How do I filter my entire digital life into one personal domain?

December 27, 2008 7:31 PM

I'm merging my digital life into one conglomerate website. I have a wordpress blog, tumblr, twitter page, blogspot blog, and a page for my music project being joined on my new domain. Can I do this without making my site busy or ugly?

I've spent countless hours working on this and find myself reaching for a 'reset design' button.

Right now I have a minimalist landing page with links to everything

i.e. 'blog' 'twitter' 'tumblr' 'music' 'non-profit'

'blog' goes to www.domain.com/blog and uses the same CSS as www.domain.com/

I didn't like the look of the java/flash widgets embedded in my site,
so right now the twitter and tumblr feeds appear in plain text in their respective locations inside the jurisdiction of my stylescripts.

I have considered linking directly to current locations i.e. 'twitter' would go to www.twitter.com/userID, but I feel like that is ungratitude for the power that having my own domain brings.

Also with that, things are brought out of 'Zen' slightly as some parts of the site are hosted on the domain (blogs, music) and others are hosted elsewhere. Of course the layout changes on every not-my-domain page.

I have considered using some type of frame that opens the new site within my site, but I'm clueless to the logistics, and am not sure that that would improve my current situation at all.

Is there hope for my site?

Many thanks in advance!

I didn't realize that this was such an emotional website problem. Maybe this should go into human relations :P

posted by bradly to computers & internet (9 comments total)

this?

It's a theme that requires WordPress, but you should be able to migrate easily from whatever CMS you're using, if it's not WordPress.

Failing that, you could use the design to inspire your own approach.
posted by Nonce at 8:23 PM on December 27, 2008

Er, I see it is wordpress. Anyway, hope that's helpful.
posted by Nonce at 8:24 PM on December 27, 2008

For your blog and twitter, at least, you could write your own (or find something like this and customize it to your liking - I know this is a thing that exists) on-page RSS reader/parser. Style it with CSS, make it display only what you want to display, etc. If your music and/or non-profit categories expose RSS feeds as well, you'd be pretty much all set - you wouldn't have to worry about java/flash widgets, and everything would be hosted on your page and styled with your CSS so your layout could remain consistent.

(Don't do the frame thing. It works, but it's heavily late-90s.)

I'm sure Googling "embed RSS feed in page" or "parse RSS feed in HTML" or something similar would get you started. Best of luck!

[on preview: Nonce's thing looks good too, and is almost certainly much simpler, but probably removes a little bit of control.]
posted by ewingpatriarch at 8:27 PM on December 27, 2008

Err, to put my intentions in more plain-English, I'm imagining a box that takes an RSS feed address and spits out "last 5 tweets," "latest blog posts," et cetera.
posted by ewingpatriarch at 8:28 PM on December 27, 2008

You can use WordPress for the whole site (not just the blog elements). You'll want to look into the difference between the blog part of WordPress and "Pages." As for handling your Twitter/other RSS stuff, WP has a built-in feed display widget that works very well; I use it to display my last five tweets on the homepage. As for design, WP themes are pretty easy to get a handle on.
posted by sinfony at 8:34 PM on December 27, 2008

sweetcron. Good explanation here.
posted by datacenter refugee at 9:12 PM on December 27, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'd take a look at Sweetcron and Movable Type 4 with Action Streams. They're both software that you run on your own server to bring all of your digital items from other sites into one place. I don't have personal experience with either of these, but I've been looking into doing this too and these are at the top of my list to play with when I get a chance.
posted by pb at 9:12 PM on December 27, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

If you do mess around with RSS feeds in wordpress, start looking for documentation on how to do so here.
posted by Nonce at 9:18 PM on December 27, 2008

Sweetcron is exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks everyone!
posted by bradly at 10:21 PM on December 27, 2008