Friday, December 9, 2011

The Bicolano Blogs Directory gets a makeover before the year ends

The Bicolano Blogs Directory was first conceived of early in February of 2009, but it wasn't until July of the same year that I managed to get things set on the right track. It first found its home on Enthousiasmos, which eventually became the original Musings of the Midnight Writer website. 

When we moved from Blogger to Wordpress, we maintained the same page layout for the directory, which was but a long roll of aggregated links. As we continue with our development, we found a way to better categorize the links and also generate screenshots for each submitted link.


The directory is an integral aspect of the site, so we kept it running even though it was in alpha and beta modes. Last week, we managed to stabilize the output of the directory, but there was a bug on it and the site was showing a triple link listing on the horizontal of the page. I reloaded the plugin and tweaked the css codes a bit, and tadaa...!






I love the flexibility of modemlooper's BP Columns 1.5.3 Theme, because the directory actually blended with it almost seamlessly, but still, I would want a custom template in dark shades and custom text colors. I was thinking of fixing the current header which I already modded earlier to remove the nav menu, but theme modifications require the creation of a BP child theme (a grandchild would have been more convenient but not-so practical option in case of orphaning) so I'll leave that for later or for if and whenever any of our volunteer designers would be able to find time in between their busy scheds to work on custom template.

Now that the Bicolano Blog Directory is in place, we'll have to work on putting back the social networking sites profile widgets, sharing buttons, and badges for optimized networking and sharing convenience.

The directory is now open for user submission. We welcome all Bicolano owned and maintained blog links, with owner option for a reciprocal link badge for Bicolano Blogger Republic. All link submissions are subject for review and may be deleted from the directory if they do not meet basic criteria of existing blog standards and/or if the blog contains less than 70% original content, and/or appears to be used solely as a link farm or contains blatant advertising which steals away the distinct elements of what makes a blog a blog.

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