So I found out today, that if you create a blog/website under Wordpress.com ( not .org) where you have a free blog/website, that you cannot embed html, javascript, or (unapproved) iframe into these sites. It took me about an hour of searching Wordpress forums and Google until I came across this page. Which explains that external embeds are not allowed because they might contain harmful elements, so if Wordpress encounters these kind of scripts, they automatically strip them out.
So that means no Google Custom Search Engine. Which is a total and complete bummer, because I definitely think it would make such a great addition to the site. Good news though, I've already created the search engine until Shepherd Career Services' Google account, so that if one day it does become available, the search engine code is ready to be copied and pasted.
Actually the more that I delve into Wordpress.com, the more I think it would definitely be worth a company or organization's time to just spend the money and self-host with wordpress.org rather than use a free blog with wordpress. The snags that I have run into, are definitely frustrating.
Since I could not enter into custom javascript or css, and I wanted to do something a little more dynamic for Shepherd Career Services' "What Can You Do With this Major?" page, I decided that I could use Wordpress.com's gallery feature, create buttons in Photoshop and then have it display as a dynamic gallery while linking each gallery image to a link on Salary.com or other job search sites. Turns out though, you cannot link individual images to individual links inside of a gallery. Well i don't know if you can, but I've been researching it profusely for the past half hour to no avail, so if someone has done it, I would greatly appreciate it if you pass the word along.
Mainly, through my Wordpress experience, I've realized how much you can't do rather than what you can do with Wordpress.com. I guess that's an okay thing, since this site has to be integrated on a different server soon anyway, but it just makes it more difficult for me as I keep trying to find ways to make the content more dynamic without being to code in javascript or iframes.
After taking time to think about how I was going to include some of the cool elements into the site that I had originally planned to embed. I've just decided that it is easier to to just put links in to the different elements that I want to put in, especially some of the resources that I've found from Salary.com and other career service sites. Links are not the most dynamic thing, but I have been so focused on how to uniquely put them in so it seems more interesting and less static. I think it will just require more playing around with the gallery feature.
Other than that, the only real dilemma I've had to work with, it how to use posts and pages to organize content. I've found out how to use categories and a custom menu to do most of the work for me, however sometimes I've seen that's where I run into problems. Because under the navigation, the pages designated for a category show up as an index with no page content or text. It just brings up each relevant post in reverse chronological order under each category. So if I want to have an index or introductory page, I have to create it as a parent page and then make the category the child of the parent index. This works fine, but it is a little bit clunky and not as streamlined as having a little static section on for each category page.
A little mix of each seems to be working out, but I as I work I just play with what feels right, if I add something new, or go in and change content, then I can always go back and change it so it makes more sense.
If you can sense the little bit of frustration I'm having, then you know how I'm feeling this week. I'm hoping next week that thing will be better and I can find better solutions to what I'm working on. I'm not ready to have a major breakdown yet, so that's a good thing. I think.
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