Blog Issue: Dang My Sidebar Fell Down and It Can't Get Up!! Part II (the solution)

I figured it out.

To help clarify the technical concept, which provides a buttress for our UU principles of a free and responsible search for truth and meaning and respect for the great web of life, I will explain.

Caution semi-Techie speak starts now...

I spoke of web links a while back.

If you create a web link it is composed of two parts: the URL link part and the link display text part. Some people show the URL link part as the display text part too. Hence you see a link that says http://www.blahblahblah.com

Please note: A link's display text may not match the URL link part. In the link above, if you click on it, you did not go to www.blahblahblah.com you came back here. The link display text is "www.blahblahblah.com" and the URL link part is "http://scuuwow.blogspot.com/search?q=sidebar". Spoofers use this trick to get you to go to a site that looks like your bank's web site but is really in a northern suburb of someplace you had no intention of going to, and the spoofers ask you for very personal information like your favorite color or SSN. You enter the information because you think it's your bank, but it's not. Don't be fooled.

I'm amazed there is no site at www.blahblahblah.com.

But I digress... back to the dropped sidebar solution, some links are very very very long. And if you use a humongous link as your link display text then it doesn't wrap. Wrap is a technical term. Wrap means that the words automagically move to the next line based on the existence of a space within a line of text. Well URL links are special they don't have spaces. So ... if you have a mile long URL link which you use as the link display text it messes up the page big time. The link causes the sidebar to drop. Why? Because the blog web page is in newspaper column format. The column that holds the sidebar gets pushed down to allow the link to write outside the width of the blog post column. The blog posts column appear on the left side of the blog web page and the sidebar appears in the right column of the blog web page.

So when I did the post about JP's link and added a link with a mile long display text it messes up the page resulting in the Dropped Sidebar. I have shortened the display text to "NY Times Link"

It's my karma to have these problems and to figure them out.

If you read this and are confused stop by and we can talk at coffee hour.

If this post helps just one person, including myself, then I have done my job within this great web of life.