Spammers

I have a feed set for comments on this blog so the new comments all go into my reader. We have now come under the attack of spammers and advertisers. I still don't see any reason to moderate comments here, but I will remain watchful for these types of comments making it in here and will add the senders to the blocked list when possible.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Mike

A New Cabinet

I found room on the outside of the cabinet next to the stove and added one for Study.

Thanks Barry.

World Clock

I really like that nifty little world clock. I think it's good to know what time it is if we are talking to someone. Does everyone want to list their time zones here so that we can add your names to the clock?

The Bios Cabinet

For those who added short Bio's under the original post, I have taken those and created brand new posts with them and they are all labeled as "Bio's". You can get to these by clicking on the Bio's Cabinet Door in the sidebar.

If you are interested in adding your Bio to the list, all you have to do is create a new post and put "Bio's" in the label box at the bottom of the post box.

If you want to edit your current bio, there are a couple of things that you can do.

The First Way

• Click Customize on the Blogger Task Bar
• Click Posting on the Tabs
• Click Edit Posts on the sub-tabs
• In the labels box in the left side bar, click Bio's
• Find your Bio and click Edit
• Edit your bio and click Publish Post when done

The Second Way

• From Rahab's, Click on the Bio's link in the Kitchen Cabinets widget in the sidebar
• Scroll down until you find your Bio
• At the bottom of your post, you will find "Posted by XXX at (time)". Quick Editing has been enabled on this blog so you should see a yellow pencil to the right. Click on it.
• Edit your post
  
• Click Publish Post when done

There is also another intersting thing that you can do from the editor. In the lower left hand corner of the box, there is a blue link labeled Post Options. Clicking on this link will expand the box and give you the options to either allow or not allow reader comments on your post and also to change the post time and date.

Changing the post date and time is a nice ability to have for updates to posts. You can change the post date and time to reflect the current date and time and your post will automatically go to the front page, on top. Then, everyone will know that it has been updated.

jON also mentioned having links to our blogs here as well so for a start, on the bio's that I have done, the blog links are at the bottom of the bio's.

Please let me know if you have any input one way or the other.

Peace

A New Sidebar Widget

First, I want to thank Erin for doing the calendar for the sidebar. It took me about five minutes to transfer all of the information that you gave me about birthdays and anniversaries to that calendar and now it is in the sidebar for everyone to see. Thanks Erin, that was a great idea!

Manuela had a great idea and from her post and the resulting discussion, I have went through all of the posts and whittled down the labels to five. They are:

• Discussion
• Prayer Matters
• Special Occasions
• Tech Stuff
• Updates

These five areas are now in the sidebar under the name "Kitchen Cabinets".

Based on the discussion in the aforementioned post/comments, a visitor can come into the kitchen and open the specific cabinet that they want to look in. If they want to hear about updates, they can open that cabinet. If they want to see prayer requests, there is a cabinet for that. There is a cabinet for discussion, technical stuff (I love that term, its so technical) and special occasions as well.

When you write a new post, please put it away in the proper cabinet by putting that name in the "post labels" area located at the bottom of the new post box.

Thanks to all for coming up with great ideas and making this place what it is; a great community to belong to! If y'all have any other ideas about cabinet labels, let me know.

Calendar

After discussion on the last post, I created a Google Calendar for Rahab's Kitchen so we can all keep track of birthdays and anniversaries and Mike doesn't have to do it all by himself. The widget is already installed, you should find it on the sidebar.

In order for the widget to work it was necessary to make the calendar public. This means if anyone who is using Google Calendar searches for public events, events on this calendar could turn up in the results depending on their search criteria. We will only be putting first names on the calendar, so it should not be a privacy issue for anyone, but it's important that you know this so you are informed. For more information on public calendars, go here.

There are no entries on the calendar yet because I wanted to give everyone an opportunity to opt out. Otherwise we will enter all the information Mike already has.

If you would like something new to be added, you can let Mike or I know and we can add it. Also if you would like to be able to add/edit events on the calendar, let me know and I'll send you an invite to it.

Also, you can subscribe to this calendar in a feedreader, on your own Google Calendar, or using another calendar application such as iCal. I can provide you with the calendar address if you would like to do this.

Consider it a calendar hung in the kitchen. I think this will alleviate one person having to be responsible of keeping track of these important dates.

More From The Tech Side

Hi All.

This has been a very busy time for me and I just keep getting behinder and behinder. (Seems that way anyway). I have posts brewing for my blog, some for Trolling For Retreads, where I contribute regularly and a full plate inside of the Matrix with work and home and life. I looked at my reader tonight and I have 125 unread posts. AAAAARGH!!!!

At any rate, I just wanted to let you know that if I missed you in the Visiting Siblings Column or the photo gallery, please send me a reminder at bobbavicto(at)gmail(dot)com.

My best wishes, prayers, hopes and dreams go out to all of you.

More Tech Stuff

For those who are Facebook members or want to be Facebook members and are on the blog network there, Rahab's Kitchen is now on the blog network. I didn't put an author do it as of yet but I personally think that since Tyler Dawn created this site to begin with, she should be listed as the author. What do you think?

You can find Rahab's Kitchen by searching the Facebook Blog Network or by going to my blog network page or you can just click here and go right to it. :)

Happy Facebooking!!

Some More Tech Stuff

Sue said this in a prior comment:

"I've changed the antispam settings. I hate having to do that too, and seeing it's only registered users that can comment here I figure it's probably safe"

I want to open this up for some discussion as to what the best method for this would be. Sue has a point in that when comments are open up to everyone (including anonymous), there is a higher probability to receive spam comments. I had the thought that if we don't open the comments to all, it would be like only serving communion to "members". What do you think?

There is always the option of opening the comments to everyone and then requiring word verification. This would cut down spam to almost nil (giving that there is always a chance that it can get through). Also, contributors to the blog are not required to use word verification when commenting on posts.

What are your thoughts?

From the Techie Corner

Hello All.

First off, I want to thank Heather for creating and hosting the Rahab's widgets. These are an awesome addition to your sites and she did an outstanding job with them!!

Like Jon noticed before, the "blog list" was removed because I found that if you use Google Reader, as soon as you log in to Google to do anything with this page, the names listed in this widget automatically changed the format of the names in your Google Reader. It's just craziness!! At any rate, I added just a simple blog roll style list with everybody on it. If I missed anyone, please let me know by sending me an email at bobbavicto(at)gmail(dot)com and I will make the changes.

I'm still waiting for some pictures so if you feel comfortable with that, send them along so they can be added to the slideshow.

There is quite literally a "ton of stuff" that can be done in the sidebar using HTML so if you have an idea, we'll give it a run!!

Happy Blogging and thanks for being here in the kitchen with us!

Get your own Rahab's Kitchen button or banner

To put one of these buttons or banners on your blog or website, copy and paste the html code below the image into a html widget/gadget or onto your website. You can change the width and height of the images by altering the "width=" or "height=" attribute that needs changing then deleting the other attribute. For example, if the image is too wide, change the "width" attribute to what you need then delete the part that says height="x".

<a href="http://rahabskitchen.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" width="271" height="271"
src="http://sacred-scarlet-designs.com.au/rahabskitchen/rahabskitchen1.gif"></a>

><a href="http://rahabskitchen.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" width="536" height="163"
src="http://sacred-scarlet-designs.com.au/rahabskitchen/rahabskitchen2.gif"></a>

<a href="http://rahabskitchen.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" width="271" height="82"
src="http://sacred-scarlet-designs.com.au/rahabskitchen/rahabskitchen3.gif"></a>

<a href="http://rahabskitchen.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" width="499" height="163"
src="http://sacred-scarlet-designs.com.au/rahabskitchen/rahabskitchen4.gif"></a>

<a href="http://rahabskitchen.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" width="163" height="396"
src="http://sacred-scarlet-designs.com.au/rahabskitchen/rahabskitchen5.gif"></a>

Banner?

Any of you artistic/techy kinda people want to create a banner image for Rahab's place that we can put on our blogs? If you can create it, I can host it.

Any takers?

Additions to the Sidebar

Hi Everyone.

I have added a subscription widget to the sidebar for posts and comments. With this particular one, in order to view all of the different options to subscribe, you either need to open the page with Internet Explorer or if you use a browser such as Firefox like I do, you can open the page using an I.E. Tab.

UPDATE: The tab is now working properly, even in Firefox. There was something about it being on the bottom of the sidebar. Must be an internet ghost thing or something.

I.E. Tab is an add-on for Firefox and is available here.

I finally got the candle thingy working on the slide show so that's what I'm staying with for awhile. Again, if you want to participate make sure you send me your pics at bobbavicto(at)gmail(dot)com.