Desperately trying to get in touch with my inner geek!
It’s gotta be in there somewhere! Anyhow, this is by way of an excuse and an apology for ignoring my own and everyone else’s blogs these past couple of days. I’ve been trying to set up my new website and especially the tapa blog. And I wouldn’t have got anywhere at all without the help of the very generous and knowledgeable Ashish, who has been very patiently helping me re-design the tapa blog.
I now have it doing almost everything I’d like it to do, though we’re still discussing the sidebar and what to do with it. But I must say that it’s been quite interesting and also gratifying. When Ashish sent me some files to download/upload in order to rewrite some stuff … I was actually able to do it! Wow! I felt so proud of myself.
You can have a look and tell me what you think of it so far. The footer still has to be totally re-worked, and Ashish says he can switch the icons on the sidebar for me. It’s really been quite an experience and I’m looking forward to learning even more.
Thanks again for all your help today, Ashish! 
~ the new sevilla tapas blog ~
(it’s quite an improvement over this one)
casa azahar 
Aye, that looks really nice. I must say the template suited your website like really really well.
Btw Ashish dude if you’re reading this, you need to do something about the alt text of the links. It appears for every link by default and if you have not entered any alt text, an empty box appears which looks incomplete. It used to happen with your earlier theme Sushi as well. Fix it if you can somehow. Otherwise, neat work yo!
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I think it’s very inviting. It had a nice, kind of Asian feel. As Mrs. Ombus is a vegetarian, she’d like the veggie section, too.
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I hadn’t noticed that, Ish. It works okay on the category links but not on the other ones.
That’s not actually a good thing, ombudsben, considering it’s all about Spanish tapas. I was initially unsure about keeping the flowers, but I like the orange & green colour scheme and don’t know what I’d replace them with. Hmmm…maybe I’ll have to rethink this.
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Wow! Two posts on two blogs thanking me? *hides into cave*lol.
ish: Ah, I can’t do that. That is one of Milo’s CSS tricks and I’ll have to remove all of it [no alt-text’s on the blog in total] or like this… 😦 I’ll try though. 🙂
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yes the site looks great, love the colour scheme. maybe the flowers look a little stretched at the top but apart from that it’s fantastic!
I’m planning a trip to barcelona next june. I think I’ll have to add sevilla to my intinerary
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Do you have a 17″ widescreen, nursemyra? The flowers look stretched out on SB as well, but on the Jaguar (15″) they look normal.
You don’t think it looks too ‘asian’ for tapas?
Yes! You must come to Sevilla. Nog & I are the best tour guides. And from Barcelona you can get very cheap flights – we paid 85 euros return for both of us when we went there last January.
Ashish, I think just removing them is fine.
Oooo, this is so exciting! 🙂
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Az, thy will shall be done! 😛 Let’s butcher some code! 😀 Btw, the flowers do appear a bit stretched on my pc as well [17″ monitor, not widescreen]. Like I told you, you can upload your images but they’ll have to be in the following resolutions – for the header – 1600 x 305 and for the bottom 1600 x 275. I could resize your images for you, but I wouldn’t be able to upload them… not enough bandwidth. I could tell you the steps though. 😀
Btw, about the little icons in the sidebar, got the images ready? Send them over and we’ll change them too!
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It must be hell doing all this extra stuff on dial-up, Ashish. *hug*
Yes, upon looking at the Jag’s screen again the flowers are stretched there too, though not as much as on SB. I don’t mind that so much, it’s the ‘asian’ thing that I’m unsure about. I quite like the tiger lilies – I think it’s the silvery stuff that gives it an asian look. Hmmm…
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Nah, its enjoyable actually as the connection is steady. 😀
Well the asian look don’t matter to me. lol. You could actually change the theme to a widget friendly theme if you’re still not feeling sure about this one. [That way you can get recent comments WITHOUT plugins too!] But you’ll have to choose from some other theme maker. lol.
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Well, I thought it was a CSS trick. I think you should get into the habit of giving every link an alt text azahar.
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My Inner Geek is happily running around with my Inner Child
Liking the new Tapas blog!
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Sorry for the Asian look comment. I just meant it seemed similar to me to Asian art I’ve seen, with very full blossoms and small, finely detailed lettering or characters. Forgive my parallel art/culture commentary! I retract it, I retract it!
Seriously, I think the site looks fine. I’m now going to go shove some tapas in my face to keep both fingers and mouth happy, and prevent another lapse …
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hey I just tried to visit your tapas blog but only the banner is there… what’s happening to the content?
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I dunno, nursemyra. It looks okay now. Was it just the welcome page or all the pages?
Ashish said the welcome page disappeared yesterday but I didn’t notice it. And then he said he went in and fixed it (he’s got *admin powers* on the new blogs) but, as I say, I didn’t seen that happening here. The welcome page was there for me.
Then he checked this theme on an IE 6.0 pre SP2 machine and said that ‘the site breaks’.
I’m not sure what he meant by that, but it sounds like my pretty new theme is a bit unstable and I’m going to have to look for a new one. 😦
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Well, I have spent most of the afternoon looking for a suitable theme without much success. One thing I did realise when playing with the pretty flower theme is that two sidebars are essential (one will be for ads – I hope!), and also that I prefer to have both sidebars on the same side.
So now I have a boring and basic orange theme up, which will do until I feel like trying out the others I downloaded today. But at least everything works on this one and looks the same each time you open the page.
*sigh* All that work for nuthin…
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I got to see it all again this time so it’s definitely working (but no flowers). still like the sunny cheerful orange 🙂
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That’s a totally different theme,nursemyra. At first I thought it was too ‘boring’ but since I changed the font and set up the widgets properly I’m starting to like it better.
I also thought I needed a pretty photo on the header, but since most of the blog is photos perhaps it’s a bit redundant?
Last night found some nice thumbnail pics for the Wine and Vegetarian pages. So maybe I should focus now on finishing the write-ups and pages and also get the Spanish version tidied up.
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but since most of the blog is photos perhaps it’s a bit redundant?
You could sort of upload a header but with the start header it looks fine too. I’d say go with oranges if you do want to upload a header. 😀
Love the new layout! 😎
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Thanks, Ashish. Yeah, I’m kind of liking the simplicity of the new theme. It provides all the necessary information and doesn’t distract from the photos.
I was told today by a Spanish friend that having a second Spanish version really wasn’t necessary and I’m inclined to agree. My next decision is – should I have the link on the end of the website be ‘sevilletapas’ or ‘sevillatapas’? At the moment it’s the former – the other was the Spanish version. But as the blog name is actually Sevilla Tapas should this be reflected in the URL or would having the English version of ‘seville’ there help for stuff like google hits? Does anybody know?
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Well the name doesn’t matter to me. Most english speaking people do call it seville anyways and even if they DID call it sevilla, you’d then expect them to type http://www.sevilla.com and get this information and not azahar-sevilla.com/sevillatapas, lol. And it doesn’t matter to google [or anybody else] what your url is, what matters is your content. 🙂
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Dang! Another friend told me tonight that he thought having a Spanish version was a great idea and would add to the popularity of my tapa blog. Not sure what to do now …
Apparently googling either ‘seville tapas’ or ‘sevilla tapas’ ends up with my blogs on the first two or three pages, so that’s a good start.
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Yeah thats a good start, and the ratings will rise. As for the spanish blog, since you’ve already put so much work in that, keep it. For other languages you could put a translation box that allows people to translate the page with Google or Altavista Babelfish.
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Well, I did reinstate the Spanish version this morning, though of course I had already moved the English version to azahar-sevilla.com ‘/sevillatapas’ so I had to switch it all around so the English one is back on ‘/sevilletapas’. Gaaaa! But yeah, since it is already set up (I just have to do the text translations) it makes sense to keep it.
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Yup, makes sense. 🙂
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Today I added a Paypal donate button. As enjoyable as the ‘photo taking process’ is we really have been going out a lot more than we can actually afford to, which became especially apparent after working out our monthly budget the other day.
Anyhow, the tapa blogs are the first step for an ‘alternative Sevilla’ website. You know, writing about non-touristy things to see and do here. And once that’s all set up (I’m hoping by January) maybe I’ll start getting some advertising income! 🙂
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