felixruina's blog

A few Monday's have come and gone without a Sensei-Link Monday post. Sorry about that. I'm currently busy transitioning into a move back to the east coast for another year of school (a ThM at Princeton Seminary). Hopefully things won't be totally quiet here during my packing up/saying goodbye time (and super kudos to Heather for her game!), but I know that pretty much everyone here understands how busy things can get when you're making a big move. :-)

So, in summary, I'll do my best to offer some more content...just don't expect regular updates until mid-September, when classes are in full swing, and my schedule is solidified.

I've been doing some adjustments to the site today...moving it from http://sensei-link.org/ohayo/ to just plain, easy-to-remember http://sensei-link.org. Unfortunately, these types of changes can mess up the internal lengths of the site. I've done my best to check through things to make sure all the files have been re-linked properly, but I could have missed some. So, as you're using the site, if you happen to notice any broken links or pages that don't seem to load properly, help me out by sending me an email via the "Contact Us" tab up at the top. Thanks!

I've justed added a live-chat feature to the site, called "Tribune". It pretty much works just like any other chatroom-type program. You can see the whole chatroom by clicking on the "Tribune" link up at the top. Or, you can see the latest posts in the little block on the bottom-left of the home page.

I don't know how useful this will really be (for contacting people, it is probably still best to use the "Contact" tab in a person's profile (Select "User list" from the menu, choose the person you want to send an email to, select the "Contact" tab, and type in your message). But, I thought that in the times when it would be nicer to be able to chat in a more interactive way with someone (say, if you were needing to collaborate on a project, or something), then the Tribune will be a nice way of doing that.

Go ahead and test it out, and let me know if you have any difficulties!

EDIT: Please not that you need to be logged-in in order to use (or even see) the Tribune chat. This is for security purposes...anonymous internet users don't need to be viewing our chats.

Well, it's Monday again. Even though I missed last week, I think it was for a good cause, and we have a nice English Bible Study for you today: The Ten Commandments.

That's right! This is actually an Old Testament Bible Study you can do with your EBS crew, and I've included the applicable Japanese sections of the Bible. Yay!

Also new this week, is the nice little Poll over on the right sidebar. Go ahead and vote for what you would like to see more of here on Sensei-Link, because I really do want to make this site as useful for you as possible!

Enjoy :)

While you're here checking out the new site, why don't you head over to the "My account" link on the left, click on the "Edit" tab, followed by the "Personal Information" tab, and provide us with some info. New users will be asked for this information when they register, but if you've already registered, you'll have to do it the hard way. It's just basic information. Things like your real name (for when we have enough users that the account names won't work well for that purpose--I know, wishful thinking), whether you are a past or current teacher, where you're from, where you taught in japan, etc... It shouldn't take long, and this could be really helpful information, especially to prospective teachers looking for someone to get into contact with.

Once again, I tried to keep everything as private as possible, so no addresses or anything like that.

Thanks!

Well, the private messaging module I was using to enable sending messages to other members of the site seems to be pretty messy, and it would take a lot of programming to get it working with the new site. So...I found an easy-to-implement alternative.

Now, to send a message to another user, click on the "User list" in the menu at the left (don't worry, this menu item is only viewable to those who have registered to the site). There, you can see a nice list of all the other teachers. If you click on the username of the user you want to send a message to, you'll be taken to their profile page. Hit the "Contact" tab at the top, and you can send a nice message that will be sent to their registered email address. Nice, huh?

The nice thing about this is that your email address is never published anywhere...not even to the person sending you the message, so it's all very secure.

Regarding the user list, you can add a fun picture to your account so that we can see who everyone is. To do this, just click on your own name in the user list, click the "edit" tab, and scroll down to the "Picture" section. There you can upload a small picture for your account.

Well, that's it for now. Let me know if you have any troubles with the "Contacts" messaging, or anything else. Read more »

Change your bookmarks and hold onto your bootstraps!

Teacher-Link has now moved to its own domain! Unfortunately, teacherlink.org was already taken, so I found the next best thing! Now presenting: sensei-link.org! At the very least, this is a lot easier to remember and tell people about than felixruina.com/connect, right? ;)

Don't worry, I'm going to leave a link at the old site which will automatically redirect you to the new site, but that link won't be around forever...so go ahead and change your bookmark while you're thinking about it!

So, why the change? Well, other than the obvious benefits of having a primary domain name, what really got me started on the whole deal was that I was looking into the best way to upgrade the base software (Drupal) that the site runs on. This is a pretty complicated process, so I kind of wanted to do the upgrade on a copy of the site first. But, after deciding to do that, I thought to myself, "If ever there was a time to move the site to it's own domain, now is the time!" This is because I simply set up the new domain, copied the site over, did the upgrade...and no one even noticed any downtime! Pretty slick, if I don't say so myself. :)

Don't worry, all of your user accounts got copied over, and I think I have all the links updated properly. (Let me know if you find something that doesn't seem to be working quite right.)

Also, I changed the look of the site during the upgrade process. I wanted something a bit lighter. There will probably be some minor modifications to the theme in the next few months, but nothing too drastic. If any of you have any graphic design/website design experience and you would like to help, let me know, because those are definitely not my skills! I do promise, though, that there won't be any other major changes to the site for a while now. I think we're finally at the point where we need to just use the site for a while.

Like I said, let me know if anything seems goofy, and I'll try to get it fixed.

A few things I already know about:

• The Private Messaging didn't survive the upgrade process. I've disabled it until I get things working properly.
• There isn't any of that fancy WYSIWYG editing for blog posts yet. If you know HTML, you can use those tags, but otherwise, you're pretty limited in the fanciness of your posts. Don't worry, I'll port the old WYSIWYG editor over to the new site in time.

Enjoy! Read more »

Just added a new video help section.  So far there's only one video (how to create a blog entry and add pictures), but there will be more soon.

There will still be the written help section, but I always found it easier to learn by watching someone else do something. :)