It’s Almost Ready

I feel so bad because I avoided my reader yesterday and didn’t visit anyone’s blogs. And now I’m scared to even LOOK at how far behind I am on reading.  But there’s good reason. I was working on the mommy community all day.  And it’s SOOO close to being done.

This is something I’ve actually piddled with the for past 2 or 3 years.  But, what happened yesterday totally pushed me into overdrive.  Right now, I’m just working on the layout of the site.  Hopefully it won’t take too much longer.  The layout and some test runs are the last things that need to be done.  Yay!!

My fear with this whole thing is that people will actually sign up (lol can you feel the confidence) and then they’ll blog… and then… something will go wrong and the site will crap and all of their memories will be gone.  I think I’d go into permanent hiding if that ever happened.  “Where’s Chris?”  “I dunno.  I think she fell off the face of the Earth.”

But… I think that if I backup the info at least once a week, a total explosion of the site won’t cause people to track me down and want to kill me.

I have a couple questions for ya.  The site I’m working on has features that allow internal mailing (like.. you log in and see messages, but it never hits your REAL email)  and you can add friends and crap like that.  It’s a whole SOCIAL thing. That’s GOOD, right?  It’s GOOD to be able to have interaction.  Right?? Yes, there will be wordpress blogs (if you choose to have one) that will link directly from your profile.  But, interaction is good IMO.

And domains.  Oh man… I need help with that area.  I have one domain that I could use.  Some of you have seen this domain if I’ve e-mailed you.  You saw it because I was too lazy to log into gmail and use that account.  LOL  But… the domain sort of removes the possibility of having the daddies join in.  Is that okay?  Do we really NEED the daddies?  I mean… I love them to death but, I’m having one helluva time trying to find a domain that’ll fit moms AND dads.  Anyone have suggestions?  Anyone?? Beuhler…. Beuhler…..

Okay - Off to work on this some more.  Well, first, I think I’ll clean the house a little and start a fire.  My fingers are so cold that I can barely type.  I’m so sick of this weather!!  If only I could wake up tomorrow and have it be summer…

Anyways… let me know.  Give me suggestions.  Opinions.  Ask questions.  Hollah!!!!

Blogger Blows

I just found out how bad blogger really does suck.  This is totally burning my butt!!

I love user communication.  It excites me when I comment somewhere and they reply in an email. It makes me all WooT WooT and stuff.

Well, since my little move over here to Text Imps (wordpress based instead of blogger) all of a sudden, no one is sending replies to my comments.  I started to get very sad.  =(  Did I anger a head honcho??  Did they hate finding out that I’d converted?

Guess what — Freakin blogger isn’t giving them my email address.  That irks the crap out of me!!  Now, of course, if I sign comments using the google/blogger option, it will give them my email address.  But it will also put the blogger.com/user2089409238409382049832048023480238402384038048230 address as my webpage.  I don’t want people to visit that stupid blogger profile.  I want them to come here.  Where I am !!!  In one click!!

Name/Url gives a crappy noreply@booger address.  OpenID gives the same crappy address.  The only way to give my email addy is to use the blogger/google thing.  What kinda crap is that?  I find that to be 100% selfish.

I wish I had a million dollars!  I would pay everyone $50 just to convert to wordpress.  Wordpress isn’t selfish!  I can’t believe that google would be selfish like that!  I mean seriously!  They’re suppose to be one of the top companies that you can rely on for getting your name/business/products out there in the world.  Grrr…. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and just pretend it was an oversight on their part.

If anyone wants to move to wordpress and needs help, use my contact page and get ahold of me!! I will help!!!  I can tell you that you can host on your own server for about $5 a month.  And you can register a domain for $7 for a full year.  Get ahold of me!! I will help!!  LOL

Also, is anyone interested in a Mommy community?  One that’s hosted on wordpress?  One that will allow you to import all of your stuff from blogger and be done with it??  Cuz I’m about 2 seconds from setting one up!!

AND… if I’m wrong about this whole email/blogger business, someone PLEASE tell me!!!  Please!!!  I’d hate to be wrong but at the same time, I’d love to be wrong. I’d love to find out there’s a way to give my address to the people whose blogs I’m commenting at.

I’m off to clean the house and stew in the anger. Bahahahaaa

Comment Approval & Captcha

I hate captcha (word verification) as much as the next person.  Mainly because I hate trying to decipher what the heck I’m looking at.  Sometimes you really have to have a good imagination to figure out that the squiggly lines you’re looking at are actually letters.

BUT… yeah, you knew there’d be a but, right?  But… I’m putting a word verification on the comments.  Actually, it’s a math verification, so there’s no need to worry about squiggly letters.  As long as you can do kindergarten math problems, you should be okay.  And if you can’t add 5 and 5, I’m really not sure you and I should be friends anyways.  LOL

My reason for adding the captcha is that I get about 60 comments a day here.  60 comments from spam bots.  Ugh… I hate those things.  I hate them and really don’t even understand the point of them.  Are there actually places that allow those comments to be published and seen by their visitors?  I just don’t don’t get it at all.

Another little security measure that I’m taking is, ya’ll have to stand by the door and be patted down the first time you comment.  (Put your clothes back on - I said patted down, not strip searched)  After that, your comments will automatically be approved.

And please don’t worry about having to enter your e-mail address. (That’s optional by the way.) I have more important things to do than spam you or sell your address to someone else so they can spam you.  Okay… That’s not really the reason.  The reason is… I’m too lazy.  But ya’ll already knew that, didn’t you?

Also, don’t forget to put your blog addy in the comment form.  Inbound links (links going to your blog) are the best way to get more traffic to your site.  And it’s also the best way to gain ranking on search engines.

If anyone has problems submitting a comment, PLEASE let me know!! Something might be going wrong in my coding and it may need fixed.  And I’ll just think you all hate me and I’ll sit over here going “boohooo I shouldn’t have changed from blogger BooHooo… “  And, you wouldn’t want me to cry, would you?  LOL

Just drop me an email at textimps at gmail dot com.  Or you can check out the contact page for my instant messenger IDs.

Thank you to everyone who’s come over here from Coke On My Keyboard.  It made me so happy to see you all here.  BTW, to those who signed up on that google thingy over there in the right sidebar, does that do the “Follow This Blog” and put it in a subscription, like blogger?

Packing My Stuff And Moving

Well… I did it.  I finally decided I’d had enough of Blogger.  There were just too many things about blogging there that I couldn’t stand.  I have given up & bailed.  This, will be my new home.

There are so many more things that I can do using Wordpress.  There are thousands of different plugins I can download and implement.  I know how to work a template.  I don’t have to deal with the way the pictures turn out when they’re uploaded at Blogger.  I can make my own templates & I can write my own plugins if I need to.  I love Wordpress and I knew from the very beginning that I was royally screwing up by using Blogger.  I hate the limitations over there.

I can’t stand not being in total control of my sites.  That drives me nuts.  That’s one reason I’ve also bailed on myspace & the reason I never got into facebook.  I gotta have control & that’s all there is to it.

I spent the last 10 hours importing everything from Coke On My Keyboard over here.  What a mess that was!  It turned all of my tags into categories.  Messed up a couple CSS attributes.  And the biggest pain in the butt was downloading all of my pictures, uploading them & changing the links on each of them. It wasn’t really hard to fix the problems.  It was just time consuming.  It would’ve been a breeze if there weren’t already so many posts here & if I weren’t integrating them.

The worst part is the fact that the comment import didn’t link anyone’s name with their site.  That really upsets me.  But… I’m sure all of you will be commenting soon enough and guess what… I even have CommentLuv installed for you beautiful people.  =)  Easy as pie when it’s Wordpress instead of Blogger.  LOL

I’m going to try and get back into featuring a site & post each week.  That was my main goal for Text Imps when I first bought the domain.  But my main focus is going to stay with my personal blog.

So…. Here I am.

If you subscribe to Coke On My Keyboard, please update your subscriptions.  There’s a feed button up there in the top right corner.  I also put one of those google friend thing-a-ma-bobs over in the sidebar.  I THINK you can use that to follow, just like on Blogger… but I’m really not sure.

If ya’ll have anything suggestions about the layout here, anything that’ll make navigating easier, let me know.  =D  Thanks for jumping over here.  Grab a drink from my fridge.  I think there’s water, soda and a couple kinds of juice.  Put your feet up.  And….  I dunno.  LOL…  My brain has shut off.  Too many codes flying through my head right now.