Thursday, March 28, 2024
bloggingdaily photo

Look at That Menu!

black cat looking upward
Ooh! Aaah!

Someday soon I’ll have the time to reorganize The Creative Cat’s content into a newsletter-style layout with a clever navigable slideshow at the top and recent articles listed in sections with little thumbnail images so you can find my content more easily.

Until I finish that new layout, I’ve actually been able to make some improvements in my menu with the template I’m currently using—not only can I link to pages on this site, I can also list categories as menu items.

cat ears on computer monitor
Cat Ears for Better Reception

Understanding from reading the page and post statistics that blogs so conveniently give us, I know that daily photos are a popular reference. They are for me, and sometimes I’ll spend more time than I want to looking for a particular photo unable to find it—and it’s my site! So the first thing I did was to revise the former page “Silly Things My Cats Do Daily Cat Photo“, which had held early highlights from when I began posting daily photos, with a reference to “Daily Photo” on the menu so you can stop by and just look at the recent daily photos by choosing “All Photos“.

photo of cat in pasta bowl
Cookie in the Pasta Bowl

Then, further, I included drop down entries under that header for “Black Cats: Mimi and the Fantastic Four“, “Tortoiseshell Cats: Cookie and Kelly“, and couldn’t pass up a special section on “Cookie’s Kitchen Escapades“. I’ll be adding a few more later, such as “seniors” and even sub-categories for each of their names so you can look at photos of your favorite kitties, but I stopped at this for now.

I’ve also added a few categories under “Pet Loss” and “Backyard Wildlife Habitat”. I need to work with my CSS coding to revise the menu layout itself so that I can add links to my portrait updates and features such as “Living Green With Pets” and “Creating with Cats” as well as articles from my guest writer, Karen Sable.

tortoiseshell cat sleeping on books
Kelly Sleeping in the Cat Library

Part of the challenge with this is making sure that everything I want to categorize is in the category I want! Back in February 2009 when I initially set up The Creative Cat I had many ideas for what I’d like to do with it but thought I’d noodle around and let it become what it should be. This means that I have categories that don’t really make sense to me nearly three years later, and posts that should be in categories I subsequently added.

I actually enjoy organizing things; finding the time for it is another! I’ll keep tinkering with this until, behind the scenes, I develop the layout I really want and move over to that. For now, take a look through and see how it works.

—————————————

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used in any way without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in purchasing one as a print, or to use in a print or internet publication.

Bernadette

From health and welfare to rescue and adoption stories, advocacy and art, factual articles and fictional stories, "The Creative Cat" offers both visual and verbal education and entertainment about cats for people who love cats, pets and animals of all species.

11 thoughts on “Look at That Menu!

  • Pingback: Feline-themed Holiday Cards « Portraits of Animals Marketplace

  • Pingback: The Artist’s Life: Holiday Cards « The Creative Cat

  • I love the picture of Cookie in the pasta bowl! It couldn’t possibly be any more purr-fect!! I know what you mean about categories – I have many posts that I look back on now, and wonder what the heck I was thinking at the time… I do what you do as well, sometimes it is a very time consuming process looking for that “perfect picture.” I remember when my son did a guest post for me – the post was meant to be a loving gesture and a favor. It turned into more work for me than I could have possibly imagined…. he had no images for me, so I had to create all of them for the post!

    Reply
    • Deb, Cookie has made an art of interacting with kitchen items which is why that one became a regular category, and I’ve got ones I haven’t even posted yet. It’s her natural curiosity! But I know what you mean about “what was I thinking?” and all the time spent on building posts and finding or creating the perfect image–I chalk it up to keeping my creative senses in top shape since my daily work doesn’t always challenge me in that way, so I forgive all the time and effort I put into it–but then, you’d hope I’d forgive myself, right? I sure we always find it worth the effort, until the next time…

      Reply
  • I find CSS so difficult! I envy you a little bit that you know how it works! And ofcourse, adorable pictures!

    Reply
    • Dianda, I’m lucky I’ve been designing websites since there were websites, and my own site and all its parts have been my experiments all these years. CSS was a natural and welcome development from the way we used to do things, but I think it would seem like a totally arbitrary coding system to someone who’s never seen it before!

      Reply
  • Karen Lucas

    I love the pictures – Ooh, Aah is beautiful and Kelly sleeping in the library is wonderful too – your photos are almost as fabulous as your paintings!!!

    Reply
  • Got your attention, though, didn’t it? I’ve been writing catchy headlines for advertising and newsletter for years, just can’t break the habit. And don’t worry about my jargon–readers who also design their own sites will know what it is, and those who don’t will think it’s mysterious and difficult.

    Just follow Mr. Sunshine’s nose and take a look!

    Reply
  • Denise, you are not the only one!!! lol CSS coding? I’m left behind. Bernadette, whatever you’re doing it’s a great site 🙂

    Reply
  • Denise

    Oh, I am such a Luddite! I read Look at that Menu! and anticipated a
    photo of all or some of the kitties having a nosh. Am I the only one?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this:
Verified by ExactMetrics