My web site has looked like old brown web pages for two and half years now. It is actually based on a template called Gazette in iWeb. I liked the look and feel of “Gazette” and I reproduced it to some extent using Dreamweaver. It had an “old” look that was in keeping with my teaching of history. Well that look is cluttered I feel. I now wish to simplify site and page construction.

It is time to move on and I am going for something that is cleaner and a lot easier to navigate. A little more professional for want of a better word. I still hope there is something of me in the new site. We will just have to wait and see.

So, I have been rebuilding my web site from the ground up. Not the “antique looking” site you may be looking at right now but a site that is presently gestating within the confines of another sub-domain on my host as at the date of this post. I am using WordPress.

The thing about WordPress that I admire the most is it’s capacity to generate static web pages. That is simply excellent. You can have your blog and you can augment your ramblings and news with a variety of supporting content via the static pages.

One can be so empowered. One has the ability to produce a rather professional and elegant web site using WordPress and it is free. That contrasts so remarkably with some entities that charge you $500-00 for a web site with 5 static pages and an upkeep fee to match.

My new web site, which I hope I can launch before Christmas, will be built entirely using WordPress. Since the template employs drop-down nested menus I am free to incorporate quite a number of pages and navigation will not be such an interface hassle.

Some WordPress templates place the page based navigation in a horizontal bar across the top. That may limit you to say 7 pages. As well, other templates place the page navigation down a sidebar. That can be messy if you build an extensive site.

I have incorporated one code hack. I have taken the code generated by a flash album gallery generator and pasted it into the static page and blog post pages so I can easily display a bunch of images.

It is a little clunky but if I create a number of draft posts and pages in advance with the code added and simply leave them unpublished I can drop in a folder of say 32 aptly numbered images and the gallery will be created. All I need do then is finish writing the blog post or page content and publish. Not bad.

Some of the existing WordPress gallery plug-ins are nice but they are buggy or require you to host the images on their servers.

Getting the galleries right is important for me. My current galleries have poor navigation. I use a Photoshop macro to create the galleries at the moment.

I enjoy taking photographs. Good stress relief. So with this new WordPress based site hopefully users will find the galleries easier to navigate. I will also begin posting images up to Flickr more frequently so people can access the jpeg file if they so desire.

WordPress is powerful. Create pages with or without comments. Nested pages. Password protected pages. Publication dates predetermined. Embed flash. Podcasting enclosures. Rich widget capabilities. Mobile blogging is a snap. Self hosted Wordprsss users can tap into plug-ins and an extensive range of themes as well. A creative and devoted user/developer community.

I do hope WordPress will always maintain it’s logical ease of use and elegant ethos. I hope feature creep does not weigh WordPress down in the future. I would despair if I witnessed WordPress evolve into a bloated baggy monster.

A number of teachers and educators that I follow do not utilise a personal photograph for their avatar. Their avatars range from comic book characters through to line drawings, second-life portraits, logos and animals. Some educators utilise images of themselves taken as children or even images of their own children.

Personally I have utilised all of the images below. My current Twitter avatar is the final photograph on the right.

I utilise a portrait photograph as it represents me. What you see is what you get. As an educator, as a teacher I feel that is the correct approach for myself to take if I am to blog and tweet professionally.

I raised this point on Twitter and it generated a conversation between Lyndon Sharp and myself. I reproduce the conversation below in chronological order top to bottom.

John Larkin: My avatar was once a favourite photo of me as a young kid but then I felt it was a little weird. Some might feel it is misleading. Thoughts?

Lyndon Sharp: @john_larkin Twitter avatar choice: room here for PhD research project. Quirky? Cartoon? Provocative? School Yrbk approach? Best portrait?

John Larkin: @lyndons Initially I had no concern regarding the avatar of me as a youth but then felt it would possibly mislead.

John Larkin: @lyndons We teach our students to be wary of those they communicate with as they may not be what they seem. So, what about teacher avatars?

Lyndon Sharp: @john_larkin Avatar choice *is* as yet unstudied. Competing interests: need fr privacy, desire fr openness & projection of self-image…

John Larkin: @lyndons this idea re avatar is interesting. What are we trying to project? One’s employment can have an impact.

Lyndon Sharp: @john_larkin I get th feeling people more experienced in Social Media tend to choose something other thn a photo-portrait: a small privacy?

John Larkin: @lyndons yes, self-employed, consultants, etc have more latitude on their choice.

Perhaps, at Lyndon suggests, this question or issue could be the focus of a research project. If a teacher chooses to blog or publish online professionally in an open manner should their profile avatar be a reasonably recent portrait photograph or not? 

Some may even feel that a portrait photograph is simply more professional. At least a recent photograph. What do you think? Is this too retrograde? Too conservative?

Should educators consider the views of other potential stakeholders: employers, students, parents?

Perhaps an educator is blogging incognito. Their choice of avatar may not be an issue in this case.

It is an interesting question. A possible conundrum. As Lyndon indicates there are competing interests.

What is your position on this? Not an issue? Free country?

Twitterfon incorporates a similar feature set and functionality as Tweetie. Twitterfon does feature an autofresh and an autoscroll to the previous update. They are handy.

Yet I still prefer Tweetie. It features an interface similar to the iChat app on the Mac as well as the Text (SMS) aapp on the iPhone. It is purely a visual thing. One other thing, embedded links in Tweetie are active and can be forwarded to other sources.

The initial image displays Twitterfon and the second Tweetie.