{"id":4256,"date":"2003-08-01T12:33:34","date_gmt":"2003-08-01T12:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4256"},"modified":"2003-08-01T12:33:34","modified_gmt":"2003-08-01T12:33:34","slug":"working-on-a-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4256","title":{"rendered":"working on a website"},"content":{"rendered":"

I reported some time ago<\/a> that<\/p>\n

a publisher was talking to me about writing a very quick "issues<\/p>\n

guide" for new voters, to be published in the fall. They actually<\/p>\n

sent me a contract, which I decided to sign, and then they withdrew<\/p>\n

the offer because of qualms about marketing. So now I’m considering<\/p>\n

writing the same material and giving it away on a website. I think I<\/p>\n

could persuade friends in the civic-engagement business to publicize<\/p>\n

the site, and the resulting traffic would be enough to justify my labor.<\/p>\n

I’d like the website to be quite interactive. In particular, I’d like<\/p>\n

visitors to answer a bunch of questions and see an initial political<\/p>\n

profile, which they could then modify in the light of the information<\/p>\n

and perspectives presented on the website. The progamming for this quiz<\/p>\n

would be a breeze for someone who know what she was doing. And it would<\/p>\n

be a fairly cheap application to buy from a programmer. But I don’t<\/p>\n

know what I’m doing, and I don’t have any money to pay for custom code.<\/p>\n

I spent quite a bit of time this week finding and downloading "freeware"<\/p>\n

that was almost right, but not exactly. In the process, I figured out<\/p>\n

that a Java script would do the trick: no need for a database. I also<\/p>\n

decided that I could learn how to write the script without pouring my<\/p>\n

time into a sinkhole. So I bought a Java script manual and I’m busy<\/p>\n

learning it. The last time I wrote code was about 1984; the language<\/p>\n

was Basic, the computer was an Atari, and I was in high school. I wasn’t<\/p>\n

especially into it (I was always a humanities kind of geek, not a techie);<\/p>\n

but it had an appeal then and it has an appeal now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I reported some time ago that a publisher was talking to me about writing a very quick "issues guide" for new voters, to be published in the fall. They actually sent me a contract, which I decided to sign, and then they withdrew the offer because of qualms about marketing. So now I’m considering writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-and-public-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}