News from the Valley of the Kings

Excerpts from recent comments on News from the Valley of the Kings are shown in the righthand sidebar, but space is tight so I have added a new Recent Comments page as well.  This shows 20 comments initially but if you click on "Show more comments" it will show a total of 50.  With the extra space, I am also showing the first 999 characters (almost always the entire comment) rather than just the snippets I can squeeze into the sidebar.

For those who enjoy the discussions here, I hope this make it easier to follow what people have been saying.  As always, if there are any problems please let me know.

You can access the new page in the grey menu bar by clicking on Recent Comments.  (I removed "Old Kingdom" as I have abandoned that in favour of the magazine Andie and I are launching soon.)

There have been some problems recently of comments which have vanished after they had  been posted and even after thay had appeared!  It seems that Blogger has changed its spam filter and some comments are wrongly getting flagged as spam and I hadn't realised that Blogger was doing that.  I've just retrieved 8 comments that had been wrongly marked as spam over the past few weeks.  My apologies.  Now I know about it, when I post I'll also check no comments have been wrongly flagged as spam.

My guess is that it is an issue mostly affecting people who are posting anonymously or with a Name/URL.  It doesn't seem to gave affected those with a Google account for instance.

Anybody else with a blog on Blogger might wish to check their own spam queue! 

My apologies again.

News from the Valley of the Kings will probably now take a break until after New Year as I am busy most days.  I may get chance to update between Christmas and New Year but don't count on it!   I'll continue to scan news stories, though, so if anything major breaks, I'll post a heads up but if I am busy I tend to post by email and can't include links.  Anything I do post will hit the RSS and Twitter feeds automatically.

Merry Christmas one and all.
Kate

Sorry updates have been slow recently.  I've been a bit down for a couple of weeks and had little enthusiasm for anything.  I'm mostly back up to date now, but there are a few more links I want to check out over the weekend.

I've also stalled on finishing up the template for the Old Kingdom blog but I'll get back to that now as well and hopefully will migrate News from the Valley of the Kings across to the new template.  (So if there's anything about the new temaplate you dislike, now is the time to shout before I make the switch!)

As Andie's blog is still not being updated, I've started posting articles on the Old Kingdom on the new Ancient Egypt for All blog as I come across material.  The template still has a number of wrinkles; I need to fill out the pages on things like subscribing; and the sidebars are somewhat bare.  But it's better than nothing and  it will get better I promise!  If you have any particular issues please tell me either by contacting me or posting a comment.  It looks best in Firefox but I've also tested in in Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. 

If anybody wants Blogger author privileges so they can post, just let me know.  This is a community blog, not my personal blog (although I will post too to make sure it has regular updates).  Alternatively, you can just email me articles and I'll create them in your name (remember to tell me what that is and, to avoid confusion, please don't use an Ancient Egyptian name like Isis!). 

I'll not post further in this blog about Ancient Egypt for All again until the New Kingdom section is set up in a few weeks time as that's clearly closely allied to News from the Valley of the Kings.  I have added a section in the white sidebar below the comments to show the titles of the most recent posts over there.

Don't Miss the Post About the work of the University Of Basel

Having read the responses to my earlier post, my decision is to opt for separate blogs for periods as indicated below. Any "regulars" can have either a Blogger author status or knowledge of the direct post email address for their periods of interest as preferred.  (I hope we can manage that without spam - we can but try and see).  Everybody else can email me/the blog owner and I'll create a post from that email as soon as I can.  That should hopefully avoid the need for a forum as subjects can be started easily.

I appreciate the growing number of Twitter followers, thank you. I'm spending increasing time though screening out Twitterers offering adult services. They sign up to follow, but have just one Tweet which is an advert for adult services. In reviewing the Twitter account, I've effectively been spammed. I'm therefore going to adopt the policy of blocking any suspicous Twitter accounts without reviewing them.  My apologies in advance if I block you by mistake.  If that happens, please contact me using the contact form and I'll unblock you.

There's also a problem with Twitter accounts if your tweets are blocked.  If you don't publish to the public Twitter timeline and would like to follow me, then please send me a message via the contact form when you sign up to follow.

If you are a regularTwitter follower then none of this matters to you - just follow normally and I'll accept you.  Hopefully someday soon Twitter will get to grips with the number of spammy Twitter accounts, but until then I;m sorry if I inconvenience anybody.

Kate

If you wish to comment on a picture, click on the link provided. This will take you to the main Wordpress blog to leave your comment. (For technical reasons, it's too hard to migrate that fully to here.) When you have finished, you can come back to this blog of you want (I'll provide links in the Wordpress blog), or you can continue browsing there.

I had two business blogs which pre-dated this one, and set up elsewhere. Over the past couple of weeks, I have lost them due to hosting problems. Rather than try to restore them from backup, I have opted to bring them to Blogger which seems much more secure. It also means I can bring them within the same template so that I get a consistent layout - after all marketing is one of my areas of professional expertise so branding is something I'm focused on.

So you'll now be seeing a new link on the navbar to a Business blog. Rather than set up two blogs, I've decided to consolidate them. If you are interested - and there is no reason you should be - I would wait 2 or 3 weeks while I get some content up. As of today the blog is empty. The main template is set up (which is why the link is now in place here) but I still need to sort out the sidebars before I think too much about content.

Just a quick note to say that the automatic domain renewal worked so this blog is securely at http://kv64.info (or http://www.kv64.info if you prefer) for the foreseeable future.

I just need some news to cover!

... just that there isn't much news this week. As the dig season winds down (other than the Valley of the Kings which the last I heard is still ongoing), news is likely to get less frequent.

In fact, it will be interesting to see how long the excavations in the Valley of the Kings do continue. Exavations rarely continue once we start getting to the summer heat - for obviou reasons. If these continue much longer (and that tent for instance isn't taken down), that would be a stong indicator that something has been found.

I'l post as soon as there is anything to report. In the meantime, I've been doing some maintenance/housekeeping. I've highlighted my own comments in the side bar and those of other Blogger members to a somewhat lesser degree. I've also added an option to click on a link at the bottom of the comments to reveal another 20 comments for those occasions when the comments are flying in thick-and-fast (such as if/when a tomb is announced).

Kate

Dear all,

Not sure when the problem began but Photobucket decide to spray ads all over my blog page. It's yet another issue from when I changed the template. I left the graphics hosted at the original (free) Photobucket location set up by the designer when I adopted the template. As this blog has got more popular, it trigger the bandwidth limit.

I have now manged to grab all the graphics, download them, upload them to web space I pay for (but don't much use), and edit the template to grab the graphics from the new location. In short, I hope I have fixed it.

I'll post something about KV63 tomorrow but I think Andie has it well covered already, so I'd rather go and sort my other templates out that have the same problem.

Sorry again
Kate

Rather than post tonight, I tidied up the presentation of the Recent Comments section. When I get chance I'll try to make similar changes to the rest of the white sidebar to get rid of the scrolling windows.

I know some readers would still prefer a very plain layout. I've set up a mirror site without most of the sidebar material, wider box for articles and very plain formatting. If anybody thinks they may prefer to use that layout, just let me know and I'll send you the web address.

I've now restored links at the bottom of the blue sidebar. I've added links to the full archive of articles on KV63, KV64 and KV65. Remember there is also a search option, but I can add more groupings (eg Amarna) if anybody wants. I've also added a hyperlink there to the Links page. That page is still a bit ugly but in due course I'll modify the template so that it looks like a proper page rather than an article (which it is - but hey, it's appearance that counts) and fill it out properly.

The blue jeans look was clear on my laptop but it was quickly apparent by the comments that on some screens it was hard to read. I've therefore changed the layout again! Blogs are very different to books. In a book the author is king. A successful blog is a community which has to reflect the collective wishes of the readership: you, the readers are more important than me. I hope this layout is better for you. By request, the main publishing area is white again.

It's that community element I want to bring to this blog. There are excellent blogs out there like Andie Byrne's Egyptology News which publicise official press reports; however, I find it frustrating that there is a lot going on in the Valley but no dig diary or press reports. There are eyewitness reports of people who have recently visited the Valley of the Kings - plus other news and gossip. They may not be as reliable as peer-reviewed articles, but as a community I'd still rather share them - with anything official that comes out as well. At times that means some reports will prove to be wrong - but then even Dr Hawass has that problem!


Best wishes
Kate

Update 27/1/09

I'm continuing to find and fix a number of 'issues' in the layout. The third party template I picked looks good, but it's got a whole host of problems. I've successfully moved the labels to the bottom since they aren't terribly useful, and corrected the post header so that it prints my name. That's not just vanity, I'd rather sort it out now in case in future anybody else ends up authoring posts.

There are still two big isssues:

1) When you get to the bottom of the displayed posts there is no way to navigate to the older posts - the link is missing. That's proving elusive to reinstate but I will get there eventually. For now I've set it to display 200 posts. That's not ideal as it slows load times, but it is a workaround. Anything older than that, use the archive.

2) I can't get commenting below posts to work. Again the template is 'buggered' as we northerners would say. Having worked out how to fix the labels I'm hopeful I may know what sections of code to tackle. For now I've left the full page commenting in place. As that works perfectly, commenting doesn't seem to be a big issue.

There are a handful of minor irritations as well that I won't bother you with. If you do spot anything else though, say and I'll move it up the priority list.

Kate

Dear Readers,

The original site went up fairly quickly and was sort of OK but I was wanting to move things off the front page to reduce the clutter - for instance I'd like a proper page of links rather than just a small box. Taking things forwards has meant taking things back to basics first so for the next day or so some familiar things will be missing, but they will be back soon!

Please bear with me.

Best wishes
Kate

Some people have reported difficulty leaving comments. Sorry if you have tried and failed. I've removed the requirement to have a Google account which should solve the problem. If I get a lot of spam comments I'll need to reconsider, but we'll try it for now.

It would be good to hear from you.

As with all blogs, occasionally there will be posts, like this one, which are just site news. As those who read the blog in a newsreader generally don't wish to see posts like this, I've created a customised news feed to filter out articles which don't refer to tombs or temples. That will drop some posts that aren't explicitly site news - for instance the post about the Luxor site management plan would also be dropped from the feed. I've added a button to make it easy to subscribe to the customised news feed for articles. (I've not bothered with a comments feed button).

It is still possible to subscribe to the full feed if you prefer, and this remains the default option.

Finally, I am also working on pruning the blog feed from sites like Egyptology News etc to try to show only articles relevant to the Valley of the Kings, Luxor etc., or the Pharaohs interred in the Valley. Please bear with me if there are any temporary glitches in the feeds from those blogs while I am making the changes.

If anybody has any comments, I'm happy to listen to your views. Both feeds are burned through Feedburner so I can also monitor which proves most popular.

I've been away and offline longer than I intended. (I hadn't expected Bangkok international airport to be blockaded.) I am now back online. So far I am not aware of any news but I'll post again once I have brought myself fully up to date.

Kate