right now i’m replacing all the content files with default content that doesn’t promote or explain the mars system. just placeholder text and stuff like that to get people started. there are plenty of comments for the HTML newbie.
in other words, all that text that you see on the mars site won’t be necessary to people who download and use the system, obviously, so i’m replacing it all with “welcome to my new site!”-type junk, just to get folks going.
i had a LOT of content files. you can see all or most of them with Mozilla, if you have the Site Navigation Toolbar on. go to “chapters,” under “document,” and you’ll see all the content files that the system detected on the server. there’s like a dozen or something. i’m going to reduce that to just three i think.
should i make them all the same? or should i make them into something simple and stupid like “my homepage” and “my pictures” and “my links” for people to get started with? i’m just not sure. i really don’t want it to be cheesy like that, but sometimes you have to hold people’s hands a little.
i think i’ll do one last enhancement to it though… a settings file that will toggle automatic line breaking on or off. that way, it will actually be possible to write content files with ZERO HTML. i don’t know how feasible this actually will be though. i know how to replace a newline or linebreak with the HTML tag for a break, but i’m not actually sure where or how this would be called into action. we’ll see. it’s no big deal, since it only reduces the amount of HTML one must know from a single tag to none.
oh, and just so we’re clear on the concept:
the content of the site only actually needs about as much HTML as you would put into your livejournal textarea when creating a new post, assuming you had “don’t auto-format” checked. and like i said, i may be able to auto-format line breaks soon, too.
