes.

   Have not heard from Sandra D lately...

   Hillary has finished a good first draft of updating the poplinks files, 
(yay, thank you!) by linking them to the wayback machine, not to the 
K-gateway library, and not archiving them.

   We took a closer look at the wayback TOS and went hmmm... they might not 
like this library thing. There are some pages that link to wayback whose 
content  can probably be found elsewhere on the web, if we google it, and 
that must be done someday...

    I still want the link content archived, in case wayback goes down 
someday, but until I have time to contact wayback and ask if our library is 
cool with them, the K-gateway library will be fairly small.

   On the other hand, the guy at the Kundalini Research Foundation, who 
represents the work of Gopi Krishna invited us to mirror anything we like!

   Thank you Sandra D for repairing the fstlinks page, seems I was wrong 
and we will need it after all! It needs to be saved to the preview.

   I have a folder of new links I have collected over the years too, but 
they are just a favourites folder and give no indication what lesson I 
intended them for! I'll post it here later, maybe somebody can sort them out.

    The reciprocal links page fstlink.html (no s) does need polishing, and 
that job involves doing a search for pages that link to fire-serpent.com 
and adding those sites to that page (not including search engines, maybe 
not including some bulletin boards & blogs  either, as they tend to be 
transient)
    I may tackle that myself in the future, as I am often amused by what 
some people write about me... but if someone wants to take a stab at it, 
that would be great!

   In other news, I was working intensely on the public/preview pages all 
weekend, and I have uploaded them over the old ones on fscnew/current. They 
are not ready or polished yet, but I am pleased with what I accomplished.

   Some work for you, Sachiko if you will...

   1.) For "truth in advertising" we need the sample lessons for the 
preview, to be the old design, until the day when the updated course goes 
online.  You had them updated to the new design already, which is great, 
but too soon.
    Good to have the updated ones ready for later. Give the updated new 
ones a temporary filename like 02matgodnew for now, so when the new 
/tantra/ pages go live they will be ready, and only need a filename change.

    However, the old sample lesson pages, (find them on the live site if 
you don't have them backed up) can be updated by having the new essays, 
experiences and links   pasted into them,  and the new audio mp3 files can 
be used.

    2.) The sample lesson pages need to be linked to each other, pretty 
much as they are in the live site. Right now in some places the "next" link 
on the new sample lessons you made goes to the tantra folder. The mouseover 
links might as well.. not sure. I was up till 7am working on them and I 
just got up, my brain is not really awake yet.

    3.) I made a whack of new textbox header images for the preview, and 
have installed and uploaded them, but I made zero effort to shrink the 
filesize. They are photoshop max size jpgs. Not sure if they should be 
gifs, I left optimization totally up to you. Sort by date in the titles 
folder with the newest first and they will float to the top of the FTP window.

   4.) Flash navigation and preload array. The navigation mouseovers have 
not changed, though I think the links might need some tweaking. Could be 
some are linked to lesson previews with new filenames.
   Hmm. I guess the old sample lessons will need the new filenames, or the 
flash will be out of date when the new course pages go live... and we will 
need meta files to link the old filename to the new, for people who have 
them bookmarked.
   1tinyform.html already has the meta code and can be edited to become 
meta-refresh pages.

   Anyway... the navtable for the preview pages can become flash anytime. I 
am pretty sure they won't change... and the preload array for the present 
mouseovers can be deleted.

   Question: lately I have been surfing with activex turned off, so flash 
doesn't work. I foolishly reset my security settings on the advice of an 
antivirus site, and got annoyed at the approval popups.  Do many people 
turn off flash and activex, and do we need to allow for that with a browser 
setting sniffer and alternate text?

    5.) Not sure if I spellchecked all the pages. (They need to be 
spellchecked with a Canadian english spellchecker.)  Some pages are not 
done yet, notably the new front index page and the mintro page.  The cintro 
page has changed a lot, and the video for it gets moved to be part of the 
new lesson 01stdyguid.html

     The new index needs to remain named something (not index.html) until 
the site goes live, so that the server file list in the fscnew/current 
folder remains visible to Helpers.

    6.) I noticed an extra /tr between the Shaktipat navlink and the FST 
store navlink, that is messing up some pages.


    Can everyone take a few moments to peruse the new preview pages and 
post here  about anything strange you find? I have a nagging feeling that 
there are some new pages that have the same content... duplicated. I need 
help from fresh eyes.

   Now that the textboxes have shiny new header art, in some places the 
title in the top heading is redundant.  On some pages I have replaced it 
with a pithy expression... (the top header on the support page now says 
"Satsangh means spiritual companionship") but in other places I have not, 
and some of the present header titles are too long and distort the page. I 
could use some fresh ideas about what to put there.

   The quotes box on almost all the preview pages, has the same content 
repeated from the main index. I need new quotes for most of the preview 
pages. Anybody got quotes that would fit? O saint Hillary Mini-slither, the 
living K list library, can you help? :)

> >  I'm also thinking of eliminating the "Experiences links" box from
> > each
> > lesson and just adding the links to the bottom of the main
> > experiences
> > section. Changing the form at this point feels like going
> > backwards... but
> > I feel it would be smoother.
>
>I think that make sense more than having separate link box. It's not
>big deal to elininating the experience box at all. I can do that as I
>copy&paste contents of each lesson.
>
>Just let me know.

  So be it! I noticed as I was choosing experiences to paste in, that it 
made more sense to paste links to the rest of the thread, below the 
experience text instead of off to the side. Thus my inspiration to 
eliminate the experiences links box.

> >   Question: does it make more sense to have the homework box at the
> > bottom, or below the experiences section instead of below the essay?
>
>It might make more sense. If you would like people to read rest of the
>article below the homework box, them maybe it is good idea to move
>it to be bottom of the page. But if it's option to read but not so
>important wather it is read or not then placement of the homework box
>should be fine as it is.

   I would say reading the experiences and transcript is more optional than 
the homework... but it seems logical to have the homework below the essay. 
The problem came when I told students to proceed directly to the next 
lesson after reading 01stdyguide.html, and realized they would miss the 
rest of the lesson... but I can just edit it to tell them to move on when 
thy are finished reading the rest of the lesson.
   Lets leave it as-is, for now.

   I had homework written for introk and matgod, but I dunno where it got 
to! Dang! May have to rewrite it.

   Many thanks to all you helpers, this job is so large and overwhelming, 
it probably never would get done without you!

   When does everyone want the next helpers thank you chat party scheduled 
for?  I'm busy this sunday but otherwise flexible!

    Blessings!