There’s always something to howl about.

Whotube? Two challenges for BloodhoundBlog’s contributors.

This site has 69 contributors, surely a propitious number. We got a lot of new software this week, including shortcodes and the Markdown markup language.

Markdown is an EZ way to get to formatted text, emulating in many ways longstanding Usenet markup conventions. Chances are, if you work in it, you will have to learn nothing of the underlying nuts-and-bolts. The list below was written simply with asterisks, typewriter style:

  • Easy to use.
  • Hard to confuse.
  • Aaron Swartz, the inventor, was hounded to death by the Deep State. His productivity lives on in you.

Shortcodes are easy ways to effect big jobs. Witness Mister Jack White:

 
The code for that was precisely this:

The word ‘youtube’ in brackets with the link to the video. Easy-peasy, and the theme will manage every sort of screen size on its own – desktop, tablet, smartphone.

The link above summarizes all of the available shortcodes, but the docs that matter are here: Extending the Youtube shortcode.

So the first challenge to our contributors is simply to post. Could not be easier to post amazing content.

The second challenge is harder: Forecast the future. Pandemic, protests, politics: What are they doing where you are, and what portents will the future bring? Our contributors are all over the country. There is much they can teach us.

There are two challenges to making a blog work: Content and conversations. The latter are caused by the former.