There’s an interesting blog-based “challenge” floating around where authors are sharing “5 Gaming Lessons” (learned in however long they’ve been playing). To give credit where it’s due, I first read about this idea over at The Bronze Kettle though they credit The Game Dame for the original idea and several others have risen to the challenge. While not an exact match persay, this idea has encouraged me to dust off one of my long-waiting drafts, one where I had started writing a letter to myself to enclose with my first copy of World of Warcraft. The idea for this letter was to include the pearls of wisdom that would otherwise have to be hard earned.

Dear me,

1. I know the video of the pretty pink elf shapeshifting into a sleek black panther is what makes you think you want to play a Druid. Little do you realize that you’ll end up spending less than 1% of your total time in a Feral form.
2. Yes, you’ll choose a Druid, but no, you won’t wear any of the gear that you can craft using the Leatherworking skill. Yes, I know you want to pick it up anyway because it seems Druidy. No, it’s still a bad idea. Be happy with Tailoring. At least you can make yourself pretty dresses. And later, some of the best armor for you will be made of cloth, not leather. Go figure.
3. Don’t agree to help start a PvP guild. You don’t even like PvP. And you won’t until the game changes to make PvP more Healing-friendly. That won’t happen until the release of the first expansion.
4. Don’t make 5 16-slot bags for every friend who buys the game on the first day they play. Chances are good they may never get past their trial. Try not to take it personally. Unless you didn’t listen to me and made them the bags anyway.
5. Put this box down… Okay, now look for the one that’s marked “Collector’s Edition.” It has an adorable little panda bear pet that falls asleep with his round butt in the air and cute little green Zzzz over his head! Much better. Proceed to checkout.

Your friend, You

P.S. When creating your character, don’t name them Gaelic words that no one can pronounce. You’ll end up regretting it and only be able to change it when you transfer servers.

What lessons have you learned since coming into the World … of Warcraft?

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One of the downsides that I didn’t consider when deciding to make the switch from Blogger to WordPress was the negative effect that this would have on the traffic I receive. I still monitor the visitor stats generated by both blogs and have watched the numbers steadily fall from my Blogspot.com blog as they have risen on my WordPress blog. Oddly enough, my Blogspot.com blog still receives about 50 returning visitors every day. I’m not sure if those people are just really confused or very nostalgic. ^_^

I’ve recently begun to contact other blog authors gracious enough to link to my site that I still use my old address. (Those of you who don’t list e-mail addresses or provide contact forms make this endeavor especially hard, by the way!) I also spent a couple of hours updating all of my previous posts to ensure that none link to my old site. I am hesitant to remove the content from my Blogspot.com blog altogether since that site does still generate traffic for this one, even if it’s no longer updated. I also recognize that there are still direct links out there to individual articles and would rather not disappoint the people who follow them. These links are also why I’ve decided against adding a meta refresh to the header of my old blog.

Oh no! Not again.

What this boils down to is an overall reduction of the “Reputation” that Resto4Life has built up within the blogosphere. I tried to make my switch a vocal one at the time, but there’s just no way to ensure that the “credit” afforded to my old blog be transferred to the new one. To give you an idea, my Technorati rating (a measure of how often linked you are) for my Blogspot.com blog is 54, while this site is currently rated 36. You may say, “bah, why do you care?” It may seem vain, but if blog authors didn’t care about building and maintaining a healthy level of readership, most of us probably wouldn’t be writing. And so I watch my stats and examine my incoming links, tweaking things that I hope will help. It feels a bit like nursing a potted plant. Those haven’t typically lasted more than a few days in my house, however…

In a general effort to continue improving, I’d like to take this opportunity to solicit some feedback from visitors. I’m curious about what you enjoy reading most here at Resto4Life and if there’s anything that you would like to see more of. I’ll try to take any suggestions you have under advisement, though I can make no promises regarding gnome pr0n (that’s a whole different blog altogether). For ideas, here are a few of the topics that I try to include (feel free to add your own if you think I missed any):

• Analysis
  While these posts don’t always contain math, graphs, and spreadsheets, they would include any post that examines a particular caveat of our class in some detail, be it a talent, spell, or Druid-specific item.
• Class/Spec News
  While I don’t cover every change to the Druid class (I try to leave the Feral and Balance changes to their respective moguls, for instance), I do try to mention anything of note that I find for healing Druids. This is fun for me since I often read about these changes in places where it’s unlikely to find intelligent discourse regarding the changes. By posting them here, I get to hear your impressions.
• Community Spotlight
  This includes any Druid-related items created by someone else that I want to share with you. This includes new Druid blogs I as I find them in addition to things like PvP videos and Featured Artwork.
• Blog-Related Posts
  This generally includes new tools or features I’ve stumbled upon (or created) and think other authors might enjoy. This includes posts like this one.
• Player vs. Player
  I’m certainly not a great PvP player, but I do enjoy it (sometimes … with a lot of tequila, lime, and salt). Moreso, I enjoy writing about it. Do you like reading about it?
• Macros and UI Stuff
  Even if you tell me you hate this sort of thing, I’m not sure I could give it up. I’d probably still write these articles and tuck them away in a dark, cobweb-filled corner. I love the UI in World of Warcraft and think everyone can benefit from tweaking their interface to suit their playstyle.
• Personal Interest Stories
  I’ve hesitated to write too much about Phaelia or my in-game experiences, both because I wasn’t sure if that would be well-received and I’m not sure if they would be particularly interesting. On the other hand, I know that some blogs thrive on sharing intimate details of their gaming. Is this something you sometimes like to read about?
• Mailbag Question and Answer
  Readers often send in great questions whose answers beg to be shared. These are generally short posts that don’t require any math (thankfully) that I enjoy putting together.

If you would like to give me your opinion on your favorite types of topics, please feel free to comment below. Or if you’d like your opinion to remain a secret, feel free to use the Contact form.

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I wanted to point out a few new features that I've been working on during the brief periods of downtime I've had at work lately. The 15-minute periods between submitting items for testing and hearing back from our testers are just perfect for aesthetic tweaks like these!

• Replaced my contact page with a much more customizable one called Contact Form 7. Thank you to Jon over at The Bronze Kettle for the recommendation!
• Updated my About Me page. Nothing special, but I did relocate my Armory and Guild Site information to the top of the page so I could remove it from the bottom of my template.
• Re-added Google Clips. This lets me opt to share my favorite posts from other Druid blogs in a section at the bottom of the page called "Nature's Reach." I cleaned out most of the old ones I was featuring and have yet to share anything new, but will do so soon!
• Finally got ItemStats working after having to manually create the itemcache table in my database and using a plugin to configure any post that uses them to not convert double quotes to smartquotes. A big thank you to Jon and Shelbi's article on implementing WoWHead-powered ItemStats on WordPress. And now you can check out what I fished up last night: [item]Weather-Beaten Journal[/item].
• Learned how to automate my extended Blogroll using a plugin that allows me to run PHP on individual pages. It should be much easier for me to add, remove, and update sites now.
• Added a form for submitting a link to the bottom of my extended Blogroll page.
• Added a new icon to add Resto4Life.com to your Technorati Favorites. It's the green speech bubble icon up at the top right, next to the RSS feed icon.
• Recategorized all the Featured Artwork pieces into the Artwork category. Hopefully this will make it easier to select a desktop wallpaper from what's been featured so far.

Also, I realize that I'm behind on responding to comments. I plan on making the rounds at some point today (if possible). Please don't think that I'm ignoring your wonderful contributions to the site!

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Idea shamelessly stolen from XKCD.com. Check it out.

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So I was out in Teldrassil, killing Young Nightsabers for the Balance of Nature quest when look what dropped:

No, not really. But it looks pretty nice, doesn’t it? If you’re wondering how I did that, you aren’t alone. A couple of visitors have written in recently inquiring about my item links, and I’m finally willing to share my secret. Note that there are other ways to include World of Warcraft items in your blog, one of which is the item links method recently highlighted by Big Bear Butt (original credits to Okoloth). But if in-line displays are more your cup of tea, and you’re interested in trying it for yourself, read on, plucky blogger!

The WoWHead Item and Spell Parser (WISP) is a small Windows application that Valenna of Parry! Dodge! Spin! and I co-developed in VB.NET to allow us to attractively display items and spells on our blog, using code automatically acquired from the WoWHead web site. To use it, you will need the following:

• The ability to use WoWHead.com (the program requires a valid WoWHead address to parse)
• Web space to host images (using images hosted on the WoWHead site would be an unfair abuse of their bandwidth — don’t do it, please)
• A text editor like Notepad to edit the configuration document
• WinZip or another program that allows you to open and extract Zip files
• The Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0+ (I believe that this is a requirement and can be acquired through Windows Update)

Instructions:

1. Download WISP.zip. (Doesn’t include an installer, much less a keylogger.)
2. Extract the contents of the *.zip file into a folder.
3. Use a text editor such as Notepad to open the Wisp.exe.config file.
4. Edit the ImageStoreLocation variable to point to the web directory where you’ll be storing images, including spell and item icons.
5. If you use Blogger and have it configured to automatically Convert Line Breaks, ensure that the ReadableHTML option is set to FALSE or NO. (Why?)
6. Save your changes and close the config document.

Before you can begin generating item tooltips, you’ll need to download, save, and upload the images used by WISP. You’ll also need to add a set of CSS styles to your blog’s stylesheet. You should only have to perform these steps once:

1. Open the application by double clicking on the executable file, WISP.exe.
2. At the bottom of the first window is a button labelled CSS Styles. Click it to open a form that contains the CSS that you will need to use for your site (customized with the URL you set up earlier). There’s a button below the CSS pane labelled Copy CSS that will copy all of the CSS to your clipboard so you can easily paste it into your Blogger or WordPress template/stylesheet.
3. Select each of the six images listed at the bottom of the Styles window and click the Open button. This will open the images on WoWHead so that you can save them to upload to your own web space.
4. Click the Close button to return to the main window.

Creating an Item or Spell Link:

1. Visit WoWHead.com and find the item or spell for which you want to generate a tooltip. Copy the URL of the page.
2. From the main window of WISP, click the Paste button at the top of the screen (you can also do so manually by clicking inside the URL box).
3. Click the Parse button.
4. HTML code should automatically be generated in the Parsed HTML pane. Click on the Copy HTML button below this pane to copy it to your clipboard.
5. Paste the copied HTML into your blog editor (be sure you aren’t editing in WYSIWYG mode).
6. Important: An image URL should populate at the bottom of the form (labelled “Hosted Image”). Click the “Open” button beside this field to open the image in a new window so that you can save it and FTP it to the directory you specified in your config file.
7. Save/Publish your post when you’re done.

Additional Notes for Blogger Users:

By default, Blogger converts your line breaks into the appropriate line break and paragraph tags. Unfortunately, this presents difficulties when working with tables and other HTML formatting that it helps to be able to see when coding. WISP can output HTML that contains line breaks and extra spaces to make the HTML more readable. If you have the Convert Line Breaks option turned on in the Formatting settings of your blog, be sure to switch ReadableHTML option to FALSE so that your output doesn’t include this additional spacing.

Additional Notes for WordPress Users:

WordPress users will need to install a plugin that tells WordPress not to automatically reformat your posts. Otherwise, WordPress will automatically eat the code necessary for displaying your items properly. The plugin that I use is called WP Unformatted, and once it’s installed you will need to add a Custom Field named “sponge” with a value of “1″ to any post where you intend to include one or more items or spells.

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